Data-Driven Decisions is a new limited-series marketing podcast presented by Convince & Convert and shared with our Social Pros listeners.

How did this non-marketing but data-driven leader become a Chief Marketing Officer? Shafqat Islam, the CMO of Optimizely, joins this episode of Data-Driven Decisions to share how he’s leading Optimizely’s marketing team into building a culture of data and experimentation.

Let the Data Do the Talking

In this episode of Data-Driven Decisions, we dive deep into the world of marketing data, measurable targets, personalization and customer-centric marketing.

Shafqat shares invaluable insights on how to approach personalization strategically, emphasizing the value of starting simple and scaling up gradually. He discusses the challenges of content creation for personalized experiences and offers practical advice on leveraging AI to find patterns in customer feedback from support tickets and sales calls.

We also explore the critical role of experimentation and testing when it comes to new marketing ideas, and why Optimizely considers experimentation part of its culture. Shafqat explains why it’s so important for marketers to have a rock-solid understanding of the typical customer journey and why this should be documented and measurable.

In This Episode:

• 0:37 - How Shafqat ended up in his role
• 2:36 - Why Shafqat wanted to build a more data-driven culture
• 4:58 - How this approach affects the marketing team
• 7:07 - The importance of experimenting with new ideas
• 8:28 - Optimizely’s approach to experimentation
• 12:33 - Why personalization is still a huge topic for marketers
• 15:22 - Finding a balanced and realistic idea of personalization
• 18:20 - How Optimizely helps its clients use their own data to make decisions
• 20:54 - Why all marketers need to map out the typical customer journey and document it
• 24:25 - How to ensure customers get the right resources
• 27:09 - How Shafqat researches and understands his customers
• 30:14 - The most important marketing metrics
• 31:56 - How Optimizely uses AI to find patterns in customer interactions

Quotes:

“Marketing is as much about the customer as it is about the prospect. In fact, in the business of our scale, it may be more customer than even prospect.”

“It's really, really important to document the customer journey and understand all the touchpoints and then come up collectively as a marketing organization, with what we want that ideal journey to be."

“Experimentation is much more than tools. To me, the idea is how do we create a culture of experimentation?”

Resources:

• Connect with Shafqat on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shafqat/
• Optimizely: https://www.optimizely.com/

Purchase the book at koganpage.com/datadrivenpersonalization (use code CCData20 for 20% off and free shipping in the UK and US) and sign up for more content at convinceandconvert.com.

What do social pros today need to know about the top platforms to get ahead? We look back at one of our favorite discussions from 2023 that marked 600 episodes of Social Pros! We asked none other than former Social Pros hosts, Jay Baer and Adam Brown, plus previous guest Allison Day, Senior Manager of Social Media at Reddit, to share their insights into what’s working in social today.

Full Episode Details

To celebrate the 600th episode milestone, we brought back previous hosts and guests to share their thoughts on social platforms today, the biggest changes, and predictions for the future.

Jay, Adam, and Allison share their ‘love it or over it’ verdicts on Threads, X, TikTok, and LinkedIn, and what they would do if they had to start over today. Jay, aka Tequila Jay Baer, talks about his strategy for starting his tequila influencer journey recently and why he focused on TikTok content to begin with.

There are some brilliant insights into how social has and is changing all the time in this episode, plus some great advice for upcoming social pros tackling the space in 2024 and beyond.

In This Episode:

• 5:56 - Love it or over it? Threads and X/Twitter
• 11:10 - LinkedIn’s evolution and our guests’ thoughts on the platform
• 15:58 - Thoughts on TikTok and Instagram Reels
• 24:26 - The biggest changes in social over the past ten years
• 27:31 - Gaining trust from leaders
• 32:21 - Why social media was about social, now it’s about media
• 36:07 - What our social pros would do if they were starting out today
• 38:28 - Why Jay Baer would start making YouTube content
• 43:15 - Jay, Adam, and Allison answer the final two
  

Resources

• Connect with Jay on LinkedIn
• Connect with Adam on LinkedIn
• Connect with Allison on LinkedIn

Visit SocialPros.com for more insights from your favorite social media marketers.

Data-Driven Decisions is a new limited-series marketing podcast presented by Convince & Convert and shared with our Social Pros listeners.

How can data help marketing and sales teams achieve their goals? A common mistake some marketers make is not being clear on those goals in the first place. This can lead to marketers and sales teams trying out lots of different tactics in an effort to drive results. But there is a smarter way – using data to build a goal-oriented mindset from the get-go.

Start with Marketing Goals, Not Tactics

In this episode, Tessa Barron, Senior Vice President of Marketing at ON24, talks about why marketers should shift their focus from traditional marketing tactics to a goal-oriented approach. Tessa explains how marketers often fall into the trap of continuously using new tactics without clear objectives and how harnessing the right data can transform a strategy.

Tessa discusses the importance of identifying key signals that indicate buyer readiness, using webinars and events to gather valuable first-party data and using that to create actionable insights that align marketing with sales. We also hear Tessa explain why marketers should create scorecards, identify the metrics that matter most, and improve conversion rates by leaning on data to drive decision-making.

In This Episode:

• 1:54 - A shift to goal-oriented marketing
• 6:22 - Leveraging webinars and other tactics for collecting customer data
• 11:11 - The importance of asking customers the right questions and using those answers
• 14:41 - Aligning marketing and sales to achieve conversion goals
• 18:58 - Testing, iterating, and improving conversion rates
• 26:49 - Why pipeline is a “lagging indicator”
• 31:32 - Why brand awareness is a leading indicator
• 33:51 - Using metrics that matter

Quotes:

“Starting with the goal first, and then the last step is determining the tactic that can really help marketers make the shift.”

“What aspect about a buyer makes them more likely to convert to an opportunity than not? By knowing that, you can start to set traps. You can start to create different interactions that will help uncover that.”

“There is no database on the planet, no third-party resource that can give you that kind of qualitative information that really makes a difference when we talk about improving conversion rates to pipeline and ultimately revenue.”

Resources:

• Connect with Tessa on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tessa-barron/

Purchase the book at koganpage.com/datadrivenpersonalization (use code CCData20 for 20% off and free shipping in the UK and US) and sign up for more content at convinceandconvert.com.

Data-Driven Decisions is a new limited-series marketing podcast presented by Convince & Convert and shared with our Social Pros listeners.

How can organizations drive real impact with data? Many organizations already have plenty of data at their fingertips these days, but it’s not just about the data you collect. It’s how you use it. Joining this episode is Anthony Coppedge, the Principal Lead of eCommerce Seller Initiatives at IBM, who takes us through his methodologies for using data to make a difference in an organization.

Organizations Don’t Lack Data, They Lack Insights

Anthony leads business agility aims across sales, marketing, and product at IBM. But how does such a large organization manage and implement data insights to grow effectively? We hear Anthony’s insightful approach to capturing and acting on qualitative feedback with the ‘Retrospective Radar’ approach.

With AI such an important topic for many organizations, Anthony also takes us through how he uses the Watson Natural Language Processing tool to analyze unstructured data to create actionable insights. Anthony explains why having a clear north star in your organization is paramount and how his ‘Outcome-Drive Alignment’ model helps different teams come together with shared objectives to make smart, data-driven decisions.

In This Episode:

• 1:51 - How IBM manages to drive impact with data
• 4:09 - Why data is often underutilized
• 6:30 - How data can identify challenges and misalignments in a team
• 14:00 - How the ‘Retrospective Radar’ works
• 20:41 - How IBM pulls the right insights from qualitative feedback
• 28:46 - How businesses can use feedback to empower team members
• 33:15 - How AI can help you gather insights from unstructured data
• 39:05 - Changing people’s minds with good data
  

Quotes:

“Everybody knows what it's like to be swimming in data. What you need to be swimming in is insight.”

“Qualitative feedback is a type of data. So if you get feedback in a survey or a poll or a thumbs up or a thumbs down or verbatim text, all of that is a type of data. It's unstructured data, but it's data. And what we want to do is parse that data and understand it in a quantitative way.”

“Feedback is a gift, but aggregated feedback is actionable intelligence.”

Resources:

• Connect with Anthony on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonycoppedge/
• Watson Natural Language Processing Demo: https://www.ibm.com/demos/live/natural-language-understanding/self-service/

Purchase the book at koganpage.com/datadrivenpersonalization (use code CCData20 for 20% off and free shipping in the UK and US) and sign up for more content at convinceandconvert.com.

How do some of the top brands like Netflix, Nike, and Disney drive audience participation and fandom? We find out in this episode, where we look back at one of our favorite conversations from last year with Alyssa Bonanno, the Chief Creative Officer and Founder of next-gen creative agency Better Half.

Full Episode Details

Audience participation and engagement are crucial for the consumer and entertainment brands that Better Half works with. But what’s the key to tapping into those fandoms? For Alyssa Bonanno, the trick is being “fandom-led.” She joins the show to share how her agency fosters great working relationships with huge brands and their audiences to drive results.

We hear how the small-but-mighty team thrives, the benefits of intentional hiring, and how her agency manages consistently high-quality social output for brands. Alyssa gives us some back story on how she built her team, Better Half’s own strategy for success, and why she believes you need to take big swings on social to get noticed.

In This Episode:

• 1:32 - An introduction to Better Half
• 3:35 - Excelling for big clients in a boutique agency
• 6:07 - Sustaining community engagement with Netflix
• 9:46 - Matching Netflix’s identity on social
• 12:15 - Operating in the niche vs mainstream
• 14:09 - Intentional hiring for difficult roles
• 19:47 - Alyssa’s team structure decisions
• 21:45 - How Better Half showcase their culture
• 25:10 - Better Half approach to social
• 28:32 - How Better Half uses Substack
• 30:14 - Where to find Alyssa and Better Half
• 33:09 - Alyssa answers the Final Two

Resources

• Alyssa’s website
• Connect with Alyssa on LinkedIn
• Follow Alyssa on Instagram
• Better Half website
• Connect with Better Half on LinkedIn
• Follow Better Half on Instagram

Visit SocialPros.com for more insights from your favorite social media marketers.

Data-Driven Decisions is a new limited-series marketing podcast presented by Convince & Convert and shared with our Social Pros listeners.

How do you compare with your peers? It’s a question that every marketer asks, and data is the trick to removing the guesswork from that answer. But finding the right data to benchmark yourself against your peers can be a challenge. Joining the podcast this week is Rob Garf, the VP and General Manager of Retail at Salesforce. He explores how Salesforce builds insights for retail customers to gain clarity on where they sit in the market.

Infuse Data into Everything You’re Doing

In this episode of Data-Driven Decisions, Rob discusses how retailers use Salesforce’s Shopping Index to compare their performance with peers and what types of data are most important to focus on. Our conversation delves into the methods of collecting actionable insights, the importance of understanding customer behavior, and why data-driven personalization is key to building a great customer experience.

Rob also shares plenty of examples of how retailers have used Salesforce's data to enhance their business operations and offers advice for organizations aiming to build a data-centric culture. We also explore how Salesforce’s annual holiday predictions have increased brand recognition and built trust with executives.

In This Episode:

• 1:40 - How Salesforce gathers insights that impact customers
• 3:37 - How Salesforce decides which data is most useful for clients
• 5:11 - Tying data insights into day-to-day actions
• 9:26 - Empowering clients and the Salesforce team to build a culture of data
• 11:59 - Using research as content
• 16:33 - How data can drive personalization
• 20:52 - Why customers now expect personalization
• 23:07 - Salesforce’s holiday insights campaign
• 26:20 - How Salesforce’s insights drive brand recognition
• 31:44 - Rob’s advice for organizations that want to lead with data
• 35:42 - How Salesforce builds a culture of data in a large organization

Quotes:

“Anytime we're thinking about collecting data or thinking about telling stories with the data, we try to get as many stakeholders involved in it as possible. And so, we're really getting collective wisdom.”

“I really encourage the team to think about the headline. It's really the thesis. What are we trying to convey? And then work backward to understand how we get the data to either substantiate that point or counter it.”

“Brands and retailers are looking for different and creative ways to capture data in exchange for some value rather than asking a consumer to fill out a questionnaire to learn who they are. It's about then using that data, activating that data, and using it to better their shopping experience.”

Resources:

• Connect with Rob on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-garf-224395/

Purchase the book at convinceandconvert.com/data-driven (use code CCData20 for 20% off and free shipping in the UK and US) and sign up for more content at convinceandconvert.com.