Head in the Cloud? The one time “MORE” is really not.

I think we all like to receive things – especially unexpected things. Like when you receive that unexpected gift from your significant other for no reason at all. Or when you find a twenty-dollar bill in the parking lot a the mall. Or when you get an unexpected raise (even though you probably deserved it). More is better, right?

How about when you discover several free (or really inexpensive) cloud connectors that perform a variety of interesting functions. Everyone needs clean data, so why not really clean it up with several plugins or cloud connectors? Or what about appending data, since you probably need addresses and phone numbers anyway. Free? More is better, right? Well, maybe not in this case. Let’s look at a few reasons why not.

Free is not Free
This is the most obvious (and easiest to understand) reason you may want to investigate a little deeper. Check to make sure the free cloud connector or plugin does not require a paid subscription service to actually use it. It should be fairly simple to determine the process required to obtain value from the connector, so make sure that surprise isn’t an unpleasant one.

The Results are not Useful

Going back to previous {Demand Gen Brief} posts, we saw that first identifying your business problem is the key to understanding how to solve for it. For example, while data appending cloud connectors can be useful, make sure the field values are what you need. For example, if your target audience is regional warehouse managers, data that appends the headquarters address and phone number is not going to be particularly useful. Compound that statement for international organizations, where a HQ address might get you in hot water for emailing to a recipient who actually lives and works in a tightly regulated country.

The Results Conflict with Each Other

This requires a bit more investigation and requires you to fully understand your root business problem. What happens when you extract the phone number from one service and the address from another and the two services use very different methodologies for obtaining (or curating) their data. You may find area codes and zip codes in conflict with one another and your logic programs are unable to determine the real location for that company.

Speed Concerns

As we saw in an earlier post, some cloud connectors and plugins have imitations on processing speeds or volumes. These need to be carefully considered when included in programs like Contact “Washing Machines” that function in-line in your lead management processes. If you have lead delivery SLAs, make sure you are not implementing cloud connector processes that take longer that your SLA allows!

Change the conversation.

When it comes to cloud connectors and plugins, free is not always better. More is not always better. Finding the correct level of processing is always the best solution. Only address real problems with solutions that directly solve them. Partial solutions or mismatched combinations of solutions may well leave you in a worse condition than where you started.

Notes:

You need to first understand your business problems.

Fully understand what each cloud connector or plugin actually does.

Make sure any cloud connector actually solved your business problem.

At the end of the day, you need to understand how your Demand Gen efforts are contributing to the bottom line. We will begin a four-part series to understand what you should be working towards, some serious question you should be asking and a common problem to avoid in: Four Ways you are Marketing Backwards.

Head in the Cloud? Three ways to evaluate cloud connectors.

There seems to be a plugin or a cloud connector to do just about anything. Match data, clean data, import data, export data, add data to the data you already have, brew an espresso… OK, maybe not brew an espresso, but most certainly everything else.

In fact, they all sound so great and they cost so little, why not just get them all? As we just read, getting them all could definitely create some conflicts in your database and, while each serve a particular purpose, their purposes might not match your purposes! So, how do you go about selecting the plugins and cloud connectors best suited to your purposes? Let’s look at three ways you can evaluate the best approach to implementing one or more that will solve – not exacerbate – your problems.

Mind the Gap
Your selection of plugins or cloud connectors should be initiated by functional gaps in your lead management process. If you don’t know of any functional gaps, you have either a) the world’s one and only perfect lead management process or, b) not performed a lead management (or lead lifecycle) analysis. There are a few questions you need to answer when mapping your lead management process, and these will guide you to understanding the gaps (usually informational gaps) in your process.

·       Do I completely understand my Total Addressable Market (TAM)?

·       Do I understand all the buyer types and their individual buyers’ journeys?

·       Do I have all the information I need to properly segment my audience?

·       Do I have all the information I need to mechanically score my contacts?

·       Do I have all the information I need to properly route leads where they need to go?

If you don’t’ have complete answers and the data to support those answers, you have discovered your gaps.

Identify your options

If you have an information gap in your lead management process, chances are good others have similar challenges. Where challenges exist, bright people have often identified solutions to those challenges and create cool solutions. Many of these solutions are in the form of cloud connectors and plugins you can easily install in your MAP or CRM platform.

Do some research and identify a list of solutions and the companies who created them. Then use social media to perform some initial discovery about how well your peers have fared using them. Go beyond feature/function comparison to see how well the overall solution performs in real world application. Check for the company’s responsiveness in dealing with installation and service calls. Make sure the solution can meet your speed requirements, especially if you have lead timing SLAs with your Telequal or Sales teams (cloud connectors can be slow). Make a list of requirements and make sure the solution can meet those – or surpass them!

Pilot your solution

Many of your potential solutions will offer some kind of free trial or evaluation period. If not, ask the sales rep to allow for one. Within a thirty-day test period, you will have identified whether or not the proposed solution is a solution or just another headache. Create a small test group of contacts in your MAP representative of the information gaps you commonly experience.

A good way to do that is to take a cut of your data with a fairly random factor, such as one thousand contacts with first names beginning with the latter “J.” Create copies of these contacts, substituting test email addresses and names, such as First1, Last1 and test1@ACMEtestcontacts.com. If you can store these in a Contact Group or similar method of isolation, it makes it easy to delete these contacts after your pilot.

Change the conversation.

This methodology works for virtually all plugin and cloud connector solutions you may want to deploy. By aligning the solutions to the problems, vetting vendors and piloting your solutions, you will get where you need to go without creating additional problems along the way.

Notes:

You need to first understand your process gaps.

Systematically vet potential solution providers.

Pilot your solutions.

Next, we want to understand one of the specific issues you need to avoid. Many plugins and cloud connectors have to balance the need to create solutions with broad appeal to offset the inexpensive cost of cloud-based solutions. This can often translate into a bit of a one-size-fits-all structure that creates unnecessary system overhead: Head in the Cloud? The one time “MORE” is really not.

Head in the Cloud? Why more plugins and cloud connectors may be making your problem even worse!

Think of the last visit to your doctor. Did you drag your tired, nauseous self into the exam room, plop down on that table with the funny roll of paper and have your doctor immediately proclaim, “I think you’ll need major surgery” before even examining you? Would you maybe ask her to use that stethoscope and those little tongue depressor thingies to perform some basic diagnostics first? Maybe an X-ray or CT scan might be in order before calling in the scalpels? How about a second opinion, doc?

Or how about your car? When you wheel in for your 25,000-mile service, what would you think of your mechanic who says, “Whew! That car’s maroon – it’s going to need a new engine. And new wiper blades.” Would you just keep right on driving until you found a mechanic with the proper diagnostic equipment to evaluate what – if anything – needs adjustment? Of course you would!

While we would never subject our bodies or our vehicles to such ridiculous treatment, it seems we are happy to turn over our Marketing databases and MAP platforms to exactly this kind of treatment! Cloud connectors and plugins seem like such great solutions to problems, they are just irresistible. They are, for the most part, inexpensive, easy to install and run without any human intervention required. What’s not to like about them? Here are a few things to think about.

They mask the real problem
Like taking ibuprofen to reduce a fever when the real problem is an infection that needs treatment before your immune system can no longer battle on its own. If left untreated, the infection can kill you while the ibuprofen artificially reduces the fever your body was using to fight the infection. Likewise, cloud connectors can treat problems to an extent.

Bad data? Get a cloud connector to clean it up. Can’t segment? Get another cloud connector to standardize your data. Need physical addresses? Get yet another cloud connector to pull in addresses based on the browser’s IP address.

Sounds like a great solution to – what was the problem again? Oh, yeah, bad data. And by “bad” I mean incomplete, non-standardized or incorrect data.

They can limit your options

Because they are inexpensive (or sometimes free), cloud connectors and plugins can have standards to which you will have to comply. For example, if you segment geographically by Congressional Districts instead of Area Code, or have a unique target audience that doesn’t use the “standard” organization levels of Manager, Director, VP (etc.), you may be out of luck. The more sophisticated your segmentation, the less likely cloud connectors will completely address your root problem.

They process at different speeds

You may find you have to make accommodations for the speed and/or volume of cloud connector processing. Many have limitations on the number of Contacts processed per unit time, require longer processing cycles than you might expect, or both. Understanding what kind of throughput you require is critical when determining whether or not cloud connector or plugins are a viable solution for you.

What should you consider?

First, you need identify the problem from a business perspective. These are Demand Generation and Lead Lifecycle problems, not technical problems. These problems follow a formula, and are easily identified:

A to B by when

For example:

I need to promote our new widget to every medical practice with more than 30 employees  in the state of Florida before April 30^th.

Now that you have identified the business problem, you to perform some diagnostics to determine the reasons why you can’t promote your widget to your target audience. The root cause (diagnosis) will help determine how you will solve that problem (treatment). Let’s look at some potential examples of root problems.

1.     You don’t’ have any medical practices in your database. Those cloud connectors may polish up the data in your MAP only to find out that you have nicely standardized and appended a database not in your target market. Your still have not solved your business problem.

2.     You don’t have geographic information on your contacts. Many organizations try to append this data via cloud connectors or plugins that extract address information from either company names or IP addresses. These can produce spotty results if the company headquarters is in another state or in another country. Fi you are marketing to a medical practice in Pensacola, but the headquarters is in Poughkeepsie, your automated programs  may inadvertently skip right over that prime prospect!

3.     Your title segmentation is incomplete and inconsistent. That cloud connector or plugin is looking for some title to rationalize to “Director” or “VP” and Dr. Sarah Jones – the actual director of your target medical practice – has a title of “Physician.” Your database now thinks nobody is in charge of your prime target medical practice.

Change the conversation.

Don’t misunderstand, I believe cloud connectors and plugins are a good thing.  They have good application when applied to the right problem. They are, however, not a magic bullet for every business problem and, in fact, can actually make your root problem worse!

Notes:

You need to first understand your business problem.

You need a proper diagnosis to determine the solution.

Not every problem can be solved with a standard solutions, cloud-based or otherwise.

Next week, we will continue the discussion about cloud connectors and plugins. Now that we know we need to really understand our business problem before prescribing a technical solution, we will investigate how to determine if a cloud connector is a viable solution in next week’s edition: Head in the Clouds? Three ways to evaluate cloud connectors.