Lost in Space. When did your most valuable contacts last hear from you?

Photo by Brian McGowan on Unsplash

Strategic scheduling helps to keep your audience engaged

Despite all the technology now available to B2B marketing I am constantly surprised that organisations often answer ‘no’ to the following fundamental questions:

1. Do you identify the most valuable contacts in your database?
2. Do you have an audience view of all the communications that represent your brand, including those from Marketing, Sales, Billing, Support and Channel?
3. Is your schedule of outbound communication created with audience experience as the foremost consideration?

If the answer to anyone of these questions is ‘no’ then your most valuable contacts are likely experiencing your communications as poorly orchestrated ‘noise’.

A lot of B2B organisations segment at industry, organisation, job role, prospect/customer level, and even those that gather content preferences often fail to shield contacts from communication that is not clearly aligned with their preferences.

Organisations that use a marketing automation platform to sequence outbound communications can achieve a view of audience experience and engagement, but many do not use the same platform for communications from sales and other functions that ‘talk’ to customers and prospects. The platform therefore usually only provides an extremely limited perspective.

Calendars of outbound communication are often driven by what the organisation ‘wants to say’ and those with multiple products and functions attempt to schedule and gate outbound content to avoid over-communication. But the scheduling often reflects internal readiness, priorities, and power bases. The audience experience becomes an output rather than an input.

When customers and prospects have an experience that is not compelling and engaging, we all know what they do, and at its best it's nothing at all! 

While you might recognise these issues, it can be hard to gain consensus for change when the voice of the customer or prospect is absent.

The first step that you need to take is to generate a view of what they are experiencing. With that insight, you will have compelling evidence to motivate and guide your organisation to adapt campaign design and orchestration. In turn, this can achieve significantly improved audience experience and engagement.

It might be easier than you think.