SalesTechStar Interview with Anna Brantley, Chief Revenue Officer at AnalyticsIQ
Anna Brantley, CRO at AnalyticsIQ talks about the importance of using multiple data types to create relevant, personalized approach to sales messaging while sharing a few data management best practices: _______ I don’t have the traditional background that you would find in a CRO. My degree is in adult health education, and I spent a few early years in human resources. While they seem to be highly unrelated to my role today, I gained valuable skillsets. For instance, trying to teach adults how to change their health behaviors is incredibly difficult, but it did teach me how to have strong communication and presentation skills to keep my audience engaged and excited about what I was trying to teach them. And while presentation and communication skills are extremely important, equally as valuable is being a great listener. As an HR manager, I got to hear about everything from employee excuses to falling asleep during company meetings to why parole officers were contacting me when there were no arrests on their employment record. Getting the full story from these employees and not coming to rash conclusions while in my HR roles made me a strong listener to resolve employee conflict. Those listening skills translate perfectly since a strong advantage in a sales role is distinguishing yourself in understanding a client or prospect’s challenges… There is nothing more valuable than your own customer data and examining it at both macro and micro levels. For instance, aggregating something as simple as the verticals and titles your client base represents to understand your industry and title niches at a macro level and then conducting one-on-one interviews with clients to fuel a micro analysis. We recently did this after we reevaluated our client distribution and discovered how many of the decision makers we started working with in the last 12 months have analytics titles. We wanted to create messaging that would really resonate with this technical audience that is so valuable to our business. So while I lovingly call myself a data geek, we wanted to know if our technical buyers and users would find it fun and playful if we said that We Speak Geek™ in our sales and marketing materials. It turns out most thought the catch phrase was clever and conveyed to them that we are a partner that will understand their analytical, data science-specific needs so we ended up trademarking the phrase. Doing this client evaluation has helped us create strategies that we are using across channels to be more relevant to our best prospects. I am a self-proclaimed data geek, but a best practice is leveraging data to drive our business. Because we are a data creator, we are in a unique position in that we can use the data we create and sell to our clients for ourselves – kind of like drinking our own Kool-Aid. Personalization is more important today than even a year ago which is why understanding when a prospect is open to starting a conversation, knowing the channel in which they prefer to receive communications, and understanding the type of content and messaging that will resonate with them are all critical to getting a response. While I would love to say that our data supplies 100% of our needs, we know that we need multiple data types to create this personalized approach, so we leverage other external data sources in conjunction with our first- and third-party data like intent data to understand when our prospects are researching the services we offer. This allows us to be personalized and relevant when they are showing intent. Read More: SalesTechStar Interview with Dana Bjornson, Chief Financial Officer, Mylo While data can be cut and sliced in an almost infinite number of different ways, at a certain point, you need to determine where you stop. I shared that we could look at things like intent, contact channel preference, and content preference, but that could lead me to have 30+ creatives. In the end, am I going to get enough data to make that insight actionable? For example, we recently tested an ABM campaign where we had also linked individual demographic data to some top prospects and discussed personalizing the gift we sent by gender. In the end, that would have doubled the effort and split our test groups into quantities that would be difficult to measure. So instead of taking this additional slice, we focused on finding a gift that was gender neutral instead. I love that business data continues to evolve. While I would be willing to pay big money to have a single sourced solution, it has definitely been an art in finding the right partners for the marketing organization we are constantly evolving. Today, we work with multiple technology platforms, have a handful of data providers, and a few specialty partnerships that help us with specific digital and social channels – it’s a balance of tying these partners back to the value they provide, making sure that they play well together, and most importantly that they provide a level of automation to make our marketing programs efficient at scale. As we continue to evolve, we are constantly testing new data sources and solutions to determine if there is a lift or competitive edge that a new partner can provide to our business. I am still surprised when I hear about sales leaders that aren’t aligned with their marketing team. In our organization, sales, account management and marketing are all under one umbrella which allows for us to have a shared communication, strategy, and goals – this structure enables us to be a unified team. Because we work together, our aligned team is able to deliver high-impact marketing activities that boost sales effectiveness, and ultimately drives revenue. Read More: How To Change When Change Is Hard AnalyticsIQ is a leading predictive analytics and marketing data innovator. They are the first data company to consistently blend cognitive psychology with sophisticated data science to help B2C and B2B marketers understand how and why individuals make decisions regardless of whether they are at home or at work. AnalyticsIQ data helps blue-chip brands fuel personalized experiences across channels including direct mail, email, online, mobile and TV. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, the AnalyticsIQ team of data analysts, scientists, and cognitive psychologists has over 100 years of collective analytical experience. Anna Brantley is the CRO at AnalyticsIQ.Hi Anna, we’d love to hear about your journey through the years…tell us more about your role as CRO at AnalyticsIQ?
That’s been a very interesting journey into sales. Seeing how today’s sales and marketing environment has to be as data driven as possible, in what ways are you seeing sales and marketing optimizing use of their data in today’s omnichannel marketplace to drive results?
What are some top B2B Data best practices you’d like to highlight?
What are some precautions marketers should be taking when assessing all their insights to create stronger strategies?
What are some thoughts you’d like to share on the future of data-driven marketing?
A few thoughts on what Revenue leaders need to be doing more of today to align team and business goals?
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