The evolving COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact all industries in different ways. However, one thing remains constant across just about all verticals: now more than ever in this age of digital disruption, the ability to be agile and adjust the marketing sails of your ship is critical. Between canceled events, deployment of COVID-19 emails, the transition to completely remote work…the list of actions and reactions have been plentiful, marketers certainly not excluded. As a new reality settles in, the overarching message has become clear: adapt to the current climate, or risk missing out on subtle sales indicators.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a marketing calendar that hasn’t undergone a complete overhaul in the past few weeks. That’s step one. But what follows these changes? Here, we provide the top three actions that marketing operations teams should take now to adjust to the current marketing climate and ensure Marketo is in tip-top shape when the economic rebound begins.
Adjust Your Scoring Model During Digital Disruption
If you’re like most organizations, you’ve experienced a huge shift in marketing activities and response rates since the pandemic exploded. Keep in mind that when your marketing and messaging change course drastically, your scoring model will also need to be adjusted, still keeping the flow coming to sales, of course.
As an example, if trade shows and events are a big part of your scoring model, it may be wise to adjust your scoring model to put an emphasis on other activities, prospect behaviors and/or adjust your overall MQL scoring threshold. Perkuto Solutions Architect Lindsay Khan offered several tips to optimize your scoring model during the steep marketing shift of late.
“Consider certain form fills as fast tracks to MQL if you’re not already doing so. Use alert emails and task assignments to follow up with people that fill out key forms, demos and ‘contact us’ forms for starters,” she said. “Other scoring adjustments to consider would be upping the points for online event attendance or attendance on demand, as people may be taking the time to view webinars or videos they haven’t had a chance to in the past.”
The takeaway: marketers need update and adjust to appropriate new milestones.
Strengthen Your Deliverability Programs and Database
Has your organization (like many others) sent out a COVID-19 message to your entire database in recent weeks? As we focus on our personal health and the health of our staff and our families, don’t neglect your database health. A slower pace equates to a window of opportunity to purge old records from your database.
“Conduct an audit of your data,” Lindsay recommended. “Certain fields are important for lead routing, but there could also be non-normalized values entered into those fields. Take the standard value set for the field, create a smart list that looks for the field not being empty, and doesn’t contain any of the standard values.”
“This approach can be used across multiple fields on a smart list by smart list basis in order to clean-up the values,” she continued. And to assist in your database clean-up efforts, be sure too, to download Perkuto’s free 41 Point Checklist to Auditing your Database. Lindsay also offered a few words of caution, “Remember to be mindful of the campaigns that could be triggered by the data value changes.” Good words of wisdom.
Get Ready to Rebound
With the cancelation of trade shows and every other live event, marketing funds will likely be diverted into more digital initiatives, which means strap in and get ready for a wild ride when the rebound begins.
Marketers should take this time now to review and adjust your program structure to prepare for scaling up, should demand increase with only a moment’s notice. Implement global forms, update email templates, and refresh those Marketo landing pages— activity can pick up at any time, with little notice.
“Create program templates for programs where you follow repeated processes,” Lindsay advised. “Tokenize the assets in the programs to speed-up asset creation and edits.”
She added, “And don’t forget to document your processes— create a guide for users so that they know where to make the necessary edits, and start a token glossary so that they understand what the tokens mean and where they are used.”
The theme across all three of these actions for marketers? The ability to read the current climate and pivot accordingly is paramount. Continue to keep your finger on the pulse of the ever-changing marketing landscape, be a champion of adaptability, and shore up the power of Marketo.
The COVID-19 crisis is unchartered territory for most of us, causing an unforeseen digital disruption and has placed unusual demands on marketing operations teams. Perkuto is here to help and support you, from providing immediate marketing operations help to answering questions about next steps your organization should take. If you’d like to discuss your options, we invite you to talk to us now.
