Behavioral Marketing Strategy

A Forrester Consulting Thought Leadership Paper Commissioned By Silverpop

Use Behavioral Marketing To Up The Ante In The Age Of The Customer

A Winning Strategy And A Path To Higher Gains

May 2013

Forrester Consulting


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Table Of Contents

Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................................................................. 2

Welcome To The Age Of The Customer ............................................................................................................................................ 3

Marketing Must Catch Up To An Already Evolved Buyer .............................................................................................................. 4

Marketing Automation Is Now Table Stakes ..................................................................................................................................... 6

Strategy And Execution Draw The Winning Hand .......................................................................................................................... 8

Behavioral Marketing Improves The Odds ...................................................................................................................................... 11

Key Recommendations ......................................................................................................................................................................... 14

Appendix A: Methodology................................................................................................................................................................... 15

Appendix B: Demographics/Data ....................................................................................................................................................... 15

Appendix C: Endnotes .......................................................................................................................................................................... 16

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Executive Summary

Today’s buyers control the buying process far more than today’s vendors control the selling process — a phenomenon

that affects both business-to-business and business-to-consumer marketers. Buyers seek the information they want

online, on the Web and in social channels, as well as in that persistent nondigital venue commonly known as the real

world. Today’s buyers are demanding. They expect sellers to know where they’ve been, what they’ve seen, what they’ve

accepted or rejected — whether that behavior happened on their tablet, via their smartphone, or at the local branch

office. Frankly, today’s marketers are struggling to keep up.

In March 2013, Silverpop commissioned Forrester Consulting to research how marketers are leveraging automation in

their customer engagement processes. In our research, we tested the hypothesis that the automation of marketing

processes generates significant insight into the context and intentions of customers and prospective customers and that

marketers who harvest and leverage this insight in customer engagement activities will see improvements across a

number of key marketing performance measures.

Through in-depth surveys with 157 marketing professionals in the US, we found that most marketers are simply using

marketing automation to scale and standardize marketing processes. However, a small vanguard is using automation to

transform marketing practices with a focus on customer behavior across multiple engagement channels. We found that

marketers who have adopted behavioral marketing practices have realized business benefits ranging from higher return

on marketing investment (ROMI) to higher contributions to sales pipelines and revenue.

Key Findings Forrester’s study yielded four key findings:

• Marketing automation enables marketing success. Marketing automation is broadly deployed to manage core

marketing processes from campaign development to lead management. But top performers seem to be leveraging

their tech investments differently, executing a higher number of more focused campaigns and setting higher

targets.

• Both B2B and B2C marketers have accepted multichannel marketing as common practice. Marketers are

familiar with the concepts and practices of multichannel marketing. One-quarter of our survey respondents

assessed themselves as mature practitioners of multichannel marketing. Another 39% were in transition. Only 7%

of respondents had no plans to implement multichannel marketing.

• Behavioral marketing is a slightly less mature practice. Only 17% of our survey respondents assessed

themselves as mature practitioners of behavioral marketing. But early adopters perceive significant benefits to

becoming more buyer-centric. Significantly, a higher percentage of behavioral marketers grew revenue faster than

plan (53% versus 41%) and contributed more than half of the sales pipeline (20% versus 11%).

• Practitioners of behavioral marketing have significantly different practices. Those marketers who self-assessed

as “mature” reported significant differences in their approach to marketing: They have more fully implemented

marketing automation, run more campaigns, and run a greater variety of campaigns.



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Welcome To The Age Of The Customer

A few years back, Forrester posited that we’ve entered a new era — the age of the customer. A review of the competitive

frameworks of the past 100 years reveals how the age of the customer is different (see Figure 1). One by one, the sources

of differentiation have been commoditized. Now, every company can tap into global factories and global supply chains.

There’s no advantage (or perhaps even need) for a huge IT infrastructure; lean startups are realizing that the cloud

provides all of the computing resources they need. The only remaining (and sustainable) source of competitive

advantage is being the customer’s first choice. The new power of the customer mandates an obsession with

understanding, delighting, connecting with, and serving customers.

Figure 1

Customer Obsession Is Key To Success In The Age Of The Customer

Source: “Competitive Strategy In The Age Of The Customer,” Forrester Research Inc., June 6, 2011

Companies have always, to a greater or lesser extent, called themselves “customer-centric.” But this is different. The age

of the customer requires us to go beyond customer-centric thinking to customer-centric operations. In the age of the

customer, three elements are essential to success: a customer-obsessed approach to defining the business and marketing

strategy; an in-depth understanding of customers’ behaviors and needs; and a customer engagement strategy that is

calibrated to those behaviors and needs. The onus is on marketing leaders to integrate intimate knowledge of customers

into marketing activities that serve the needs of customers as they move through the process of picking their “first

choice” vendor.



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Marketing Must Catch Up To An Already Evolved Buyer

Today’s buyers (both businesses and consumers) are a take-charge bunch. They seek out the information they need to

move themselves along their path to a purchase (see Figure 2). Although it varies greatly with product complexity and

market maturity, today’s buyers might be anywhere from two-thirds to 90% of the way through their journey before

they reach out to the vendor. For many product categories, buyers now put off talking with salespeople until they are

ready for price quotes or delivery terms. Buyers are finding the information they need in an ever-expanding array of

content types (from infographics to video to white papers) in an ever-increasing number and variety of online and

offline channels — and they’re accessing the online channels from an increasingly diverse array of devices.

Figure 2

Today’s Buyers Control Their Own Multichannel Journey

Source: “The New Physics Of Lead-To-Revenue Management,” Forrester Research Inc., March 28, 2013

This changing buyer dynamic changes the role of marketing in several fundamental ways:

• Marketing owns a bigger chunk of the “selling process.” In many companies, marketing’s role in the sales

process has been to create revenue opportunities — by driving traffic to a website or developing a sales-ready lead

— not to advance or close deals. Guiding the buyer through the early stages of the buying process (traditionally

the role of sales) requires completely different thinking. An outside-in approach, calibrated to your buyer’s wants



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and needs, shifts the focus from content that details features and benefits to engagement that informs, persuades,

and convinces.

• Marketers must engage consistently over multiple channels. Buyers notice misaligned messages. We asked

survey respondents to assess their own multichannel marketing maturity and found that B2C marketers are

much more prepared than B2B marketers to engage multitouchpoint customers with a multichannel approach.1

Sixty-nine percent of the B2C marketers reported that they were either mature multichannel practitioners or were

transitioning to that state. B2B marketers have some ground to make up; only 59% indicated a similar level of

maturity (see Figure 3).

• Marketers must provide relevant content. As buyers move through a buying journey, they seek answers to

different questions that stand between them and a decision. The speed of purchase decisions is predicated on the

delivery of relevant marketing activities, messages, and content at each stage of the buyer’s journey. To

accomplish this, marketers can trigger appropriate messages and offers based upon demonstrated buyer

behaviors. But when we asked survey respondents to assess their maturity with behavioral marketing, only 17%

rated themselves as mature practitioners. Once again, B2C marketers were slightly ahead of the game: 20% rated

themselves as mature practitioners and another 41% as in transition, compared with 16% and 25%, respectively,

for B2B marketers.2

Figure 3

Multichannel Behavioral Marketing Is An Emerging Practice

Base: 157 marketing professionals focusing marketing efforts on the US

(percentages do not total 100 because of rounding)

Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Silverpop, May 2013



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Marketing Automation Is Now Table Stakes

Forty percent of our survey respondents reported that they were “somewhat aggressive or at the forefront” when it

comes to technology adoption. Another 32% said that they adopt technology in sync with wider marketplace adoption.

Only 18% said that they typically lag behind the mainstream in their adoption of technology.

Forrester defines marketing automation as:

Tooling and processes that help generate new business opportunities, improve potential buyers’ propensity to

purchase, manage customer loyalty, and increase alignment between marketing activity and revenue.3

Marketing automation introduces operational efficiency, scalability, and quality into the marketing process.

Automation makes the marketing team more productive, more effective, and improves the customer experience

through consistent execution. So the uptake is not all that surprising. When we asked our survey respondents about

their use of specific marketing automation technologies, we discovered consistently broad deployment across all

company sizes and business models, with just a few things of note:

• Small businesses are investing nearly on par with larger companies. A new model of the successful small

business has emerged. The new reality is far different from the owner-operated local enterprise of Norman

Rockwell’s America. Small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) have dramatically adapted their marketing

practices to changing buyer behaviors — where the journey for nearly every purchase (business or consumer)

begins with a web search. The new generation of top-performing SMB competitors has embraced online

marketing with both arms, as demonstrated by their marketing investment levels (see Figure 4).

Figure 4

Small Business Marketing Automation Investment Keeps Pace With Larger Firms





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• B2C marketers have an automation advantage over B2B companies. B2C marketers reported a higher level of

automation in all but one marketing automation category (see Figure 5). More than half of the B2C marketers

claimed to be “somewhat aggressive or at the forefront” of technology adoption. B2C marketers also have a better

relationship with their IT support: 56% reported having an “excellent or good” relationship with IT, versus only

46% of B2B marketers.

• B2C marketers are decidedly more social. In particular, B2C marketers are using social media management

technology far more than their B2B counterparts (83% versus 57%). B2B marketers consistently underestimate

just how “social” business buyers are. Forrester’s research finds that 86% of business buyers engage in social

activity for their work; 55% cite online communities and forums as influencers on their decisions.4

• B2B marketers are more likely to nurture customer relationships. The one category where B2B marketers are

more heavily invested than B2C marketers is in the category of lead management systems. Many B2C marketers

don’t take advantage of technology to engage with customers systematically throughout a longer buying cycle —

or throughout the entire customer life cycle. In fact, digging into the campaign strategies of our respondents, we

learned that 44% of B2C marketers had no plans or intention to implement lead nurturing campaigns, while 71%

of B2B marketers are either executing lead nurturing campaigns today or plan to start doing so within the next 12

months.

Figure 5

B2C Marketers Have Adopted Technology More Fully Than Their B2B Compatriots

Base: 136 B2B and B2C marketing professionals focusing marketing efforts on the US




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Strategy And Execution Draw The Winning Hand

If marketing automation is table stakes, then advantage accrues to the marketer who better uses that technology to

generate new business opportunities, improve potential buyers’ propensity to purchase, manage customer loyalty, and

increase alignment between marketing activity and revenue. That means that real advantage is derived from marketing

strategy and execution. In our survey, we asked a number of questions about automated marketing campaign strategy

and execution.5 To divine the nuanced difference between winning and losing strategies, we looked at the data through

a number of different lenses, including: top performers, defined as those whose companies exceeded their growth goals

the prior year; behavioral marketers, defined as those who claimed to be mature or transitioning to the practice; early

tech adopters, defined as those who reported themselves to be at the forefront of technology adoption; and customer

type, which allowed us to see the differences between B2B and B2C marketers. We found striking differences in the

state of marketing practices:

• The use of automated campaigns is widespread but not universal. Nearly one-third (29%) of respondents

reported that they are not executing any automated marketing campaigns. There was only a slight variance on

this point between B2B marketers (at 27%) and B2C marketers (at 31%). However, only 21% of top performers

and 16% of the behavioral marketers do not execute automated marketing campaigns.

• The bar for “automated” is set pretty low. Nearly half of the marketers reported that less than 10% of their

outbound communications were triggered by something other than manual intervention. The most frequently

mentioned triggers were behavioral (see Figure 6). Only 12% of our behavioral marketers, and 14% of our tech

early adopters, reported that more than half of their outbound communications were triggered by their

automation system. There’s clearly a lot of headroom for the automated marketer.

• Automation helps marketers scale campaign execution. On average, two-thirds of marketers execute more

campaigns after moving to an automated campaign strategy. B2B marketers and B2C marketers were both close

to this average at 65% and 62%, respectively. When we sliced the data through our analysis lenses, we saw that

72% of top performers, 71% of the behavioral marketers, and 73% of the early tech adopters are running more

campaigns.

• Marketers are evolving a more varied campaign portfolio. We asked marketers about their use of six different

campaign types (see Figure 7). We found that, overall, marketers are executing a balanced mix of campaign types,

each of which has different objectives and targets. The campaign mix has gotten more balanced compared with

the data from a Forrester study commissioned by Silverpop in 2012 (see Figure 8).6 The year-over-year results

show significant increases in the number of respondents who reported using customer data-gathering campaigns

(13%) and lead nurturing campaigns (10%). A higher percentage of B2C marketers reported using every type of

campaign with the exception of lead nurturing. Behavioral marketers executed a more varied campaign slate as

well (see Figure 9).



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Figure 6

Behavior Is the Most Frequent Trigger For Automated Marketing Campaigns


(multiple responses accepted)


Figure 7

A Balanced Mix Of Campaign Types Are Part Of The Strategy

Base: 112 marketing professionals focusing marketing efforts on the US that use automated campaigns

(percentages may not total 100 because of rounding)




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Figure 8

Marketers Are Expanding Their Campaign Portfolios


*Base: 133 marketing professionals focusing marketing efforts on the US that use automated campaigns

Source: Commissioned studies conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Silverpop, May 2012 and May 2013

Figure 9

Campaign Mix Strategies Vary With The Profile Of The Marketer





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• Marketers are starting to measure what matters. One bright spot in our year-over-year comparison was the

change in perspective on marketing performance measurement. Marketers seem to be evolving a more holistic set

of measures and metrics. In 2012, nearly all marketers were measuring “response rates,” but far fewer were

measuring business impact metrics like customer lifetime value. In 2013, while marketers still hold a healthy

regard for response rates, far more respondents reported a varied measurement mix that included lead nurturing

and customer retention (see Figure 10).

Figure 10

Marketers Are Evolving A More Balanced Perspective On Performance Management


*Base: 133 marketing professionals focusing marketing efforts on the US that use automated campaigns

(multiple responses accepted)


Behavioral Marketing Improves The Odds

Despite all of the improvements we’ve seen in automated campaign execution, most marketers are still not capitalizing

on the value of behavioral insight. Marketers have shown us that they’re increasingly capturing this data, but our survey

found limited use of preference, propensity, and influence data to shape campaign strategies. When we looked into the

survey responses of the emerging behavioral marketers to understand their motivations, habits, and performance

results, we found that:

• Buyer behavioral data remains the greatest untapped marketing asset. On average, only 45% of marketers are

capturing and consolidating customer behavioral data from multiple channels in a single database. Significantly,



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only 60% of respondents who called themselves “mature behavioral marketers” consolidate behavioral data. In

the age of the customer, competitive advantage is increasingly derived from customer knowledge. With

intelligent leverage of customer behavioral data, and the knowledge it drives, marketers can provide targeted

content and offers that serve to both improve buyer engagement and increase conversion rates.

• Revenue impact and customer experience are the twin drivers of behavioral marketing. We asked respondents

to assess the potential gain if they were able to take specific actions with prospective customers based upon those

customers’ behavior across different channels. Return on marketing investment (ROMI) and customer

satisfaction and loyalty topped the list of perceived benefits. Reducing sales cycles and customer acquisition costs

were at the bottom of the list of perceived values (see Figure 11).

• Behavioral marketers are getting better results. It’s clear from our survey results that even the most advanced

behavioral marketers still rank as neophytes — but the early results are promising, as the behavioral marketing

vanguard is performing better than its peers. We asked B2B marketers to report the contribution that marketing

was making to the sales pipeline (see Figure 12). Behavioral marketers performed slightly better than their peers

(34% to 26%). We asked B2C marketers to report the percentage of revenue that can be attributed to automated

digital programs (see Figure 13). Behavioral marketers performed slightly better than their peers (26% to 21%).

Figure 11

Perceived Advantages From Behavioral Marketing


(some response categories have been omitted)




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Figure 12

Behavioral Marketer Impact For B2B Marketers

Base: 120 B2B marketing professionals focusing marketing efforts on the US


Figure 13

Behavioral Marketer Impact For B2C Marketers

Base: 130 B2C marketing professionals focusing marketing efforts on the US





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KEY RECOMMENDATIONS

We have entered the age of the customer. Marketers must evolve to meet the expectations and demands of empowered

customers. If you have not already transformed your customer engagement processes into integrated, customer-centric

processes, you are behind the vanguard. As you strategize and plan to become more customer-centric, you must:

• Create a culture of customer obsession. The full promise of behavioral marketing is only realized when all

interactions with a customer are calibrated around their current context and historical interaction with your

company. Tackling different types of data and aggregating for collective insight is an essential characteristic of any

behavioral marketing program.

• Establish a common language across channels and touchpoints. Channel, product, marketing communications,

and sales silos have often evolved their own dialects of a common language. Careless use of language may not

confuse the customer completely, but it will ensure that key value points are not amplified. Something as simple as

a corporate glossary of customer-facing terminology can remediate this communications problem.

• Stop thinking about campaigns and start thinking engagement. Customers will engage with marketers who

meet their needs — their changing needs — for different information and options during the buying journey.

Marketers who continue to build campaigns, and make offers, around products and product features will be

perceived as tone-deaf to today’s informed buyer.

• Learn from best-in-class marketers “on the other side.” Today’s business buyers behave more like consumers:

They browse on their tablets, seek advice in social channels, and shop around for options. Today’s consumers are

less impulsive, taking a studied research-based approach to smaller and smaller decisions. B2B marketers can learn

some things from B2C marketers’ practices — such as incorporating social media into the marketing mix and

engaging on mobile devices. B2C marketers can learn from B2B marketers about content marketing and nurturing

buyers through complex decision cycles.

• Find a trusted IT advisor. Marketing is — and should be — inexorably bound up in technology, as the majority of

customer touchpoints are digitally enabled and the digital landscape of customer experiences is evolving at a

breakneck pace. Marketing execs need a trusted IT advisor. Many CMOs will rethink their relationship with IT, some

will turn to an external service provider, and others will create a shadow IT organization in marketing operations.

Whatever the source, find your IT champion.

• Build the technical infrastructure to support dynamic, cross-channel conversations with customers. It’s

simply not possible to manage the delivery of dynamic, targeted, consistent content, offers, and products, across

digitally enabled customer touchpoints when marketing tasks are semiautomated with a series of unintegrated

software tools.



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Appendix A: Methodology

In this study, Forrester Consulting conducted an online survey of 157 marketing professionals at the manager level and

above who focus their marketing efforts on the United States in order to evaluate marketers’ knowledge of and attitudes

toward multichannel marketing, behavioral marketing, and automated marketing. The study was conducted in March

and April 2013.

Appendix B: Demographics/Data

Figure 14

Survey Demographics: Company Size And Audience






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Figure 15

Survey Demographics: Marketing Responsibilities



Appendix C: Endnotes

1 In the survey, we defined multichannel marketing as an integrated approach to engaging customers and prospects

across many channels to improve the sales and revenue effectiveness of those interactions.

2 In the survey, we defined behavioral marketing as collecting information regarding customer and prospect behavior

and then using that information to influence marketing campaigns.

3 Marketers serving buyers that make high-consideration purchases need to communicate with those individuals at

every stage of their path to purchase. To manage this depth of engagement at scale requires marketing automation.

Source: “B2B Marketers Must Better Prepare For Marketing Automation,” Forrester Research, Inc., April 26, 2011.

4 Source: Q1 2011 US And European B2B Social Technographics® Online Survey For Business Technology Buyers.

5 We defined automated digital marketing campaigns as digital communications executed via predetermined business

rules versus manual processes.

6 Source: “Automation: Redefining Marketing’s Game Plan,” a Forrester Consulting Thought Leadership Paper

Commissioned By Silverpop, Silverpop website, May 2011 (http://www.silverpop.com/Documents/Whitepapers/2012-

earlier/Silverpop_Redefining-Your-Marketing-Game-Plan.pdf).