Each year, AutomationDay brings together, over the course of one day, the players in marketing automation and, more broadly, marketing innovation! For this edition, four themes were highlighted: marketing automation, content marketing, growth marketing, and data! Here is what I took away from this day full of learning and meetings!
Morning sessions
Isabelle Garcia: let’s democratize data, for employees who empower the company!
To kick off the day, Isabelle Garcia, General Secretary of RER C, shared her experience with data and its use at SNCF!
Through several very concrete and varied examples, Isabelle showed us the importance of data in improving the daily lives of both users and employees! What I took away is that getting everyone involved in using data is essential. Drivers, for example, are a key source of crucial information for improving the customer experience.
Customer behavior is important to leverage; for example, to reduce waiting times, analyzing everyone’s behavior is a good practice! Knowing peak hours makes it possible to adapt schedules, for example. Knowing customers’ journeys helps position kiosks in key locations.
And if I had to remember only one thing: “If we have two ears and one mouth, there must be a reason for that”!
Arnaud Le Roux: evolution and trends in marketing in 2021: inbound marketing and automation
Arnaud Le Roux took over next. This CMO of Fioulmarket looked back at how marketing has evolved over time. What stands out is the change in consumption habits and in the relationship with advertising. Where advertising was once a real prescriber of a product, highlighting its features, a few years ago, it has become much more difficult to stand out from the crowd. The solution? Data! Indeed, targeting your persona rather than the entire population has become essential for advertising that converts. Here again, segmentation pays off. The phrase to remember: “stop selling and make people want to buy.” !
Nina Ramen: the email course system: gaining credibility to increase sales
Nina Ramen is our third speaker of the day. Her leitmotif: everything based on love and personalized relationships.
Her starting observation is simple: asking a stranger for the time before asking them for money increases the probability that they will accept by 50%.
With this in mind, Nina created a strategy based 80% on a relationship of trust and 20% on sales. By explaining to contacts what awaits them, you avoid unpleasant surprises and the relationship only becomes stronger as a result.
She also points out that today, an email address is a means of payment. This strategy must therefore also be applied to obtaining that piece of data.
She then offers a few very concrete and simple rules:
- a free sample
- no impersonal email
- ask questions in emails
- keep the possibility of replying to emails
The phrase that sticks is: “Automating something that does not work will not save the world.”
Benoît Dubos: from ? to ?: the pillars of growth
To end this morning on a high note, Benoît Dubos joined us.
He shared his experience by explaining the importance of internalizing skills in order to grow a company. Hiring specialized people helps the company progress in various areas and accelerate growth.
At the same time, building your company around trusted people with shared values is very important.
Content Room
Charlotte Goyard: the 5 secrets of an online media outlet to exceed a 30% open rate
Attention, takeoff for the content room. Here, it’s concrete and concise for a maximum of advice in a minimum amount of time. Are you ready? Here are the 5 steps to increase your open rate!
- clean your database: sending emails to valid addresses can increase your open rate from 10 to 13%
- qualify: know your subscribers, gather information about them, without an overly long form, that is the key to proper segmentation
- personalize your communications: to catch attention and attract interest
- segment so you deliver only the right messages and do not clutter communication with irrelevant information
- energize: change the titles, the subject lines, run tests to engage your community!
Watch the session replay: https://youtu.be/h4OwxgbRnbk
Catherine Fournier: make your hybrid event a success – strategic insights and practical advice
This time, it’s five best practices for a top-notch hybrid event:
- choose the right platform: to set up registrations, reminders, and a smooth experience on the big day!
- rely on innovation: your speakers can be remote or even pre-record their talks!
- take care of the experience: the big day must be an enjoyable moment for everyone, speakers and visitors alike!
- maintain live sessions so everyone can attend, on site or remotely.
- define objectives: to stay on course from preparation through to the event!
Nicolas Nguyen: how to create a sustainable Content Marketing strategy?
The traffic curve on your website drives your company’s growth curve.
Knowing that only 10% of content captures traffic, you need to take care with your SEO brief.
The 5 tips to increase your traffic:
- rework the articles that perform well
- create content in an organized way, working on keywords
- think through your content according to Google’s requirements
- add internal and external links
- retarget visitors with paid campaigns!
Ferréole Lespinasse: increase the effectiveness of your content: the benefits of editorial restraint
Finally, Ferréole Lespinasse gives us the 4 pillars of editorial restraint:
- humility and sincerity: write only what is true, remove overblown flourishes that lead to mistrust and unpleasant surprises.
- usefulness and clarity: an article that brings no useful information is a waste of time
- sustainability: your content must remain usable for a long time
- responsibility: be aware of the ecological impact of the multitude of content and platforms!
This strategy, which even LeMonde uses, boils down to writing less in order to write better. And that is the world of tomorrow.
Marketing Automation Room
Isabelle Defay: Inbound Marketing and Account-Based Marketing, your next winning B2B strategies?
A specialist in Inbound and Account-Based Marketing topics, Isabelle Defay, director of the Winbound agencies in Paris, Lyon, and Lille, looked back at these two winning B2B strategies.
Inbound marketing is above all permission marketing. It is the foundation of pull marketing, that is to say, making high-value information and content available and drawing in contacts who are looking for information.
Things to take into consideration with this method:
- the decision-making journey and therefore the results, which can take some time
- targeting a fairly broad market that does not necessarily suit every strategy
- a conversion rate
ABM (Account Based Marketing) is a method that aims to reverse the conversion funnel. First, we decide which companies it makes sense to work with according to certain criteria. We then engage the contacts in these companies with personalized campaigns and, in this way, build a lasting relationship that will bring business opportunities.
These two approaches are highly complementary, but one does not replace the other! A marketing mix between these two methods should be considered in order to optimize your marketing actions.
How do you choose between the two?
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Inbound Marketing |
Account Based Marketing |
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Stéphane Couleaud: 2020 marketing automation barometer
Also called the “pope of marketing automation”, Stéphane Couleaud president of Webmecanik, presented the 2020 marketing automation barometer. An infographic presenting the overall marketing automation market and the key figures drawn from the use of our Webmecanik Automation software.
Marketing automation is:
A set of techniques and tools for marketing teams to help them with sales and retention through communication automation.
A rapidly growing market where more than 300 software vendors offer tools equipped with essential features such as:
- Lead Nurturing
- Lead Scoring
- CRM Integration
- Automated Campaigns
- Landing Pages
- Tracking
- Preference Center
A method that is aimed equally at B2B or B2C companies, large accounts or SMEs/mid-sized companies. Even if expectations are different, marketing automation is based on an identical process for all scenarios: attract visitors, identify them, nurture them, and convert them.
Nicoleta Binca: the Marketing Automation journey in the SAAS industry
Marketing and communication specialist at XWiki, Nicoleta Binca looked back at their marketing automation tool migration project and explained to us the strength and the challenges of such a strategy in the SaaS industry.
The migration project from Marketo to Webmecanik Automation was implemented in several stages:
- Searching for the tool that matched the company’s needs: budget optimization, ease of use, data sovereignty (servers based in the EU), integration with their CRM, support responsiveness.
- Data migration in less than 35 days: thanks to a structured 5-step process: migration duration, data exports, technical aspects, TESTS, and production launch.
- Adapting to the new software: starting with team training, software configuration, and the creation of a work schedule for campaign implementation.
- The benefits of marketing automation: this marketing strategy allows better segmentation, the use of A/B tests, lead qualification, a better understanding of your contact database, and finally personalized communication.
- The results after 9 months of using their new tool: GDPR compliance, higher-quality data, easier email and campaign creation, management of several webinars, better visibility of their workflow and processes, and finally great creative freedom.
In summary, the most important criterion raised by Nicoleta when implementing a marketing automation project is to choose the tool that best adapts to your business, and not the other way around.
Sylvain Davril: lessons learned from 80+ Marketing Automation projects
Sylvain Davril, founder of Merlin/Léonard and a marketing automation expert, has been supporting his B2B clients for 25 years. He looked back at his many experiences and the lessons he drew from more than 80 Marketing Automation projects.
Through an infographic, he explained the different steps to successfully carry out a B2B marketing project:
- Base camp: preparing for change
- Camp 1: content strategy
- Camp 2: marketing automation
- Camp 3: demand generation
- Camp 4: conversational marketing
- Camp 5: behavioral marketing
- Camp 6: revenue performance management
According to Sylvain, the full progression of this implementation takes 3 years. The success of a marketing automation project is a combination of factors. He especially insists on the importance of creating quality content, positioned in a conversion funnel like an automated staircase of trust.
The full infographic is here!
Data Room
Norman Pracht: measure your marketing ROI thanks to your marketing automation and CRM integration
Norman Pracht, CEO of Webmecanik, presented the measurement of the ROI of your marketing actions thanks to your marketing automation software and your CRM.
The challenge of any marketing strategy is knowing which actions bring you money so you can better target your future investments.
To do this, a few steps are necessary:
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- Define the source of your leads: first-touch attribution
- Define a tagging plan: mapping your UTMs
- Assign and retain the sources of your visitors: this will allow you to measure profitability
- Link acquisition source and revenue: this is where the link between marketing automation and CRM makes perfect sense
- Analyze your ROI by source
Johann Duranton: Net Promoter Score (NPS), the must-have indicator in 2021?
Johann Duranton, sales director at Vocaza, looked back at the key indicator for measuring customer recommendation: the Net Promoter Score.
A well-known indicator that measures the share of customers who would be willing to recommend a brand, a product, or a service. Concretely, it measures customer recommendation based on a score on a scale from 0 to 10.
You can then segment your customer base into 3 groups:
- Promoters (scores of 9 or 10)
- Neutrals (scores of 7 or 8)
- Detractors (scores between 0 and 6)
Measuring NPS makes it possible to anticipate churn, compare yourself to the competition, and measure your progress. The interpretation of your NPS depends on the sector, but also on the country in which you operate.
Hélène Moré: 5 steps to leverage your data and develop your sales effectiveness
A Data and relationship marketing consultant at Pogotango, Hélène Moré discussed the 5 steps for leveraging your data and thus developing your sales effectiveness.
Hélène also came back to the importance of relationship marketing: marketing centered on the contact/customer in order to maintain a personalized and continuous relationship with them. The objective is to support them throughout their buying journey and build loyalty in response to their behavior… just like in real life, after all.
To do this, tools such as your CRM and synchronized marketing automation software allow you to interact continuously in an individualized way.
The 5 steps to follow are therefore:
- Step 1: get to know your customers better
- Step 2: collect – find the right “honey pots”
- Step 3: Personalize
- Step 4: Automate with marketing automation
- Step 5: Analyze and optimize
In conclusion to her talk, Hélène gave a few tips: respect your customers, it is possible to do things well and effectively even with a small budget, do not seek perfection, and adopt a progressive approach: 1 objective, 1 target, 1 system → GO!
Yusuf Young: how to build a CRM integration that turns your Sales and Marketing teams into a SMarketing unit.
Yusuf Young, B2B marketing automation and inbound sales expert at FunnelBud, presented how your CRM integration transformed your sales and marketing into a SMarketing team.
Yusuf first presented the advantages of a best-of-breed software stack versus all-in-one:
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All-in-one |
Integrated best-of-breed |
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In a best-of-breed software stack (the combination of several ultra-specialized software tools), it is important that each tool be perfectly synchronized with the others. He notably highlighted the importance of synchronization between sales and marketing in both directions.
Growth Marketing Room
Bertrand Barbet: generate leads on social media thanks to content sharing by your employees and partners
Bertrand Barbet, founder of Limber, presented a lead generation strategy on social media through content sharing by your employees and partners: advocacy marketing
This method consists of mobilizing all the company’s stakeholders so they can become ambassadors and share your company’s information on their social accounts in order to amplify the visibility of your brand messages.
A collective influence approach that has proven itself:
- Employee Advocacy: a combined audience 10x greater than that of the company alone and engagement 8x greater than that of a company account
- 78% of internet users trust a peer rather than a brand
- Social selling: makes it easier to align marketing and sales departments and generates business opportunities via social media.
- 40% more qualified leads compared with traditional telephone prospecting.
Via the Limber tool, you can easily orchestrate these advocacy marketing initiatives.
Stephen Lurie: 5 ideas to boost engagement
Stephen Lurie, director of appvizer.com, presented 5 ideas to boost customer engagement.
Creating quality content is now at the heart of every strategy. But to create quality content that will capture your audience’s attention and inspire them, it is important to understand what is going on in your prospects’ minds and to practice empathy: take the time, listen, speak…
- Start with Why : Simon Sinek’s famous golden circle is not obsolete and should be the starting point of any marketing strategy.
- The power of Narratives : your audience likes listening to stories and drawing information from what they hear, so storytelling is essential.
- Monroe Motivation Sequence : a 5-step method for communicating properly with your audience. Attention -> Need -> Satisfaction -> Visualization -> Action
- Features > Benefits > Outcome : in content creation, focus on the final communication objective, what will interest your audience. Spoiler: it is never the features or your product, but the benefit it brings.
- Too much Information VS Timely Information : send the right information, at the right time, relevant information to earn your audience’s trust. Marketing automation is a very good tool for automating the distribution of this quality content.
Watch the session replay: https://youtu.be/RvllnxP6rB4
Eddy Mimoun: more impactful marketing automation thanks to an outsourced sales force
Eddy Mimoun, CEO of HDB Solutions, presented his techniques for more impactful marketing automation thanks to an outsourced sales force.
This involves sales organization in the age of automation. The sales profession is evolving and merging with marketing roles to specialize the sales organization according to the stages of the product sales cycle.
Nurturing and triggering prospecting now have an important place in a sales strategy. Indeed, by defining triggers to send content at the right time, it becomes possible to determine a prospect’s maturity and engage sales actions.
Eddy also looked back at what should be outsourced or kept in-house to accelerate sales growth:
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Outsourcing |
In-house |
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Gabriel Dabi-Schwebel: Q2C Selling: the ultimate method to accelerate your sales
Gabriel Dabi-Schwebel, founder of 1min30, presented the must-read books for succeeding in your marketing automation strategy and in particular his latest book, co-written with Nicolas Delignieres, Sales Odyssey: Q2C Selling, the next-generation sales process.
A new methodology based on collective intelligence and design thinking methods serving your sales processes.
It is built in 4 steps:
- The Sales process canvas: asking the right questions in order to determine the ideal structure of your sales process.
- Model your Go/No Go tree: define the rules that make it possible to initiate a sales process or not, and the way it will unfold.
- Model and enrich your sales processes through conversations, stories, and content: increase your mastery of the process and its impact thanks to the available resources and identify gaps.
- Prioritize your actions: which strengths should you capitalize on and which shortcomings should be addressed first.
Watch the session replay: https://youtu.be/gdfj3pFWhqs
You can find the replays of the morning sessions on AutomationDay.fr! See you in 2022 for the next edition of our event.
