Today’s Boston Marketo User Group (BMUG) featured three presentations and Q&A on closed loop reporting from Paul Green of Extreme Networks, Lauren Brubaker of NetProspex and yours truly and well chronicled on Twitter by many of the Marketing Automation-erati including Jarin Chu, Jeff Coveney, Ed Masson and OpFocus.
The presentations and conversation spanned a wide range of topics and perspectives, but these were my top overarching takeaways:
#1 - EVERYONE is trying to improve their closed loop marketing effectiveness
Companies may be at different stages in their journey towards closed loop reporting, but every business spending money on sales & marketing is trying to better understand the payoff on their investments and how to leverage those investments to scale their business performance. Many companies are in the early stages and trying to head in the right direction, while the ones who have been working on it for several years continue to strive for more.
#2 – The skills of marketing technologists as in demand as ever
With a room full of some-70 marketing technologists, the conversation was clear that everyone is looking for more talent in this area. It’s a great time to be a revenue marketer and specialized in technologies such as Marketo.
#3 - Closed loop, revenue marketing takes partnership between marketing, sales and IT
This was one of Paul’s summary points but it applied to all of us --- all three of these departments need to contribute to the closed loop engine. IT teams can be a great ally for marketers looking to connect data and systems and ensure they have the real time dashboards and reporting required to enable close loop reporting. In Paul’s case, he also noted that his sales and marketing teams are now seen as a single organization reporting into a Chief Revenue Officer.
#4 - Tracking revenue stages is now broadly adopted
Whereas everyone has different approaches to where data resides, what is tracked and how reporting is performed, and one common denominator between everyone in the room was the underlying fundamental of using revenue stages to track lead progression through their buying process e.g. MQI to MQL to SAL to SQL.
For those who attended (or even if you didn’t), these are some related resources to the topic:
- Five powerful metrics to support your closed loop marketing in an inbound marketing and lead nurturing world
- Six critical attributes and three must-have metrics for closed loop measurement of marketing programs
- Six essentials to setting up a closed loop marketing system via CMO Essentials
And as there were multiple requests for the slides here is a download of my PPT deck on closed loop reporting: Closed Loop Reporting Slides
