Summary
Consumers day after day are hit with information overload. To gain their trust (and their business!) brands are wise to break through the noise by sending relevant, timely messages that tap into each prospect's intent. Personalized marketing campaigns are quickly becoming the norm — but unfortunately, it's not always easy to obtain the data needed to effectively implement them. Moreover, a disconnect between sales data and marketing tactics often contributes to buyer fatigue rather than continual engagement, and worse, lost sales. When done well, true buyer-centric marketing has the power to yield unparalleled, highly valuable results. For ClearTail Marketing, it was imperative to leverage this power on behalf of their clients. They wanted to better synchronize marketing and sales efforts with campaigns that were so fine-tuned, each lead would feel the brand was speaking directly to them. To achieve this, they needed to go beyond the basic CRM and create complementary touchpoints for a fully customized buyer experience.
"SharpSpring has grown in a lot of different directions and it's a much more powerful tool today. I think it's one of the best on the market and it's one of the most cost-effective as well." - Magee Clegg, Founder & CEO of ClearTail Marketing
Challenge
As a baseline to developing new campaigns and messaging, many marketers analyze previous results, attributing success to the most recent lead source prior to purchase, often referred to as an MQL. Unfortunately this ignores the complexity of what’s really needed to attract and educate customers today to make purchase decisions—across the entire marketing and sales funnel. While it can be challenging to map which touchpoints can be attributed to conversions, a single lead source is not representational. A pipeline is typically portrayed as a linear process, while in reality, the actual buyer journey is anything but. Leads may encounter your brand simultaneously across several different channels throughout different stages. In fact, attribution is often flawed. While your CRM or Google Analytics may identify lead sources, that's not necessarily what drove your leads to that point of the pipeline. Often, qualitative surveys (e.g., "How did you hear about us?") reveal more complex answers or factors that aren't easily tracked, such as word of mouth referrals. Another consideration is whether concurrent or opposing campaigns drive more conversions or cannibalize the audience. How does the frequency of secondary marketing (e.g., emails and social media) impact the existing consumer base? What are the varying impacts of all touchpoints on the total number of orders and the average Customer Lifetime Value? While measuring touchpoints is essential for tracking, it's important to consider the whole story. To increase your conversions, a non-negotiable is that you must deliver the right messages at the right time and have them complement each other. This becomes even more complicated in the B2B space, as those businesses earn most of their revenue from repeat clients. Maximizing revenue, then, means continually re-engaging previous customers, potentially across multiple channels with varying tones and buying intents. ClearTail was eager to overcome these challenges as they aimed to develop their fractional CMO services. Their primary clients are business owners who were generating more than $1 million in annual revenue but facing budget bloat and disjointed tactics in their sales and marketing teams. The ClearTail team knew that unlocking those valuable insights and correcting attribution issues could help their clients scale up their businesses.
Solution
ClearTail needed to get their sales and marketing teams on the same page with robust data to inform all touchpoints. With a full picture of a lead's complex buying journey, they could create truly personalized campaigns that would drive more conversions and revenue. The SharpSpring platform offered a solution. By combining the CRM's detailed lead sources, behavioral information, profile data, segmentation, and marketing automation to create right-fit content, ClearTail could overcome the false dichotomy between sales and marketing — and start delivering impactful campaigns and follow-ups to secure a loyal customer base for each of their clients.
Campaign
Tactic 1: Leverage an integrated CRM for more accurate insights With SharpSpring, ClearTail was able to shift the focus from basic metrics to an in-depth analysis of campaigns' intersections and cumulative effects on driving revenue. While core results such as clickthrough rates and cost-per-impression are an important part of the picture, they don't say much about which factors are helping close the deal. To develop long-lasting client relationships, you must be able to pinpoint that. That’s why it's crucial to stop silo-ing your campaigns and splitting your pipeline into marketing vs. sales. When all data can be captured in a single CRM and used for trigger-based remarketing and customized follow-up, you can avoid lost leads, incorrect assumptions or burned-out prospects. Tactic 2: Focus on clear lead acquisition first so you can build trust Before you start segmenting your audience and sending out a bunch of campaigns, know that you have a proven conversion process. Start with Google Ads and robust SEO so you can gather some of the data on how your ideal clients find you and what they look like. Add in additional marketing strategies as suitable for your business (organic social, paid social, email marketing) and as you have good data to shape your campaigns. This allows you to better target your audiences as you know more about their interests. Plus, you can boost your conversions by retargeting those who have already engaged with your brand. When done correctly, that level of remarketing can double or even triple your conversions and therefore your revenue. To make this approach work, though, you'll need a reliable way to capture leads, track their progress, and share information between your marketing and sales teams — ideally all in one place.
Results
SharpSpring's all-in-one automation platform helped ClearTail Marketing not only refine their personalized campaigns but also prove their results with a clear ROI. They were able to double or even triple their clients' revenue while cultivating brand loyalty with highly relevant messaging. Plus, they saved time and minimized lost leads by integrating their lead sources, sales data, and marketing campaigns. With fewer gaps and inconsistencies in the CRM, ClearTail prevented costly attribution errors or mislabeled leads. This, in turn, enabled them to send timely follow-ups and retargeting ads at the ideal time. Today, ClearTail has turned a wealth of data into a robust structure for truly personalized campaigns. This saves them valuable time and money while generating better results for their clients.