Roles, Job Titles, and Getting Things Done

One of the great things about my role at Silverpop is my opportunity to see the inner workings of at least 100 top-tier marketing groups a year. Some are deeply stacked teams with all resources on a single floor, working together seamlessly; others are small hit teams of two or three killer marketers who are forced to work with creative and IT in a shared-services capacity and hire solid vendors. Since both scenarios can be equally successful, be careful what you wish for in terms of the future state of your group.

Before we dive all the way in, let's look at a perfect example of a small, brilliant team that out-executes many of the bigger teams I see. I work closely with a leading software company that has more than 10 titles marketed to individuals and work groups via the freemium model (where the software is free to try for a period of time or with limited functionality, but after that it requires a subscription to continue its use). In addition to separately marketing each title to those who sign up for the trial, they have an aggressive cross-sell and upsell methodology that helps users understand the benefits of their other tools and how those same benefits apply to other groups within their company. It even includes a by-seat-per-company analysis so they can see when to invoke an enterprise sales rep for an account where more than two groups are using a specific tool.

The average marketer's head might explode just thinking through the upgrade nurture programs required to predictably convert free users to paid users for 10+ software titles. They are apt to wonder what the right cadence is for communication, and what offer converts best (extend-the-trial, one-month-free-with-annual-subscription, etc.)? When we account for time in combination with this nurture process (normally 14 or 30 days industry-wide), we have to extrapolate how many touches work best and what stage in the process is ideal.

Many companies in this spot will have a 14-day trial-to-upgrade program that looks like this:

1. Welcome and thanks for trialing (sent immediately on signup).
2. Product benefits and getting started tutorial (8-12 hours later).
3. Reminder to login (day two if no user login has occurred).
4. More advanced tutorial (day five + three logins).
5. First upgrade offer (day six + three logins).
6. Survey (day 10 + five logins).
7. Second upgrade offer (day 12 + five logins).
8. Expired notice with final offer (day 14 + five logins).
9. First re-engagement (day 18).
10. Final re-engagement (day 20).

If it's 10 touches per trial user and you've got 10 products to support, and your paid media and search actives are optimized well enough to drive 500 trials per weekday across all products—you're talking serious volume. There is absolutely no way to be successful in this world without massive automation and a rock-solid technology stack. You start a set of nurture streams totaling 5,000 messages every single day that takes into account both time and user actions.

Now what if I told you that a mere three people ran that marketing function? I discuss much of what makes them so successful, and why they're the blueprint for great behavioral marketing in the rest of this chapter. I also work though the application for more traditional campaign-based marketing operations and marketing groups of all sizes and compositions.

Let's get back to the roles within your marketing group. Although the structure might differ in hundreds of ways based on your business, internal politics, or how your budget is funded, certain roles are a constant. The typical marketing reporting structure looks like this:

• CMO/SVP: Leads the overall marketing vision, responsible for revenue generation from all marketing activities.
• VP: Typically the reporting focal point for all the channel-based groups, responsible for optimization of channel mix.
• Director: Plans and manages the execution of a specific channel, responsible for maximizing individual channel success metrics.
• Manager: Executes a specific channel, responsible for getting the job done.
• Specialist: Supports the manager with execution, responsible for compiling reports and other admin duties critical to running the group smoothly.

I'm going to leave creative out of the marketing-specific job roles for now—for the simple reason that it's often still a shared service across multiple groups inside a company. For some companies—like Silverpop—the creative function is aligned under its own director and part of the marketing group in reporting structure, but still has external customers across the organization. Regardless of where creative services reports, they're most likely to have customers across the expanse of an organization—from the CEO's office to investor relations to sales operations.

One role I increasingly see in hypersuccessful marketing groups is an analyst-type position that takes on many names. Sometimes it's called a database marketing manager, and there are one or two specialists on the team who focus on data modeling and reporting. Other times, the function is filled with the skills of a certain specialist on the team without naming the role at the director or manager level.

Regardless of what it's called or where it reports, this role is critical in the transformation to behavioral marketing. Typically, the person filling it has some IT-based skills and may have actually come to marketing from that world. As a result, they bring to the group a numbers-driven, data-oriented view of audience selection and the scientific method necessary to drive smart A/B test methodologies and fact-based assumptions. These skills beautifully complement a great artistic, human-powered marketer who can empathize with their audience at a personal and persona level.

When thinking about reorienting your effort around behavioral marketing, it's crucial to understand that it can effectively occur at every level already outlined—from the CMO to the specialist. Of course, your success will be more institutional the higher the thinking rises within the company—but do not think that a single manager can't make a huge difference in factoring for customer behaviors.

Let's return to the earlier software company example. In that scenario, the director of marketing leads the behavioral marketing initiative almost completely; all his executives know is that his numbers are “through the roof.” Sure they ask some second-order questions about tactics and challenge him to drive his results even further, but they're not in the weeds of audience selection and messaging cadence.

Conversely, I've seen many scenarios in which a new CMO or SVP is hired into a small-to-medium sized company and the tone changes almost immediately. The focus moves from historical methods to the customer. This changes quickly for two significant reasons: budget reallocation and new director hires. Oftentimes, a CMO has at least a couple of trusted colleagues to bring over to the new company, prompting an up-and-down synchronicity of thinking that makes for a powerful method for change. Moving dollars between channels can also be an important signal in expectation setting for the entire marketing department.

You should be mentally prepared for any and all leadership changes in your marketing group, since most will signal an increase in performance- and behavioral-based marketing. Sure there are cases in which poser bureaucrat types work their way into roles at their friends' companies to run marketing, but by and large most staffing moves in marketing today reflect the growing importance of the function—both in budgeting and contribution to revenue.

If you're a director or below, you should be plotting to lead the revolution—especially if you work in a traditional marketing group with mediocre results, where nothing much has changed in the two years you've been there. Architect a vision and approach that you can achieve in the short-term that features 2–3 quick revenue-driving wins. Seek the absolute minimum permission needed to make these changes, and get down to business. There are two critical pieces of advice I often share with my customers (and my two young daughters, too) that come from two of my favorite rap artists, Chingy and Lil Wayne, respectively: “Don't talk about it, be about it” and “No sittin' at the table unless you're bringin' something to it.”

There may never be a more opportune time for a young marketer to be a catalyst for change. The market is inevitably moving toward more quantified, personalized buying experiences, and building your competency now will pay great dividends for your future and allow you to succeed in your current role. So be the change, and don't wait for a new CMO to bring in a new hotshot director—when you knew what to do the whole time.

The Art and the Science of Marketing

One of the other common conversations I have with our customers focuses on the importance of recognizing and celebrating two very different sides of marketing: art and science. For decades, the marketing function has involved a series of incredible artistic moments. Beginning with advertising agency legends such as Leo Burnett through today's great initiatives like Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty, there's no doubt that resonant messaging and the ability to tell a genuine story are hallmarks of effective creative.

Although these large-scale campaigns and messaging platforms will continue to drive business (and awareness) for the biggest brands that can afford the millions of investment dollars required, there's an emerging application for this great creative, but it's in much smaller chunks. The same way these huge firms resonate with broad audiences is the way that effective behavioral marketers think about resonating with small segments. So their genius is applied in much the same way, just in more highly relevant moments.

Therein lies one of the most important points of recognition for anyone on the journey toward behavioral marketing. We can now take in a massive amount of data, understand where our prospects and customers are in the buying cycle, and then serve them the ideal message. We can use our creative brains to model out the critical customer journeys, leverage our scientific methods to track and assess specific events within those journeys, and then circle back to our creative prowess to deliver the most compelling message at the right time.

This is precisely why I see the most effective marketing groups blending the two skills together almost seamlessly. Focusing on one more than the other is not necessarily a gigantic mistake; it only leaves a ton of upside on the cutting room floor. Can you be good at the art but ignore the science? Maybe, but you're likely not going to scale your effort to 10 product lines the way we described earlier. And you're probably always going to need more design help from outside agencies. Can you ignore the art, and be a great data-driven marketer? Sure, but if you can't demonstrate a highly personal understanding of your customers and be a very effective storyteller both visually and with words, they'll eventually find one of your competitors who's more compelling. That's simply the nature of how humans buy things today.

Hiring for Potential

I'm going to spend a minute talking about hiring practices and how to build your team. If things are going well and you're beginning to lead the behavioral marketing revolution inside your company, you're inevitably going to have to make some key additions to your team. This moment of hiring may be the single most important inflection point in your behavioral-marketing growth pattern. You've architected a plan, sold the vision enough to begin execution, gotten early wins, and proven revenue life—but now it's time to scale.

There are an abundance of perspectives on how to hire great marketers—but mine's almost exclusively focused on the idea of potential. Although having a base-level understanding of marketing functions is critical for the lower half of any marketing organization, one of the enemies of success is typically the statement, “That's how we did it at my old company.” If I hear that in an interview, my brain tunes out just a tiny bit. What I'm looking for when hiring is someone dripping in constructive dissatisfaction. I want to hear, “I wish my boss would let me…” or “We need to spend more time testing….”

This is especially true when hiring managers and specialists. You're typically talking to someone with less than five years experience, and at some level you need to look three years into the future in terms of what kind of marketer you think you can cultivate. As it happens, I've been known to select a candidate for the specialist role based 100 percent on potential. When I worked for UPS, I hired a superbright intern directly from an administrative role and shepherded her through the tuition-reimbursement program to finish her technical college degree—all while working with her to deepen her marketing knowledge. We worked together for many years afterward.

The moral of the story: ignore what degree someone holds, and be confident you can create a great marketer with the right amount of mentorship, guidance, and training. This is especially important if you're in a small company that can't afford a big-market superstar digital marketing manager who commands a minimum of $120,000 a year. You're going to be forced to think about hiring the way Major League Baseball teams think about farm teams. Index for potential, personality, and grittiness and be willing to invest the time and energy required to create a great marketer, and you'll be pleased with the outcome.

Another critical note on hiring is to stay within the general confines of your industry and your company size. I'm not encouraging uniformity or dependence on someone's previous skill set; it's merely that you can only expect so much flexibility from the average human being. I've seen far too many 10-person companies hire a hotshot marketing director from a Fortune 500 company who fails miserably in the first 60 days—because that person is an architect, not a doer. Their previous role involved three managers, a high-dollar agency, and a predictable pace. The new small-company environment requires someone to dive in and get his or her own hands dirty. These two worlds almost never mesh, so ignore how utterly amazing someone's resume is and how great their previous results appear.

“Industries” is also shorthand for business models. It's impossible to underestimate the difference between running marketing at an SaaS company versus a consumer packaged goods (CPG) company. The SaaS company is medieval in its focus on a sales funnel and revenue-repeatable processes and spending, whereas a CPG company is a brand-driven, channel-relationship optimization play of the highest order. These two models are so different that it'd be amazingly rare to find someone who excelled at both. Think of it as your ‘marketing DNA’; marketing within a specific business model builds certain competencies that might not only be worthless in the other world; they might also actually harm the new effort.

Although I might seem overly insular about certain aspects of hiring, I'll reiterate that potential should be the basis for almost every decision. Don't expect someone with more than 5 to 7 years of marketing to completely unlearn one approach and excel at a new one. Be realistic and make smart decisions. Although hiring across industries can be risky, I've also seen it work out phenomenally well when the new staff brings never-before-seen tactics to the new marketing effort—for example, when someone comes into a traditional email-driven marketing group from a mobile-heavy industry in which short-message service (SMS) and in-app messaging are a regular part of the communications process. Your customers are probably way more ready than you are to meet them in these new communications destinations.

And finally, let's talk about how the typical executive (CMO or SVP) should approach the process of hiring directors and managers for their teams. At this level, it's less about raw potential and more about market approach and management style. Although you should always be dedicated to growing your people, the main selection criteria here should be who can drive the most meaningful change with the least amount of executive coaching and intervention. You need top-tier performers who thrive on pressure, can keep a team strong and motivated, and are deeply self-motivated.

A couple things I always look for include a wide personal network of peers (to drive downstream hiring and best-practices transfer); a predisposition to do and not just talk (resume and interview topics should be results-oriented and specific to their personal role in the success); and a strong sense of team-building (marketing is perpetually full of 20-something newcomers, and knowing how to hire and get the most from this generation is an art form itself).

And Finally, Your Technology Stack

If the right people are the ideal base to build your new behavioral-marketing approach, then technology is what will allow you to scale that effort. We've discussed and defined the ideas behind behavioral at length—and there's lots more coming up. Now, let's talk about the minimum technology pieces it takes to become a great behavioral marketer.

First, you need some decent competency—and a clear business driver—for the email channel. Email truly is the dream channel for behavioral marketing, given its ability to scale to millions of customers but address them via a single message. Although it is not always easy to split hairs that finely, email's automation and scale capabilities make it the perfect place to start.

There's a solution for almost any size company on the planet. I recently saw a number that calculated the number of email service providers (ESPs) at more than 350 in just the United States. There are likely dozens more internationally, so there's bound to be one for almost everyone who's in the market for one.

My advice on how to best choose an ESP normally requires answers to some pretty straightforward questions: How much is your budget, how big is your list, and how automated do you want to be? If you're just getting started and need something free that grows into ∼$2,000 a year, there are some great choices in the market. Recognize you're likely going to share an IP address (and reputation scores as a result), but things should be cool until your list gets to six digits. If you're in hypergrowth mode and sell via email (such that deliverability is critically important) and want to begin the behavioral marketing journey with a couple of million customers, there are also many solutions under ∼$75,000 a year. However, you need to be careful in this segment. Features and functionality start to become critically important, and you want to be very specific during your selection process. For the full-on enterprise play that requires integration with other back-end systems and needs to support both millions of records and expanded data structures, there are many players in the above $75,000 a year price range. A word of caution for this vendor segment: make sure which features are included versus those that are charged at additional fee.

You need a rock-solid email platform that can be the beginnings of your behavioral marketing machine. Don't choose a product that can't tie into your other business systems and don't buy so much cost per thousand (CPM)-based volume that you'll never use it all. Find a tool that matches your future-state automation desires and meets your price requirements today. And once you choose a tool, jump in with both feet. Integrate your key systems quickly and get down to work bringing behavioral marketing to life. Choosing the perfect email platform will mean nothing if you use it to only 10 percent of its potential.

The other required piece of technology to begin the behavioral marketing process is a centralized customer database. Many times, a good email platform can and will serve this function. It's even better if the platform's capabilities extend into the marketing automation space, allowing it to generate more rules-based automated campaigns on your behalf. In some organizations in which marketing and sales are heavily integrated, it's also common to see a full-blown CRM system. When pairing a strong CRM and a leading marketing automation system, make sure to carefully architect customer IDs and sources of reference data. The worst-case scenario is ending up with duplicate records that sales and marketing are working on separately. Trial this functionality deeply before releasing it widely across both departments, and make sure to dig deep during the selection process. A check box on a product slick is very different from seeing your test data smoothly synching between platforms.

The good news is that this is about all the must-have technology you need to get started with behavioral marketing. The most aggressive groups also have print-on-demand platforms to execute one-off direct-mail pieces; external agencies to build and maintain the absolute best creative, integrated call-center systems that populate all email campaigns sent to a specific customer the moment a rep picks up a call from them; and a powerful cross-channel reporting dashboard that sums it all up. But those aren't first-step requirements. You can build toward world-class by continuing to make incremental improvements in how you execute every single day.

If you're already running down the road of behavioral marketing, then your frame of reference should soon become channel orchestration. By outlining personal-level customer journey maps based on deep customer insights, you can begin to think about the relative strengths of each channel you have and how they can seamlessly collaborate. Supporting your ideal customer's buying process is a phenomenal place to start your next chapter of behavioral marketing prowess.