Marketo Summit Session: Engaging with Cross Channel Marketing

[Note from Brian: Please note that Marketo is a client of TopRank Online Marketing]

When was the last time you heard of a really successful email campaign? Or TV ad campaign? Or a campaign on any channel for that matter? It’s likely been awhile.

The reason that isolated, channel-specific campaigns are rarely discussed these days is simple: they rarely work. That by no means is saying that email, or TV, or social, can’t be incredibly effective platforms to market your messages. Cross channel (see multiple channel) marketing is effective because each of these platforms can have an impact, when integrated into a holistic campaign.

It’s with this in mind that Maria Pergolino, Marketo’s Senior Director of Marketing, led the Marketo Summit panel discussion ‘Engaging with Cross Channel Marketing’.

Joined by Marketo users Tricia Reilly of VMWare and Loretta Jones of Echosign, Pergolino started the session by asking each panel member to share their journey to adopting Marketo’s marketing automation solution. After Reilly and Jones reviewed how their business needs and market demands led them to Marketo, the discussion then changed gears and focused on some ways VMWare and Echosign leveraged data from Marketo to identify and develop a cross-channel marketing strategy to more effectively nurture prospects through the sales funnel.

The session featured several case studies, but Pergolino’s own story of Marketo’s recent campaign to re-engage stale contacts really resonated with the crowd. Here are the details on how fortune cookies drove $200K in revenue for Marketo.

Marketo’s Fortune Cookie Campaign

Challenge: Reinvigorate high value but inactive email subscribers.

Strategy: Re-engage these stalled contacts through a multi-touch, customized campaign.

Tactics: Pergolino’s team deployed a marketing mix aimed at a targeted audience segment that included: email, direct mail, web content and phone calls.

Marketo’s marketing team started the campaign by leveraging the sales teams insights and asking them to nominnate contacts to target for the campaign. After the lists of contacts were cleaned to remove old or inaccurate data, the campaign was ready to launch.

1. Fortune cookie baskets were sent to targeted contacts
2. Each basket included a definitive guide resource, as well as a personal letter
3. Once the package was received, the e-signature for the package created a notification within Marketo, triggering an email to the contact
4. A follow up call was then automatically scheduled with the appropriate sales rep through Marketo’s integration with Salesforce.
5. Optimized web and social content was crafted and published to reinforce the key messages

Results:  Pergolino shared that the cost to Marketo for developing and executing the campaign was approximately $13,000. The return was slightly higher, with $200,000 to-date in revenue…with more opportunities in-progress.

Food aside, this story reminds us of the importance of connecting with our audience it different ways. Direct mail, email and phone enabled Marketo to effectively push their strategic message and inspire action, while their optimized web content allowed them to pull in the target audience to destinations that moved them along the funnel.

Have you had success with a cross channel campaign?  What’s your fortune cookie story?