Mike Maynard and Hannah Wehrly address the benefits of data enrichment, the recent acquisition of Clearbit by HubSpot, and how data enrichment can enhance marketing campaigns and increase campaign success.

They also discuss how survey findings aren’t always the reality of the B2B industry, how marketing automation can help marketers and sales work together, and how it can aid social media and KPIs.

Listen to the podcast now via the links below:

Transcript: Marketing Automation Moment Episode Eleven – What is the Importance of Data Enrichment in B2B

Speakers: Mike Maynard, Hannah Kelly

Hannah: Welcome to the market automation moment Podcast. I’m Hannah Kelly.

Mike: And I’m Mike Maynard. This is Napier’s podcast to tell you about the latest news from the world of marketing automation.

Hannah: Welcome to the Marketing Automation Moment Podcast. I’m Hannah Wehrly. And I Mike Maynard. And this week we discuss Hubspots AI trends marketers report,

Mike: the acquisition of data enrichment company Clearbit, the best part automation KPIs, how marketers and sales can work together by using marketing automation platforms,

Hannah: and how market automation can help with your social media. Hi, Mike, welcome back to another episode of Market automation moment. How you doing?

Mike: Well, it’s great to be back. It’s been a while since we’ve talked actually I’ve done a lot of travelling, and we’ve had a few technical problems as well.

Hannah: We definitely have Well, I’m really excited about our conversation today. Because although we have got, of course, a little bit to talk about with regards to AI. We’ve also got some really interesting elements to talk about today. So I’m just going to jump right into it and HubSpot have actually released an AI trends for marketers report. Now this was really interesting, because I have to say, I don’t think I agree with all the data, because hospital actually reckons that AI gives marketers 12 and a half hours back per week. Now that sounds wonderful in theory, but actually in reality, I don’t think that’s quite true, especially when it comes to b2b Tech and the line of work that we’re in. I mean, they’ve stated that 48% are using AI to conduct research 22% to get ideas and 32% to learn how to do things. What do you think about this?

Mike: Yeah, and I think a lot of people are using AI now. I mean, we use AI a lot. You know, I used it this morning. To give people a definition of something is great for certain tasks, but the HubSpot report, it seemed to make claims without really backing up and I think this is where I became a little bit nervous, particularly, you know, when it started talking about 12 and a half hours per week as the likely timesaving?

Hannah: Absolutely, I mean, one thing that came across, which was quite interesting was that 37% are using AI to automate time consuming tasks with regards to SEO. So things like keyword mapping, and ternal link building, and actually to support them in building their content strategy. Now, it’s interesting, because as you said, you know, you use it this morning, of course, as elements to this, but what are the risks and advantages of using AI to support SEO?

Mike: Well, I think, you know, AI is great as a tool. I mean, you know, I personally love what Microsoft had done in calling their AI tools that copilot something to help. It’s interesting to see that 37% of marketers are actually automating time consuming SEO tasks with AI. I’m not entirely sure 30% of marketers are really particularly active doing SEO. So it does make me wonder quite what the sample was. And I think we need to take away some of the numbers. You know, the claim that marketers spend five hours a day on menial tasks, I think was HubSpot word. And that, you know, using AI is going to automate that away to be only two and a half hours. I’m not sure many of us marketers are putting on our, you know, inputs to our annual appraisals, that actually more than half our day is menial tasks. And equally, I think some of the numbers are quite high. Having said that, without doubt AI is super useful, and is really being deployed by a lot of marketers today. So I think let’s forget about the numbers somewhat. And maybe let’s talk about how people are using it. And you mentioned earlier, some stats on ideas, and research. And I think this is what marketers should be doing. They should be focusing on, how can I help? And what can I use it for rather than necessarily trying to tally up exactly how many hours a day it saves?

Hannah: That’s a great point, Mike. And I really like that, you know, as a marketer myself, I don’t look at my tasks as Oh my God, I need to save two hours, but being able to get that insight, that inspiration sometimes, that’s really where AI has come to help.

Mike: Uh, definitely, I mean, the whole blank play paper syndrome where, you know, if you’re not careful, you can be sat there for a whole day staring at a piece of blank paper and not knowing what to do, whether it’s, you know, SEO, keyword research, or whether it’s, you know, trying to come up with some content. I think AI could save, you know, a huge amount of time there. And it’s almost a bit pointless to try and work out exactly how much I think it’s much better to go and actually change the way we work because, you know, let’s be honest, looking forward. Nobody’s gonna care about what you did a year ago. People are actually going to care about you being efficient and effective and using the tools today. So I think let’s focus on finding the use cases, rather than trying to come up with some artificial quantification that perhaps isn’t so useful.

Hannah: Absolutely, you’re completely right. Mike, I actually want to move the conversation on a little bit because a couple of days ago, you sent me an article. It’s something really interesting. And I’d love to get your thoughts about. And it’s that HubSpot has actually just announced an acquisition of clear bit. Do you want to talk a little bit about what this means?

Mike: So this, I think, is super interesting. And it’s really frustrating. I mean, some of the older listeners will remember something called Plaxo, which was like, a way to update your contacts. And that company kind of fell by the wayside. But now, it seems to be the hottest area in martec is actually data enrichment. And so HubSpot, clearly, they’ve got this philosophy of being a single platform, people buy everything from them. So they need a data enrichment facility. So they bought Clearbit to do that. But also, it was only a couple of months ago that Apollo to IO, got some more investment, I think it valued the company at something like one and a half billion. We’re seeing more and more of these data enrichment companies becoming hugely important in b2b. And I think what HubSpot has done is really buy someone so that they’re able to offer that within that HubSpot package, which is their philosophy in their approach. Many other people using other marketing automation platforms will tie in different systems. And they’ll pick the best system for the data they need.

Hannah:

I think absolutely. And actually just want to take it back a step back and go back to basics, and maybe just for our listeners who aren’t as advanced in market automation, what are the benefits of data enrichment? Like what can this do for you as a marketer?

Mike: Well, I know you’re an expert on this, because you do a lot of data enrichment for our business development, the hammer, so thank you for asking me. But I think you know, the main thing that people are doing is they’re taking data that is either incomplete. And let’s be honest, most people, they look at their marketing, automation databases, they know that maybe they got the address, perhaps they’ve got the name, right. Hopefully, they’ve got the company, right, maybe they’ve got the job title, but company size, postal address, maybe mobile phone number, all of those things are typically missing on a fairly large number of accounts. And so what data enrichment offers is the possibility of actually adding that data automatically. And in fact, what typically happens is once people set up a system, what you do is you maybe simply put in the email address for somebody, wait a couple of seconds, and then the data enrichment system will then fill in all the other details. So whether you’re entering contacts into a database for marketing, or more likely sales into a CRM, it really saves time, because it fills out all those forms, or those name and phone number and fields that take a long time to complete. And I know you’ve been working on trying to use this in Napier’s marketing as well.

Hannah: Oh, yeah. I mean, I’m so enthusiastic about this, because I have a basis for our database where I have to have the set fields filled in from the get go. Otherwise, I can’t sleep at night. So knowing that this can be done automatically. I mean, I love this. And it’s definitely I’d say a point in HubSpot corner because it’s gonna save marketers so much time, but also the benefits of it. And personally for me as well, you know, being able to not have to do all this research to get that data is going to be so beneficial.

Mike: Absolutely. And I think the question is unclip is a good a good system today, can HubSpot keep that data fresh going forward. And as HubSpot adds more and more features, they’re spreading themselves broader and broader across more and more functionality in their tool chain. The challenge is to be great at everything. And obviously, some of their competitors will say, well, actually, what we’re doing is we’re allowing you to bring in best in class vendors. And I think it’d be interesting to see who wins. I mean, both sides have fairly compelling arguments as to what they’re doing. Both sides have great strategies. And ultimately, I think both HubSpot and also the marketing automation vendors that effectively recommend you use a third party data enrichment. So they’ll both actually be great solutions going forward.

Hannah: Absolutely, completely agree, Mike. And I think this is a good segue into our next part of the podcast because focusing on data, I want you to have a conversation around the best marketing automation KPIs. So, for example, if we take NAPEO the kinds of things that I look at when we run a campaign are things like landing page conversion, so you know how many people are visiting our page and actually filling in the form? You know, for us, we look at our website traffic, but we know only a real small percentage of that website traffic is actually relevant to Napier. So it’d be good to get your insight and what you think are the most important metrics to look at. So for example, is cost per lead a good metric to be measuring. What about customer lifetime value? Where should marketers be focusing their efforts? When looking at market automation KPIs?

Mike: Well, obviously, I mean, you’re a smart marketer, you’re not looking at the kind of vanity metrics so much, you know, things like impressions and click through rate, and you’re really trying to measure things that are closer to our business objectives. And I love that about what you do. And I think people should really You take a leaf out of your book and be looking at that, I think it’s very difficult. You know, landing page conversions is really interesting when you look at conversion rates, for example, typically, somebody’s running a campaign, they might run a campaign out to their database, which could have a large percentage of existing customers, and also have quite a few prospects that have already been warmed up. And you might see quite a high conversion rate on your landing page, where people are willing to enter data, frankly, you know, they’ve got an email from you, they know, you know, their email address, they’re happy to put it in again, you’re probably auto filling it to make it easy. I think the risk is, then when you then roll that campaign out to a broader audience where you’re trying to bring in new prospects that you want to nurture, that conversion rate is going to go down. And so I think trying to look at individual metrics and apply them across a whole campaign is very difficult. What you need to do is start looking at what you’re trying to achieve, and then how much it costs you to achieve that. And that typically will involve, you know, splitting campaigns into different phases or different stages. Because as I say, you know, it’s very different mailing around database versus, say, running a Google ads campaign to drive people to your website, and your landing pages. What do you think about that?

Hannah: Oh, I completely agree, Mike. I mean, we’ve fallen trap before where we’ve been like, no, we want to achieve this conversion rate, or we want to get this open rate from our emails, but knowing the difference of what the goal of your actual campaign is, before you get started, is so important to your success. Otherwise, you’re just setting yourself up for failure. I mean, we have a monthly newsletter that goes out to our database, and we got a 16% click through rate last month. So for us, that’s absolutely amazing. But if it was perhaps going out to people who don’t know the name of your name, I wouldn’t ever be aiming for a click through rate that high?

Mike: Absolutely, I think it’s pick the metrics and pick the goals based upon the audience you’re reaching, and the campaign you’re running. And I think it’s about you know, trying to understand what’s realistic. I mean, within our newsletter, for example, we have a lot of journalists who subscribe to our newsletter, that’s fantastic. I love the fact they do that. They’re quite often quite engaged on the newsletter. And maybe what we care about is actually a subset of our total newsletter audience, which are the prospects, or perhaps we also care about our clients as well, because if we’re sending our clients newsletters, they’re not clicking. That’s not a good sign. Clearly, we don’t understand what clients are interested in. So I think it’s about picking those metrics and working them out. I mean, the one thing I don’t like is people coming up with industry benchmarks, they’re always useful as a start. But almost invariably, your campaign is different from everybody else’s. So again, you know, use them as a guide, but don’t use them as gospel.

Hannah: Don’t use them as gospel, what a way to end that’s a brilliant like, I mean, let’s move on. Because, you know, my role, I sit half in marketing, I sit half in sales. And we talk, obviously a lot about marketing in this podcast. But I’m really excited just to give sales a moment to shine like we deserve. And this is focused on using market automation to support sales. So I mean, a lot of automation platforms have the capability for things like pipelines, so we can track the deal, the stages our deals are at, we have visibility of what marketing is doing, which is amazing. We know what communication is going out. And we can actually see exactly what our prospects are viewing on our company’s website. And for me, I think it’s not talked about enough. I think companies know it’s there. But you know, we talk about all the time that sales and marketing need to work together. And sometimes I think Martin automation is that glue that does it, because we get such an insight as a sales people to see what marketers are doing what we’re communicating. But also marketing can come to sales and say, what should we be talking about? How are your deals going? Is there anything I can help you with? I can see that this there’s this many in the pipeline? I mean, are you as passionate about it as I am, Mike?

Mike: Well, I really love the fact that marketing automation brings it together. And I think, you know, it’s interesting, you have two types of solutions. I mean, internally, we use a SharpSpring platform. And they’re the sales CRM is integrated in with a marketing automation system. However, you know, a lot of our clients, for example, use Marketo and Salesforce, but either way, you’re able to share data between both the sales view and the marketing view, whether it’s the same platform or a different platform. And I think there’s a lot of data marketers can provide to salespeople that’s going to help them engage when they call the customer, you know, whether it’s what’s been downloaded, whether it’s what’s been viewed on the website, or perhaps it’s even just what we’ve sent to the prospect and they’ve not responded to. And to me, there’s kind of two things. I mean, one is marketers need to provide that data. And I think marketers are getting better at that. And the tools are definitely getting better at you know, encouraging that sharing of data. But also, I think there’s a need for marketers to help salespeople and explain what they’re sharing. And I’ve seen with some clients, you know, salespeople get a lead list of URLs, they don’t really know what they are what they mean. And that’s really not a good way to do it. So I think it’s not just about the technology and what the technology can do. But it’s about, you know, really engaging and talking between the two different departments. Obviously, at Napier, you know, we’re small, we’ve got a department of one that includes both sales and marketing. So I assume your communications are pretty good. But clients with big departments in marketing and sales, that communication is much more difficult. And I think helping sales understand what information you’re giving them. That’s super useful.

Hannah: Oh, definitely, Mike. And I think the one thing I would add to that as well is that there’s simple ways to do that. And there is the function of dashboards of a mouse automation platform. So you know, have a talk of sales, see what they’re interested in and see what we could help them, but then provide a platform where they can quickly just go in, have a look, see what the updates are, without constantly having to have that conversation. So I think it’s two levels, I think, absolutely explain what it is have a discussion about, you know, what sales should be looking at, but then also provide that really easy access so that they can sometimes just go in quickly before a prospect call?

Mike: Yeah. And ultimately, it’s all about qualifying leads. And I think this is always the big battleground between marketing and sales is, when do you handle lead over to sales? And how does sales qualify it? And I think today, we’re moving away from what was the case 510 years ago, where pretty much marketing through these leads across the sales, they weren’t necessarily particularly well qualified. And sales just looked at them when they’re all terrible. And clearly, the truth was somewhere in between. So things like scoring, but also more importantly, nurturing and assessing work. Contacts are on that customer journey. I think that’s super important to improve that quality and that conversation between marketing and sales. Because we know, you know, and I don’t want to be the hippie here. But when marketing and sales work together, it’s always better for both sides.

Hannah:  Oh, absolutely. And it’s a great point, Mike. And it really is all about education.

Mike: It definitely is. And I think if anybody wants to understand how to do that, talking to you is a great education. Because you’re doing both sides, you see the issues from both sides, you see the the challenge of how do I qualify leads from a marketing point of view? And then from a sales point of view? Am I actually gonna get any money out of this? And that is often quite a very different question.

Hannah: So whether it’s an MQL definitely is unique perspective to have, I would say. So just looking at time, Mike, I’d like to move on to our insightful Tip of the Week. Now, this is more, you know, maybe a basic tip. I’m sure a lot of our listeners know this already. But I think it’s always something great to drive home. And that is that some market automation platforms, not all, but the majority do have the capabilities to support your social media platforms. So this is things like scheduling posts, so Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn in advance, but also have social listening tools. So you can look and see when your company is being mentioned, when you should be commenting, you can track topics. And I think, you know, as a company, perhaps for Napier, we’ve not use it to its full capability. But it can be a really great way to ensure that everything is being tracked on the platform to see how your campaigns are being successful. What do you think about the social media capabilities?

Mike: Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, actually, I know you’re running a lot of social campaigns organic, and paid social campaigns, and you’re tying them into our marketing automation. So I think that’s really important. I think the other thing that people need to remember is that marketing automation platforms can understand when traffic comes from social media. So you’re not just you know, looking at social media, and using those on platform metrics, you know, things like likes and shares and clicks. But you’re also able to take the data and work out how many of those people that click through, actually then convert to leads. So tying social and marketing automation together, it’s great because you can be more effective on the social platform. But you can also understand much better what’s going on and work out which of those posts are really driving the leads and the things that are going to move the needle in the business. What do you think?

Hannah: I mean, that’s a great point, Mike. I mean, sometimes social media in the best way it can feel a bit like a slog, you know, we have to be active, we have to have a high quality of posts, but being able to have that data to look in and say okay, case studies perform really well. But this one where we’re too salesy, doesn’t work at all, it just saves so much time for the future and understanding what’s going to be successful.

Mike: Yeah, for sure, I think, you know, social media, it can feel like a slog, but also, if you can actually see real results coming from it. And not just as I say clicks and likes, but actually leads and opportunities. I think that really helps, you know, understand that it’s worth the effort. Absolutely. Well, thanks so much for your time today, Mike. It’s been another fantastic conversation. Thanks, Hannah. And I look forward to talking to you next time.

Hannah: Thanks for listening to the marketing automation moment podcast.

Mike: Don’t forget to subscribe in your favorite podcast application and we’ll see you next time.

 

Marketing Automation Moment Podcast