Targeting

(Thats on target)
A How-To Guide for transforming your database to support effective
segmentation and persona-driven communication and engagement.

Are you in the market

for a chicken coop?
WAIT! Thats not you.*
Unreliable targeting can end a conversation from the get-go.
Dear [FORCE-FIT BUYER DESCRIPTION]...STOP! That doesnt work either.
Even if your contact database and net-new leads are being segmented by personas, if you cant accurately target
your prospects, how can you fine-tune your message for them and deliver it via the channels they use?
Relevance + Meaningful Engagement = Revenue.
Its simple to state, but much more complex to actually
execute. In this How-To Guide, well explore strategies
actual Oracle Eloqua customers are using to generate
some amazing results. Theyve proven that sound data
practices can help you reach a narrowly-defined target at
the exact moment your information has the most value.
Piqued your interest? Then youre the right target.
Read on.

The benefit of this in many ways is

immeasurable; because we know what a
contact is interested in, our Database Marketing
team is able to serve up emails that are catered
to our contacts and encourage them to engage
with us to the sale.
National Instruments. Inc.

Customers who use

Eloquas targeting and
segmentation technology
create 7X more inquiries
and 4X more leads than
those who do not.

*eloqua.com/conversation
Marketing Automation:
Start the Conversation
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THE BIG PICTURE: Your targeting efforts are

driven by powerful, persona-driven marketing
and sales processes.
Hold on! Persona what? Trust us, its all tied together.
Before we delve into the nuts and bolts of targeting and segmentation, its wise to get a glimpse of where you
can go: the Promised Land, marketing nirvana, or whatever you want to call it.
Well-understood personas are the basis for amazingly effective lead routing, scoring, and nurturing
efforts.
We call this new, enlightened approach to engaging with audiences in ways that clearly demonstrate value
Modern Marketing. It demands that you not only understand the nuances of who your buyers are and what they
want to accomplish, but also which overt and covert pains are driving their actions, how they approach learning
about and solving those problems, when they reach a buying decision, and why they buy. This is their journey, and
broader knowledge leads to:
Alignment with Buying Dynamics: Since you more-fully understand where a contact is in their buying
journey, you reduce the risk of over- or under-engaging some person who simply responded to an email or
is already far along the consideration path. This is key, since buyers can sense if you have the right appreciation for their struggles and goals.
Syncing to Digital Behavior: We call it Digital Body Language. Every person who gets online to work,
play, or learn, displays unique habits and social behaviors over their keyboard, tablet, and smart phone.
Those activities can be detected and used to fine-tune the delivery and tone of messaging. This helps your
become a smarter marketerone who also can facilitate more meaningful sales discussions.
Speaking the Right Way: Its not enough to simply act like youre in the club. Your communications must
go beyond establishing a polite rapport. They must speak personally to your buyers. Its also critical to have
systems in place to present clear pictures of where and how your contacts interact. This helps ensure that
your messaging not only addresses their need, but also where they are in the buyer journey.
Failsafe Campaigns: How many times has your team fallen victim to a batch and blast nightmare, possibly alienating a segment of potential customers because your message wasnt on point? Take hit or miss
marketing and turn it into the right content, at the right timeto the RIGHT person.

Cleaner data can earn you bigger money!

McAfee

 Failsafe Nurturing: To stay true to your promise of providing valuable engagements that your prospects
will ideally thank you for, its imperative to broaden your view of buying processes and stages to multiple
scenarios, each united to well-defined segment paths that your teams have agreed upon and defined.
But it all starts with your database

The Nitty-Gritty of Targeting

Poor data quality leads to non-targeted blast campaigns and increased opt-outs and
database inactivity.

Without some method for data and process governance, it was virtually impossible to create
data-driven marketing programsor demonstrate contribution and value.
2013 Markie Award Entrant
You have to have a solid, dependable foundation before you can build any program or campaign. In the next
several pages, you will see steps taken by some of our most successful customers to clean their database slates
and empower more intuitive marketing efforts. Look for the highlighted Customer Hints for some extra insight on
how your peers solved their targeting challenges.

Our active list sizes were growing smaller daily,

and our marketing teams were questioning the
value of email marketing.
Another 2013 Markie Award Entrant
DB should stand for database, not data beast.

List segmentation has been elevated to a new

level with the availability of data from Marketing
(Digital Body Language), Sales (opportunities
and pipeline), and Finance (historic billings by
product group) all in one place.
Stone Mountain, Inc.

The Markie Awards

honor excellence in
marketing. Open to any
Oracle Modern Marketer,
the competition has
generated thousands of
entries for the coveted
trophies. Check it out at
markies.eloqua.com

PROJECT A: Where You Start

STEP 1: PULL YOUR PEOPLE TOGETHER
Drum Up Support from the Top: Executive approval and support
secures the change management from a top-down perspective.
This requires buy in and commitment, two scary terms. Effective
data management happens every day, not at random intervals.
Drum Up Support from the Bottom: Those most affected by the
changes (and the workload) need to be brought into the fold as
quickly as possible. Effectively executed strategies are driven by
governance and day-to-day management. Databases need nurturing, too. Dont go it alone.

CUSTOMER HINT:
Superimposing the map
of current infrastructure to the
sales follow-up process along with
field/online campaign process
exposed the bottlenecks, gaps in
lead flow management, plus
gave pointers on critical elements
for the new data structure design
to accurately target the best
prospects.

Gain and Maintain Alignment: Stakeholders must meet regularly

to ensure alignment between sales and marketing and between
global and regional teams with respect to data and the associated
processes.

STEP 2: DO YOUR DATA DILIGENCE

Determine Whats Critical to Your Personas: Analyze all data field
options from all sources (CRM, MRM, etc.) and commit to the
most vital elements. Draw up your personas based on those key
attributes across the industries and/or verticals youre targeting.
Nail Down Critical Resources: Heres a fun exercise: ask a roomful of your cross-functional team, Who owns data? You will either
end up with an argument over everyone claiming they do, or the
blank look of a kindergarten class being asked who stole the tray of
cookies. Without a clear definition of ownership, how can you possibly know what resources exist and how to manage end-to-end?
The reality is that everyone shares the responsibility (and the pains
of siloed efforts), and you need to identify data stewards across
the systems and practices in question so that the actions of one do
not impact those of many, or if they do, they do so in a way thats
productive to the organization.

If you find there are skills and process gaps, seek out a partner or
vendor thatcan bring some strong best practice guidance across
the three pillars of People, Process, and Technology. You should
walk away with a clear plan that includes ongoing operational governance, and not a onetime cleanse.

CUSTOMER HINT:
To aid in segmentation
and reporting, pick list values
for fields like lead source,
industry, number of employees,
revenue, and campaign focus.
Establish naming conventions for
campaigns that clearly identify the
time period, region, offer type, and
campaign type being executed.
Identify internal data stewards
from regional teams to secure data
quality for that region.

CUSTOMER HINT:
Digital marketing is always
evolving. Your data must
constantly be refreshed and your
gathering refocused to really target
the best prospects.

 Determine Success Metrics: If you cant measure them, youre not maximizing the value of your initiatives. Define and schedule metrics results reviews with your constituents. Make data part of your
conversations.

If you are worried about how to start the targeting conversation

with sales (and want to avoid that glazed look in their eyes) just
mutter one word: Reach. After they perk up, turn the reach conversation into identifying marketable contacts. Measure your engagement, active and inactive contacts in the database, and decide how
to improve their ability to get to the right contact at the right time.

Dont Forget These Other Areas: Add to reporting: net new contacts, active/inactive contacts, percent change, and contact profile
data completeness.

CUSTOMER HINT:
It was well communicated that
the success of this effort not only
relied on an optimal technical
solution but also on the universal
adoption of data policies coupled
with behavioral changes toward
data handling in general.

PROJECT B: Data Done Right

STEP 1: BACK TO THE BASICS
Data Field Cleanup:
Standardize and Sync Across System Fields. Consider country/
region and pick list values for previously identified fields, such as
industry, lead source original, lead source most recent, lead status,
key demographics, campaign focus, etc.

CUSTOMER HINT:
Oracle offers a great built-in
feature that keeps track of hard
bounced email addresses even
when the contact is deleted
from the database.

Mandate 100% Data Population on Key Fields. This should be

expanded to existing web forms, CRM lead page, and list uploads templates. Do not be afraid to ask
media partners for the data. More complete data increases your velocity through the journey. If they
cannot provide those key fields, have a backup plan to enrich your contacts.

Contact Clean-up/Enrichment:
The goal here is to get obsolete and unrequired contacts deleted from the database, such as removing
Hard Bounced Contacts. The second step is to remove the camouflage your prospects are hiding behind.
If you know where they go, who they are, and what their motivations are, you can augment important
profile data for contacts that are deemed relevant to targeting and segmentation efforts for the marketing/
sales process.

Junk Contacts. It would be fun if [email protected] were an actual address. But lets be real: fake data
is alive and thriving. Employ a name analyzer program or database scripts to identify junk content and
records in the database. When possible, add this to your data normalization and validation efforts at the
intake to ensure they dont get there in the first place. Set a periodic review for new creative entries; if for
nothing else, it will serve as a source of entertainment for your next staff meeting.

Email Address Validation. Augmenting your process with external services to validate email addresses
will help speed this process. Dead or defunct addresses can wreak havoc on your efforts. Using validation
saves time, reduces risk by identifying known spam traps, and helps keep your sender score and reputation strong. Many of these providers will provide you with a deliverability score per address, which will
allow you to determine the correct course of action.

Contact Relevance and Validation. Consider all these practices

continuous improvement efforts, especially here. Always review
and standardize your processes around critical profile fields.
Whether these are title, demographic, or areas such as job role or
job function translations, you need to understand the percentage
of your database that is both relevant and marketable, and take
the necessary steps to improve both. Whether you are creating
your own table of roles and functions, or bringing data in through
enhancement efforts, contacts need to continuously be validated
against buyer personas.

Data Enrichment. Determine and prioritize critical contact profile fields for completeness and map out
a plan or approach to improve how youre messaging to these audiences. You can do this by augmenting
information with an external data source, or by monitoring your progressive profiling and standard form
requirements.

CUSTOMER HINT:
In collaboration with sales,
a list of accounts was compiled
and categorized as must have
and nice to have. IT related
contacts with manager and above
job roles were sourced against
this contact list from contact
discovery vendors.

Master Suppressions and Contact Subscriptions: Remember, earlier we mentioned shared responsibilities? Here is a great way to minimize the risk of complaints from your targets. Work with your data
stewards to determine suppression and subscription rules that align with your go to market strategies.
Be specific and give your prospects better options than all-or-nothing suppression such as an opt-in to
specific types of communication like a newsletter.
Counter Competitors: While this is a tough one to do, lets not make it easy for them to stay on top of
your latest and greatest. There are many who thrive on being a fast follower, and would love to let you
blaze the trails and tag along for the ride. Imitation is not always flattering; sometimes its just downright
annoying. Define a list of competitor domains to ensure that they are removed from any communications
and do not make it into your lead queue.
Country Level Suppression: Create and enforce a list of embargoed countries and other targeted risky
countries as per company policy.
Internal Employees/Vendors: Every marketing and sales resource wants to know which types of
communication their prospects and customers are receiving. However, this does present overhead
in managing them out of the process if allowed to go through. Instead, share your campaign and
communication plans, and add employees and partners to the suppression list to avoid unnecessary
metrics and confusion.

CUSTOMER HINT:
Whether you use the capabilities within a tool or system or do this as part of a larger corporate datamart that helps to feed
segmentation, the results can be the same. Standardize your key fields, and look for patterns in the data. Areas such as job
titles are a big one. Think of all the Master of This or Grand Poobah of That that enter via form submissions. Building a
list of standard titles to help simplify and normalize will make your segmentation significantly easier. Go a step further and
derive an organization or functional role by key words to help enhance your segmentation and targeting efforts. Want to
automate cleanup? Look at dates of inactivity, and automate an add to re-engagement campaign to try and revitalize. If
no action, deactivate and archive after your specified criteria.

STEP 2: BEYOND THE BASICS

Web Forms: Create an audit process to review all active forms and landing pages. Use auto and or
pre-population to all entry forms. This accomplishes most of what fast find data is needed to route your
prospect to the proper resource. This can either happen by auto-populating from the existing database
info, or using a third party on the form to do an auto-lookup and population. Why only on the intake forms?
This will allow you to then use progressive profiling in subsequent touches, gathering critical persona
information not found in standard data sources. This will also help add consistency to the form entries by
leveraging existing and standardized data sets.
List Imports: We like standards. Standards eliminate bad surprises. Define and distribute a standard template for list uploads to your constituents. Ensure that the list is submitted to you with in the proper layout,
with as much of the standard fields completed as possible. This will speed up your ability to upload and
communicate with the list, and reduce or eliminate errors.
Automating Data Clean-up and Standardization: We live and love automation. Its what we do. And its
how we, and other Modern Marketers, eliminate the mundane, standardized, repeatable tasks so we can
focus on higher-value work. The way to understand this is to look for patterns, and then build processes,
as well as seek solutions that can automate those patterns. Data standardization and clean-up are prime
areas to prove significant wins for your organization.

STEP 3: POWER IN THE RIGHT HANDS

A fancy, high-performance motor that sits on a stand in a garage doesnt do anyone any good. You need to ensure
that the delivery of your precious leads occurs in an efficient manner. When was the last time you looked at the
input of leads into your CRM? If you arent sure and cant state your process guidelines, then read on.
Established Service Level Agreements (SLAs): This isnt just for contacting within a specified timeframe.
Its end-to-end. You can hardly expect sales to meet a first contact SLA of one hour if it takes two to move
the lead into your CRM. Make sure that your process can support and encourage sales reps to take action.
Prioritize Your Processes: Not every action needs instantaneous reaction. Make sure your process can
deliver when needed, and dont let poor data quality or inconsistent accuracy stand in the way. If you dont
solve it, the acceptance and utilization of the CRM and associated systems and processes will suffer.
Nothing is worse than hearing sad tales of reps with spreadsheets instead of following up on the valuable
MQLs you brought to the table.

 Lead Scoring: While this is technically part of prioritization, it is far more than that. Lead scoring allows
you to base the passage of leads on demonstrated interest and fit to the buyer persona. Delivering 1,000
leads to a rep where only a fraction convert wastes their time. You want them closing deals. Its marketings role to bring the prospects ready to enter the sales cycle to the table, and ensure high value conversations for both parties. Lead scoringlike all other methodologiesis a journey. When done correctly,
expect to see shorter cycle times, higher conversions, and enhanced follow up by sales.

STEP 4: EVEN MORE BEYOND THE BASICS

Weve mentioned these topics already, but heres how they will help you
move beyond the basics of data management and targeting.
Re-engagement Campaign: Having a million records with a 50%
active rate is nothing to be proud of. If you have contacts that
have not engaged in over 12 months, try to re-engage by offering
some new content hot off the presses, and be sure to ask them to
confirm their preferences. Weve seen some crafty techniques for
wooing prospects back into engagement, such as offering a prize
for a subscription update.
Preference Update Campaign: Time to time, its just good practice to ensure that you are delivering relevant content tied to your
targets specific interests. If you learn something new about your
buyer persona this is the perfect opportunity to ask for an update
to their profile. You simultaneously get a heads-up to what interests
them while driving further engagement.
Create Welcome Campaigns: To nurture contact relations through
a soft introduction to marketing efforts, as well as to profile their
interests prior to marketing communications, create dynamic welcome campaigns based on contact source such as various website
registrations, events, and product areas.

CUSTOMER HINT:
We created a campaign to
engage our active contacts to
profile their interests so that
we could provide them with
targeted content. Through this
campaign, we profiled 87% of
our database to Level 1 and 13%
of our database to Level 2. In
future campaign efforts, Level 2
has reached nearly 50%.

CUSTOMER HINT:
Our campaign welcomes the
contact and asks them to choose
their area of interest. Contacts
are dynamically fed into these
campaigns from website
registrations (via a double form
post) and from the CRM.

PROJECT C: The Follow-Through

Data cleansing and standardization is not a one-time activity. Proper checks and balances must be established to
ensure that the data doesnt become stale with time.
Here are key things to consider to maintain consistent and clean data in your marketing database:
Documentation and Training: Document and list all data processes in a centralized location for the
organization so that they are easily accessible when needed. This single source of truth establishes exactly
how to acquire and load new data. Its not enough to have it stored on a shelf (the dust mites dont care
about marketing). Build out your plan for how you determine the level of implementation. Make it part of
onboarding and regular operational reviews.
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 Appoint a Data Steward: Empower the marketing operations team to act as a data steward to set overall
data policies and processes, and to ensure that all teams are in compliance with the defined data policies.
Make it responsible for reporting overall data health and communicating relevant data information (new
rules, changes in policy) to the broader marketing organization. Where marketing data relies on input from
other functions (sales, service, finance, web), the data steward can act as an ambassador, ensuring marketing needs are considered while gathering feedback. Data becomes more valuable with a point person
to surface use cases and applications.
Schedule Database Audits: Conduct periodic database audits for inconsistencies and non-standardized
values for important data fields. If inconsistency is found, identify the data source that is responsible and
review and correct.
Get Feedback: Encourage feedback from your constituents, and most importantly, from your prospects
and targets. The more they are willing to disclose about their preferences, the stronger your targeting
can be.
Finally.Be your own best friend.
As a famous President said, Trust, But Verify. Dont forget to do surprise checks yourself. Dive into the data
and results. Double check that your practices match your personas. Make sure that your procedures are enabling
sales, not just delivering data.

About Oracle Marketing Cloud

Modern Marketers choose Oracle Marketing Cloud to build customer obsessed cultures, create and manage
ideal customers, and power revenue performance. They use award-winning technology and expertise to transform marketing by truly knowing the customer, engaging with cross-channel marketing, and achieving data
driven accountability. Integrated information from cross-channel, content, and social marketing with data management and dozens of AppCloud apps enables these businesses to target, engage, convert, analyze, and use
marketing technology to deliver personalized customer experiences.
Visit oracle.com/marketingcloud.

Copyright 2014, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

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