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Marketo’s March ‘22 release: Let’s chat

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Marketo’s March ‘22 release: Let’s chat

One of the biggest stories from Marketo’s latest release is their planned entry into the world of chat software. This wouldn’t be the first company in the last year to enter into the chat software space. ZoomInfo acquired chat software, Insent.ai, in June 2021.

As chat software users ourselves, we’re advocates of using conversational marketing to engage with website visitors and are looking forward to this feature. It’s one more way we can engage with prospects; and personalize messaging. For example, you might upload your target account list and create a unique conversation with them versus all other visitors. Or, you can tailor messaging to return website visitors versus first-time visitors.

Marketos March ‘22 release Lets chat

It’s not often companies provide added value like this Marketo chat functionality without charging for the feature as an add-on or upsell. This seems to be the exception versus the norm so I’m feeling obligated to give Marketo a pat on the back.

Chat in the Hat

As mentioned, Marketo has announced its intention to get into the chat game, joining others including Drift, ZoomInfo, Intercom, and LiveChat to name a few. According to Marketo, the 1:1 personalized conversations will include the ability to book meetings directly in the chat, lead routing, starter templates, and drag-and-drop conversation creation. 

In our recent 2022 study of Marketo users, 49.2% of respondents said chat integration is important or extremely important for their business. Clearly, there is room for growth when it comes to proving the importance of chat to current Marketo users. By comparison, 74.4% of respondents said attribution is important or extremely important for their business. Source: 2022 Marketo User Study

Read next: Drift extends offerings across customer lifecycle

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Why we care. Looking to peer-to-peer review site G2 for a lay of the land, we found 422 companies listed under the category “live chat software.” Marketo does seem to be entering a competitive space. Regardless, their intention to include this feature within all packages will certainly turn heads amongst the competition.

The business side of me is having fun running through all of the future scenarios. Could there be a consolidation of MarTech with this feature addition? In other words, those who previously used a third party chat platform can potentially achieve the same goal using Marketo. Or, will dedicated chat software tools like Drift continue to win as a result of their extreme focus on delivering the best chat experience to the market? 

According to Marketo, “Dynamic Chat is included in all Marketo Engage packages and will be rolled out to all Marketo Engage users this year”. At Adobe Summit, we learned a phased rollout to all customers will occur in the next 6 months. It’s also unclear if the platform was “build or buy”. Either way, as users of chat functionality, we look forward to testing Marketo’s version of dynamic chat. 

Bot Activity 2.0

When Marketo released their bot activity filter on emails, we didn’t hesitate to enable this feature. As a refresher, go to Admin > Email and select the bot activity tab to active/deactivate the filtering of bot activity. After making the change, we found the impact to be fairly low and we’ve heard similar from our clients.

And now, the feature has been expanded to log activities identified as bots and both filter and trigger based on these activities. In the same location, there is a new toggle to turn on called “Log Bot Activity.”  

Why we care. This new feature will allow you the ability to filter and trigger actions based on activities that are identified as being performed by bots. You will find “Is Bot Activity” and “Bot Activity Pattern” as new constraints as seen in the example below. 

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According to VP of Consulting at Perkuto + MERGE, Judi Cousineau, a use case for this functionality includes removing scoring and lifecycle changes if the activity was performed by a bot. Amanda Giacobassi, Director of Solutions Architecture at Perkuto + MERGE adds, “You might negatively score people with bot behavior, or use the filter constraints to exclude contacts with bot activity from your email audience lists.”

1647465587 750 Marketos March ‘22 release Lets chat

 

Next-Gen Experience Automation

By the way, Next-Gen Experience Automation is “Before & After” for my fellow Wheel of Fortune fans. 

The Next Generation Experience will receive a design and usability update for the import program workflow. The release didn’t indicate too many details as to what we might expect, so we look forward to learning more in the next release webinar.

For Experience Automation updates, users will have the ability to expand connectivity between Marketo and their MarTech stack. This is done by authoring customized flow steps for use in Smart Campaigns which comes with what Marketo calls, Self-Service Flow Steps (Beta). 

And, the Smart Campaign Priority Override provides users with the ability to prioritize campaigns; overriding the standard campaign priority ranking. This update will free up processing resources for other high-priority tasks, according to Marketo.


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  • Import Program Workflow: She shares our curiosity about the usability enhancements; wondering if they will be UI enhancements only? What a real cliff-hanger.
  • Self-Service Flow Steps: From what we know so far, she believes this will not open up the API to the smart campaign UI (e.g. something that would allow creating and editing custom object records in the UI), but rather making webhook type functionality available in batch and executable campaigns.
  • Smart Campaign Priority Override:. According to Amanda, “This will be immediately useful for enterprise level organizations who have issues with operational campaigns taking too long to run. This might be a nice approach to order management concerns as well.”

API Enhancements

The next batch of API enhancements includes:

  • Return Disable Open Tracking Status of Emails
  • Retrieve Dynamic Content Subject Lines from Email
  • Program Member Custom Fields CRUD
  • Bulk Custom Object Export updatedAt Filter
  • Expose Head Start Setting for Email Programs
  • Selective Program Tag Update

Why we care. Our subject matter expert, Amanda, believes open tracking and dynamic content subject lines will have a positive impact on external reporting. She also cites the custom object export and head start setting as interesting related to work in enterprise automation platforms like Workato. Having less impact overall, she notes program member custom fields and tag updates given they are rarely used in UI as is.

View the complete set of March 2022 Marketo Release Notes.

This article is presented through a partnership between MarTech and Perkuto + MERGE , a marketing operations consultancy.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


About The Author

Marketos March ‘22 release Lets chat
With 20+ years of experience in marketing, John is demand generation director at Perkuto, a MERGE company. His ultimate flow-state is positioning products and services, developing buying personas, and executing plans to attract best-fit customers. Determining the right content, campaigns, channels, and budget to hit revenue KPIs is where John thrives. Outside of the office, John is a father, husband and outdoors enthusiast.


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How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

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A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

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Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

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Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

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“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

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Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

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Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Trends in Content Localization – Moz

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Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

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How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

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