Using A Data-Driven Approach For Creating Messaging With A Measurable Impact
1. #B2BMX
Using A Data-Driven Approach For
Creating Messaging
With A Measurable Impact
Christine Elliott, Content Strategy & Operations Practice Leader
Crowe Horwath LLP
@Im_Christine44 @CroweHorwathUS
2. #B2BMX
Crowe Horwath LLP is one of the largest public accounting, consulting and
technology firms in the United States.
Crowe uses its deep industry expertise to provide audit services to public and
private entities while also helping clients reach their goals with tax, advisory, risk
and performance services.
Crowe serves clients worldwide as an independent member of Crowe Horwath
International, one of the largest global accounting networks in the world. The
network consists of more than 200 independent accounting and advisory services
firms in more than 130 countries around the world.
Crowe Horwath LLP
3. 2006
2007 2011
2008
20172009
20162010
2015
2012 2014
2013
2018
APRIL 2005
Learned about
lead nurture at
Marketing
Profs B2B
demand gen
conference.
SEPT 2005
Hired Kern
Consulting to
develop lead
nurture
strategy for
Risk business
unit.
SEPT 2008
Implemented
marketing
automation
platform
(Eloqua.)
APR 2010
Initiated first
firmwide
marketing plan
with common
objectives, one of
which was expert
positioning.
JAN 2012
Asked to develop a
lead nurture
program for the
Performance
Consulting business
unit in banking.
DEC 2013
Created
virtual
content team:
reps from all
groups that
develop or
touch
content.
DEC 2014
Recommended
formal change
to org structure
to bring
content groups
together.
MAY 2015
Official launch
of Content
Strategy &
Operations
team.
MAR 2016
Hired first
full-time
content
strategist.
JAN 2017
Recommending
re-alignment of
team, revamp of
processes and
expansion of
coverage.
The Crowe Horwath LLP Content Marketing Journey
4. #B2BMX
Why marketers should care about technology
The importance of an iterative approach to marketing campaigns
Why an iterative approach is wholly inadequate on its own
Getting connected to the market conversation
A model for a sustainable content ecosystem
Takeaways
8. #B2BMX
Dodd -F ran k an d S tress Testin g : Baselin e
JANUARY FEBRUARY MARCH APRIL
Performance
Improvement
EARLY EARLY MID LATE
Dodd-Frank EARLY EARLY MID MID
AML EARLY EARLY MID LATE
Vendor Selection &
Management
EARLY EARLY MID MID
Big Data EARLY EARLY EARLY MID
Credit Portfolio
Management
EARLY MID MID LATE
Open Rate
Click-to-
Open Rate Open Rate
Click-to-
Open Rate
Dodd-Frank 61% 19% 54% 15%
Anti-Money
Laundering 95% 12% 80% 11%
Vendor
Selection &
Management 65% 12% 31% 9%
Performance
Improvement 79% 11% 58% 12%
Credit Portfolio
Management 94% 6% 42% 29%
Big Data 56% 6% 38% 4%
Total 76% 13% 48% 12%
April 2013
Track
December 2014
9. #B2BMX
Dodd-Frank & Stress Testing – Iteration #1 Develop /
Refine
Messaging
OVERARCHING BRAND MESSAGE
Crowe Credit 360 is a powerful stress-testing system that leverages machine learning – leading to a better,
faster way to aggregate data, standardize modeling, provide dashboard reporting, and create submission
reports, while providing capabilities to independently perform on-demand stress testing.
SMART DECISIONS LASTING VALUE
Employ machine learning to reduce the
costs, time, and effort to support critical
stress testing and capital planning needs,
and to support extended model value and
applications.
Automate and calibrate the stress-testing
process from one year to the next to redirect
resources from information modeling toward
information analysis.
BRAND PILLARS
Results Relationships Values
We implement a powerful,
proprietary platform that
simplifies the complex stress-
testing process
Crowe professionals combine
banking industry experience
and technological expertise to
develop a robust solution that
simplifies and streamlines the
stress-testing process.
We approach every client
engagement with a commitment to
helping organizations move beyond
compliance toward operationalizing
data for improved decision-making.
PROOF POINTS
DIFFERENTIATORS
Crowe Credit 360 produces a fully automated stress-testing analysis tool and submission file.
New brand message development process
Creating a sustainable and cost-effective stress-
testing program to address Dodd-Frank requires
advanced technology designed to improve model
development and validation.
Creation of storylines for each campaign
Cascade messaging for business units, industries
and even at the solution / product level.
25 message maps created this year.
11. #B2BMX
Dodd-Frank & Stress Testing – Iteration #1
Execute
Programs
Trigger emails
Offer multiple
content assets
per email
CHECKLIST /
E-Book Sidebar
CASE STUDY
(if downloaded Checklist)
CASE STUDY
E-BOOK
CHECKLIST / CASE
STUDY
CHECKLIST
(if downloaded Case Study)
E-BOOK /
CHECKLIST /
CASE STUDY
12. #B2BMX
Dodd-Frank & Stress Testing – Iteration #1
CHECKLIST /
E-Book Sidebar
CASE STUDY
(if downloaded Checklist)
CASE STUDY
E-BOOK
CHECKLIST / CASE
STUDY
CHECKLIST
(if downloaded Case Study)
E-BOOK /
CHECKLIST /
CASE STUDY
Open Rate
Click-to-
Open Rate
18.3% 17.5%
Open Rate
Click-to-
Open Rate
18.9% 16.1% Open Rate
Click-to-
Open Rate
18.5% 12.8%
Open Rate
Click-to-
Open Rate
72.3% 63.0%
Open Rate
Click-to-
Open Rate
83.3% 66.7%
Open Rate
Click-to-
Open Rate
83.3% 80.0%
Open Rate
Click-to-
Open Rate
66.3% 45.6%
13.
14.
15.
16. #B2BMX
Building a Sustainable Content Ecosystem
2
Find white space
and develop a
unique perspective.
3
Align your messaging to the
themes and terms being
used.
4
Continuously innovate and test
new platforms, technologies and
formats.
5 Publishing content is not a strategy.
Aggressively promote your content.
6
Look for non-traditional influencers and
up-and-comers.
7
Make connections that
provide value. Nurture those
relationships.
10
Always stay focused on the market
conversation.
9
Find ways to measure engagement,
not just opens and clicks.
8
Make incremental
improvements, but also
swing for the fences.
Spectacular failure is success.
1 Identify the conversations you want to
be part of (or lead) and monitor them.
As you can see from the list of takeaways, I’m going to completely contradict myself today. I’m going to tell you how important it is to continuously evolve and iterate – AND that that strategy is not enough. I’m going to provide real life examples of what we’ve done at Crowe and at the end will put forward 10 steps to creating a sustainable content ecosystem.
Crowe’s content journey goes back to 2005. There’s a lot of information on this slide, I just want to point out a few things. I
I first learned about lead nurture at a Marketing Profs conference in 2005. I thought it was a great idea. We started to pursue a strategy and realized that we didn’t have marketing automation to make it happen.
That led to us implementing Eloqua in 2008, so that makes me an Eloqua Old Timer and an Eloqueen.
It took us a few years to ramp up with Eloqua while I was focused on building out FW marketing strategies.
In 2012 we developed our first lead nurture campaign – I’ll share a bit of our journey later. This was the Content Marketing “bootcamp.”
With all of the best practices we learned in nurture, we wanted to share that knowledge more broadly. So we created a virtual content team that met for a year and identified tons of content improvement opportunities.
A year and a half later (May 2015), we changed the organizational structure and created an Content Strategy & Operations team.
Now almost two years into that, we have developed content strategy capabilities and are continuing to evolve .
As you can see from the list of takeaways, I’m going to completely contradict myself today. I’m going to tell you how important it is to continuously evolve and iterate – AND that that strategy is not enough. I’m going to provide real life examples of what we’ve done at Crowe and at the end will put forward 10 steps to creating a sustainable content ecosystem.
I don’t know anyone who would disagree with this concept – that technology is transforming every aspect of our lives. And it’s also true – maybe even especially true – in professional services. This word cloud is from the ScribbleLive Insights tool as it relates to data analytics in the professional services space. It is a major tenet of the conversation about professional services firms. If you think about it, accounting and consulting services are heavily focused on selling “people.” However, technology can now perform many tasks that people had to do before – at a much lower cost. Professional services firms that do not embrace technology will not be able to remain competitive in the long run.
And I would also suggest that it’s true for us as marketers. We need to embrace technology to innovate and iterate quickly and understand what’s happening in the market. And I want to give you a great example of the pace of change.
OK, maybe it took the Cubs 108 years to win the World Series, so it’s not a great example of how fast things are moving. But I’ve been a Cubs an my whole life, so I absolutely had to work them into this presentation. And does anyone know who I’m watching the Cubs game with? A Cubs legend. Mr. Ernie Banks. Mr. Cub. A highlight of my life. Anyway….
So this model should look very familiar to everyone. You develop messaging and strategies, execute programs, measure your results and feed that into the next iteration. It’s a solid model and one that has served us well. Spoiler alert -- until now. I’m going to share an example from our lead nurture program to illustrate this.
Back in 2012, we launched a lead nurture program with six tracks or topic areas.
Dodd-Frank is a banking regulation that had just been enacted. We had no Dodd-Frank services at the time, but banks were trying to understand what it meant for them.
This infographic really resonated in the market – showing the magnitude of difference between Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley (which was the biggest disruption in recent history after the fall of Enron and the implosion of Arthur Andersen. ) 849 pages versus 66. Astounding.
So our nurture program had six tracks, and so if we sent you a piece of Dodd-Frank content and you downloaded it, you would then receive another piece of Dodd-Frank content once a month. You could change tracks if you wanted at any time (a sidebar “if you’d rather receive information about….”)
And the results were amazing. Through the first year of the program, we had astounding results. 76% open rates overall (versus 20% open rate from other e-comms to the same audience) and a click-to-open rate over double our standard results.
But you can also see that our results diminished over time. Still strong, but we knew we had to iterate.
In early 2015, we worked with an agency to develop a new brand identity – Smart Decisions. Lasting Value. We didn’t, however, have the budget to have the agency do all of the roll-out of the new brand. So cascading the new brand message fell to the content strategy team.
We developed a message map process to capture an overarching brand message and supporting points for each business unit, industry and even at the solution level. We asked questions about how we help clients make smart decisions and add lasting value. We captured statements around our three brand pillars – results, relationships and values. Our clients who are most satisfied working with us say those are the things that separate us from our competitors. We also document proof points, differentiators and audience-specific messaging points.
For our Dodd-Frank work, by 2015 we had a proprietary technology solution to streamline the compliance process and provide capital planning models for strategic value. The message map provides a blueprint for anyone developing content to ensure consistency.
Additionally, we strengthened the messaging for our nurture programs. Instead of just creating good content on Dodd-Frank and stress testing, we aligned the content in each campaign to a storyline. For this nurture program, we focused on the importance of model development and validation – a key differentiator for us.
So here you can see our new visual identity. And from a nurture program perspective, we moved from the drip campaign approach to structured mini-nurture campaigns. That helped us to better identify who may be more likely to want to have a conversation. Each campaign is typically 3-4 pieces of content. MUCH easier to execute on focused campaigns than feeding the ‘drip’ beast.
So we took the three assets and created a nurture flow. There were two main components of our evolved strategy – using “trigger” emails to drive further engagement and testing whether we could get more content viewed if we bundled it together.
So we sent the ebook to the banking audience. People who downloaded the ebook immediately got an email offering the two other pieces (green arrow). Then a week later, they would get an email offering them whichever piece they hadn’t already downloaded.
The gray boxes represent the non-responder path – similar to a drip approach. If they didn’t engage with the ebook, we sent the checklist a week later and then a week later the case study.
So let’s look at the results.
For the non-responder path, the results were pretty static. Slightly under our typical 20% open rate, but strong click-to-opens.
But look at the results for the trigger emails. A significant improvement. Even in the instance of the non-responder path, if they clicked on the second piece, we immediately sent the third and got the same results.
Pretty impressive, right? We’ve made some real progress through iterating our approach.
But guess what….
The market doesn’t care. At all. We are, in this moment, completely missing the mark. How do we know?
We’ve been working with ScribbleLive and their insights platform, which allows you to monitor the conversation on topics you care about.
Here’s the conversation happening on Dodd-Frank. It’s recently been ramping up in terms of exposure very recently.
The tool is very intuitive and allows you to drill down to better understand.
This word cloud represents the themes that are most influential in that moment.
You can drill down to see the individual opinions that make up the themes.
At this moment, the conversation is all about President Trump and his intention to roll back Dodd-Frank. There are strong opinions on both sides. If he is successful, our entire revenue stream could evaporate.
The platform also allows you to see what publications are involved in the conversation. We are able to easily see who is most active on this topic in this moment. Some of these publications are the standard ones we have relationships with – others are not.
And you can even drill down and show the individuals who are most influential. Donald Trump has offered three times as many opinions as the senators for whom Dodd-Frank is names.
You can also see how the influencers are interconnected. The blue trophy icon represents earned influence. The red lightening bolt represents the top 20% of influential opinions and the green megaphones represent smaller opinions. You can truly see how the influencers are interconnected.
Clearly we aren’t on Donald Trump’s radar, but we do have relationships with some people in this web of influence.
To give you a sense of the magnitude of Trump’s influence, this chart says it all. His voice is astounding. Irrespective of your political beliefs, Trump’s influence is irrefutable.
So what can we – Crowe Horwath – do to connect to the conversation. We were able to see through Insights that none of our competitors are showing up as influencers here. So it’s an opportunity for us.
We need to take action now and get ourselves into the conversation with these three steps.
And think about this – developing a perspective and connecting to influencers and publishers who are part of the conversation can be done very quickly. And with very little cost. So much for making small adjustments along the way and declaring victory. You really need to do both –continue to improve your targeting, messaging and programs. But even more importantly, keep connected to the market conversation.
So in summary, here are 10 steps to creating a sustainable content ecosystem.