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Guest Blog

Guest Blog, Cain Ullah: Building partnerships in B2B: How to get buy-in…
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As an external partner in B2C, you are likely to focus on customer demand, experience and building products and/or services that they would want to use; it’s relatively straightforward. However, the challenges in the B2B space are different. It’s often services and systems rather than products, so business value can be more difficult to demonstrate, therefore selling the benefits and maintaining buy-in in such a partnership is often challenging. However, the rewards for success can be enormous.

Often, the biggest challenge in a B2B environment is getting stakeholder buy-in. Innovation in the B2B space requires influence from the right partners to help organisations make bold decisions around technology. Implementing a fresh approach to delivering new products and services can often mean new business practices, and having the support of the right internal stakeholders is essential in the tougher moments of initiating change. Using an empathetic approach and working collaboratively are effective tools to help your client build influence. Once stakeholder buy-in is achieved, it’s more possible to drive value beyond the project you are involved with, across the business and directly to customers. All of these elements need to be lined up to be able to reach the end goal of exceeding customer demand, creating exceptional customer experience and selling products and/or services.

 

WHY?

As a consultancy brought in to fix a business problem, Red Badger often sees similar issues in most enterprise-size businesses. Enterprises are simply not structured to deliver value to customers fast. By changing focus to driving value to the customer, a leaner, more collaborative and technologically bolder business model emerges.

 

HOW?

The most effective way to sell the benefits of change internally is to clearly illustrate a path to achieving the overall business objectives. This should be done by tackling smaller pieces of work first, drive value early and prove ROI; rather than trying to change a whole process, or replace an entire system. It’s okay to have lofty goals, but you must get there through a continuous series of small steps.

First of all, empathise with the problem, the space and the customers. You have to understand your client’s customers as well as, if not better than, they do. Collaboration with the client throughout the lifecycle of the project from the very beginning is crucial, so that you are considered part of the team.

Then, don’t over-reach. It can be perceived as arrogant and easily backfire. Identify, target and tackle problems that are achievable: small and bite-sized. Each win that you can prove translates into another example of how you are driving value to their customers and reminds more stakeholders why you are important to keep on-board. To maintain customer buy-in, you have to maintain value.

As the saying goes, speed is of the essence. If you can produce tangible results fast, buy-in is easier to uphold. Results can be marked out as  helping to drive change, and, ultimately, the results will speak for themselves.

The ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ that every business working in B2B needs to be aware of:

 

  • Don’t take on challenges that are too big to win.
  • Do prove your value throughout.
  • Don’t forget that your primary focus should be on the customers; what their own end goals are not yours.
  • Do help them to be bold with technology rather than relying on the ‘enterprise’ solution.
  • Do have empathy for your client and understand their internal challenges.
  • Do have a level of pragmatism. Don’t be too dogmatic. When dealing with organisational change, you have to pick your battles.

 

Cain Ullah is a founder of Red Badger, with responsibilities including; strategy, culture, sales and marketing. He is extremely proud of Red Badger’s people and is focused on scaling quality and a lovely culture in the team.

 

Guest Blog, Rupert Harrison: Moving mobile for email marketing…
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In a prevalent ‘mobile first’ society, Rupert Harrison, planning director at Zeta Interactive, explains the rise of its incorporation into email marketing, and how marketers and brands should be cautious in monitoring its engagement level, the design and how it will fit into the overall ‘marketing mix’.

We live in a ‘mobile first’ world. Take a look at any bus stop or queue for the bank and the majority of people will have their mobile phone in hand. It’s no surprise that 50 per cent of consumers use email ‘on-the-go’, according to the DMA Email Tracking Study 2015. That means that half of brands’ email interactions with consumers are on mobile, so it’s important to get it right.

But the hype around ‘mobile first’ has led many brands to oversimplify their thinking when it comes to mobile engagement. Yes, mobile creates the opportunity for brands to target customers in any place, at any time – but email marketing via mobile is so much more than a one-way route into consumers’ pockets.

It goes without saying that email design must be responsive to mobile devices, so that the customer experience is as good as possible when the message is viewed on mobile. However, it is also critical that marketers make good use of the data available to them to understand the context within which content is consumed, and deliver the right messages accordingly.

Striking the right tone

Mobile takes the relationship between brands and consumers to a new level of intimacy. Email marketing is already a very personal medium: as a means of delivering highly personalised content, it is the real definition of one-to-one marketing. But brands can derive powerful insights by looking at location and device type, as well as time of day, dwell times and interaction rates – allowing them to make their communications hyper-relevant to every customer.

Of course, this is a good thing. But such intimacy can quickly turn invasive if it misses the mark, and marketing that is poorly targeted or overbearing can feel particularly intrusive for customers. True personalisation is speaking softly to an audience, not yelling in their ear.

Over half (51 per cent) of consumers believe that just one-30 per cent of emails are relevant or interesting, according to the DMA; a figure that has risen steadily over the past four years. And consumers do unsubscribe from brands that no longer interest them, or if their content is inappropriate or uninspiring. By smarter targeting and better understanding of the customer mind-set and situation when they are engaging on mobile devices, marketers can improve engagement and reduce the cost of getting it wrong.

Moments of insight

But mobile gives brands the opportunity to go further and use the channel as an ‘early alert system’ providing insights for a wider marketing campaign.  Think of mobiles as mini ‘vote now’ devices and you get the picture.  The ‘moments of insight’ afforded by these interactions can be fed into a segmentation engine that allows brands to target their customers in a more intimate way.

So, businesses need to be wary of placing too much emphasis on ‘mobile first’, take a step back and think smartly about where mobile engagement fits into the overall marketing mix. Only by thinking in more holistic terms can brands ensure they make the most of the “moving target” opportunity.

 

Rupert Harrison is the planning director at Zeta Interactive. He has extensive experience of data driven communications and customer journey planning across direct, digital, social and offline and has worked at a wide range of companies, including POSSIBLE, News UK and most recently as head of comms planning at VCCPme.

Zeta Interactive is a digital marketing and smart data company working with over 250 brands worldwide.  It was recognised as one of the 50 most promising private companies by Forbes in 2014 and has featured twice in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Marketing Hubs.