• March 9, 2015
• Content, Demand Generation, EMEA, Sales and Marketing Alignment

Tech Marketer Talks: Driving ROI in ANZ and APJ with Data Driven Marketing – RSA

Jo Aldrich is the Marketing Manager for ANZ and the APJ Program lead at RSA, with more than 20 years’ experience in both sales and marketing roles with IT organizations. She drives the marketing strategy and is responsible for the development and execution of ANZ marketing and communications plans and is the primary strategy contributor to APJ programs.

Audrey Ang is the Field and Channel Marketing Programs Manager at RSA. She has more than 15 years’ experience working in technology companies such as EMC, Microsoft, Trend Micro and other IT system integrators in Australia and Singapore. At RSA, she helps build and run B2B marketing programs for both direct and channel across ANZ.

Can you share a little background on RSA?

RSA is the Security Division of EMC and leading provider of intelligence-driven security solutions. RSA helps organizations worldwide solve complex and sensitive security challenges such as: managing organizational risk, safeguarding mobile access and collaboration, preventing online fraud, and defending against advanced threats.

How would you describe the relationship between Marketing and Sales?

The relationship we have with sales is very strong. Our sales teams support and respect 100% of what marketing does. We have a lot of open communication with our sales team and meet regularly to involve them in our plans so we’re aligned in our goals and objectives. We ask for sales input to helps prioritize marketing programs and in doing so, it helps us understand what they need so we can all agree on the outcomes we want to achieve. That way we know exactly why we are running specific marketing programs, can justify the budget for it, and we all agree how we will measure success.  We can then take that to partners, like TechTarget, and share our specific goals so they can help us strategize and execute programs to help us reach our goals and objectives.

How did your relationship with Sales get to be so strong and what types of things led to that?

When it comes down to it, it’s about the people and building relationships. Having a bit of sales background myself, I have a sales perspective and can relate to how things translate to sales. One important thing to us is to have our marketing team physically located with the sales team so we can be inside the sales hub interacting daily which makes a huge difference.  It has helped in our day-to-day interactions and lets them tell us what’s working, what’s not working, and we see firsthand the challenges they’re up against.  In the end, Sales makes Marketing look successful when they close business so when they win deals, we all win!!

What role does data intelligence plays in your marketing and sales efforts?

Marketing has really evolved a lot over the past 5 years. Having access to data like Activity Intelligence from  TechTarget has been a real game changer for us in providing more in-depth understanding of our target audience’s behaviors, needs and buying patterns. Activity data gives us visibility to better understand who we are marketing to and helps us get in front of the right person with the right message at the right time. Knowing the history and activities our prospects and customers’ are taking upfront and where and what types of content they’re engaging with on TechTarget sites helps us target them in a much more relevant and intelligent way.

How are you using Activity Intelligence in your infrastructure? 

We share the Activity Intelligence we get from TechTarget with our sales associates so they can do the proper follow-up based on what, where, and who those prospects are engaging on TechTarget sites. It empowers them to have knowledgeable and intelligent conversations in their sales follow-up. They are more ahead of the game out of the gate with this level of intelligence in their hands. The intelligence we use from the TechTarget dashboards is very useful to us in our marketing in that it helps us improve our messaging and makes sales more efficient. It also gives us added insight into what other RSA products and solutions buyers may be interested in considering based on what and how they’re engaging.

What impact are you seeing on your marketing and sales strategy as a result?

We are far more targeted in our campaign approach. We get much better results and higher conversion rates. While the volume of leads is less, the quality of leads is much higher and very actionable for sales. They are getting real opportunities to follow up on which in turn helps build credibility and trust in our marketing.

Can you share any results or improvements you are getting with campaigns/programs?

We have been running UniSites, Leaderboards, Welcome Ads and Content Syndication. UniSite results alone were 111% over goal and the dwell time exceeded benchmark averages. We also learned that people really like our videos and are spending time watching them.  Social media is another big initiative for us in 2015. We embedded links into our UniSite and are getting a strong social share rate of .29% (average range .16 -.30%) which has increased the amount of followers more than we’ve ever had before.

In your opinion, what has changed most in technology marketing in the last 5 years?

Digital, online and social marketing has really changed IT buying and we’ve had to adapt our marketing tactics to keep up with that.  Everyone is “time poor” and so by time they get to us, buyers are much further along in their buy cycles so we have to be prepared for more educated buyers who’ve done a lot of their own research. Buyers today have access to so much more information. They also know all the players and competitors and what their strengths and weaknesses are because they’ve done all their research. We need to be ready for that. This is another reason why TechTarget is so valuable to work with. They give us that insight so we know exactly who to target our content to and how to message to them.

How do you leverage social media within the boundaries of your programs and how do you socialize your efforts within your own organization?

We have been active in building out communities. All our marketing now has an element of social media. We also have social evangelists who blog and are our subject matter experts. We can measure social engagement both actively and passively based on comments, retweets and shares.

Are your programs global in scope or more regional?

We run programs locally but also like to extend into other global regions and vice versa.  For example we may run regional programs in Southeast Asia that have performed well and then decide to expand those into other regions like Australia. Working with TechTarget, we have the flexibility to expand and extend different programs into other regions as we go. Conversely, I work with our counterparts across continents and corporate regularly to see what types of things we can leverage from them as there are always a mix of global programs and local programs going on. In those cases we provide feedback on what corporate is putting on TechTarget sites that may have ripple effects in our specific regions. That way we’re ensuring we are providing a consistent message globally.

Whether we’re running content on TechTarget sites regionally or globally, we know we always have the ability to scale our programs either way.

How important is the ability to scale globally when working with a media partner?

This is very important to us. We need the ability to penetrate APJ since our regions piggy-back off each other a great deal. We must be able to reach the right target market base and get the right exposure suited to whatever persona we are trying to push out into different regions.  It is essential for us to have a media partner who can scale to other regions and who understands the different business objectives RSA has across those different regions. TechTarget has demonstrated time and again they are a media partner who understands RSA’s global strategy and can customize and integrate different solution sets that fit within that strategy.

Any other aspects of your partnership with TechTarget you would like to comment on?

The TechTarget Account Team has been outstanding.  Right from the start, we were able to have an open and honest relationship with them. There is nothing too hard, no timeline they can’t meet, and TechTarget has the ability to be flexible, change and adapt as we go.  They can scale our programs efficiently so we don’t have to recreate new ones each and every time. Also, having a dedicated Client Consulting Manager sharing our program ROI helps us understand the success of our overall investment. We are very pleased with the relationship we have with TechTarget and value them greatly as a media partner.

data-driven marketing, Marketing ROI, sales and marketing alignment, TechTarget