Much has been written about the tremendous promise personalization in marketing communications holds for business-to-business marketers, and there have been some tantalizing peeks at just how impressive it can be.

For example, Ari Sheinkin, VP of marketing analytics and media at IBM, relates that Big Blue realized a 1,654 percent increase in engagement rates on a section of its home page with some very minor personalization adjustments based on simply recognizing whether or not a visitor is a developer. That’s an eye-popping number, and Sheinkin is hopeful it portends great things to come for IBM in the B2B personalization space.

However, Sheinkin is also quick to admit that it reflects “low-hanging fruit” in IBM’s march toward more effective personalization, and he agrees with IBM CMO Michelle Peluso’s reaction when she was presented with the data. “She said she loves the results she’s seeing with our personalization testing, but she’ll be really excited when it’s about revenue,” he points out. “Engagement rates are nice, but we don’t make money off engagement rates.”

About three years ago, a Gartner forecast suggested that B2B sellers that incorporated personalization into digital commerce by 2018 would realize revenue increases up to 15 percent. “But here we are, and personalization is still far from the norm in B2B,” says Chris Spears, chief marketing technology officer at Arke, a brand experience consultancy specializing in mar-tech solutions.

He cites B2B International research that found only 14 percent of large business-to-business companies have become truly customer-centric, which is a prerequisite for effective personalization. “A customer-centric company understands the expectations of its customers, then it takes strategic steps to meet and, when possible, exceed them,” Spears says.

Personalization is a key part of that. Used effectively, it enables companies to leverage customer data to deliver better brand experiences. Personalization also helps business-to-business marketers “keep customers and attract new ones by reducing acquisition costs, increasing revenues, and increasing the efficiency of their marketing spend,” he says.

A Case for Compelling Content

For large, matrixed organizations that have been more product-centric than customer-centric, achieving meaningful personalization requires overcoming internal cultural challenges. “Shifting that focus in the other direction at IBM has given us great improvements, and it’s having a cultural impact that’s been interesting to watch,” Sheinkin says.

Historically, there has been intense internal combat among different IBM business units that all wanted to reach certain high-value marketing targets, such as the CIO of a big auto company. “In the past, we kind of had a free-for-all,” Sheinkin says. Business unit leaders would jockey for position, sometimes pleading their case to corporate higher-ups.

Now, however, IBM relies on analytics, especially the strategic segmentation tools in its Unica omnichannel marketing software, to make those decisions. “The outcome is determined by what’s best for the client, based on the target’s behavior and the best message to reach that target,” Sheinkin explains. “If a business unit didn’t win that fight, it’s a challenge for them to go improve their content personalization. The only way to win is by having more compelling content that has higher open rates and click-through rates.”

Business-to-business buyers’ expectations are increasingly driven by their experiences in the B2C arena, where they have come to expect targeted, personalized advertising content on websites like Amazon and Hulu. While the majority of B2B marketers are still relatively unsophisticated in their strategies around technology-enabled personalization, Spears says, the handful doing a great job are shaping all customer expectations. (See “How to Improve Personalization in B2B Sales Messages,” below.)

“They raise the bar and make it harder for other companies, including B2B companies, to keep their customers satisfied unless they offer similar levels of personalized experiences,” Sheinkin says. “It’s not like someone has a great experience with Amazon or Apple, and then they come to IBM and say, well, I really wasn’t expecting that level of personalization or relevance because it’s B2B. They’re taking the best digital experiences they’ve had and saying, ‘Why shouldn’t I have this here? Especially at a technology company.'”

Relevance Equals Personalization

In the business-to-business world, personalization and relevance are closely aligned and virtually interchangeable in some applications. “The goal of personalization is really relevance,” says Mike O’Toole, president at PJA Advertising + Marketing. “You want to provide content and experiences that answer the right questions at the right stage of a buyer’s journey. And relevance absolutely affects effectiveness.”

The 2017 DemandGen B2B Buyer’s Survey found the majority of buyers self-navigate through the early stages of the buying journey, but they still expect a tailored experience relevant to their interests and needs. Three-quarters of respondents said it was “very important” that they be presented with content that is relevant and speaks directly to their needs, and two-thirds said it was “very important” that content speaks directly to the needs of their industry, and that the provider shows expertise in their area.

“We know that responding to needs, anticipating and answering questions throughout the process does increase consideration and purchase intent,” O’Toole says.

Business-to-business marketers face more and different personalization challenges than B2C marketers do, says Rebecca Stone, head of demand generation and international marketing at LiveRamp, which provides identity resolution services for omnichannel marketing. B2B marketers need to factor time of day into their targeting because people are less receptive to work-related ads during non-work hours. They also have to consider individuals’ roles and responsibilities within the organization and where in the buying funnel they happen to be.

Perhaps the biggest difference between B2B and B2C when it comes to personalization is the number of people typically involved in the buying decision. In the business-to-business sector, that number has grown from 5.4 in 2015 to 6.8 in 2017.

“The complication of trying to personalize outreach messages and communication to multiple people in an account is, by definition, going to be harder than trying to do it one person at a time in a B2C setting,” says Laura Ramos, VP and principal analyst serving B2B marketing professionals at Forrester.

The Importance of Strategy

Personalization in business-to-business marketing needs to be part of a broader program designed to improve segmentation and targeting of specific customers, Ramos contends. “It’s not just personalization for personalization’s sake. You need to have the strategy, you need to make the decision up front that you’re going to do something like ABM (account-based marketing) or microsegmentation in order to put personalization to work on specific accounts, industries, or situations where it makes the most sense to be more targeted,” she says.

Forrester is not currently tracking the success of individual personalization strategies in the B2B market. “It’s very situational,” Ramos says. “Vendors promoting particular technologies and solutions always have stories about how well they worked, but there are still many unanswered questions. B2B marketers really need to approach this on an individual basis and do A/B testing to figure it out for their own audience and target market.”

Overall, there is consensus in the business-to-business community that personalization has staying power. “The stakes are high for B2B buyers,” O’Toole says. “Making the right call on an enterprise purchase can be a high-ticket, high-impact decision that can influence careers. An effective personalization strategy recognizes the high personal stakes buyers face and speaks to their personal risk and value.”

Sheinkin is a true believer in personalization’s long-term potential. “There is no longer any debate about the need for personalization in the B2B sphere,” he says. “At IBM, the results of our experiments are so clear, it’s really just a matter of scale, consistency, and meeting the content creation challenge. Right now, we’re hitting home runs on small fields. Now we have to figure out how to spread that success across the entire ecosystem.”

TIPS

How to Improve Personalization in B2B Sales Messages

1. Create the right content. Over the past four years, IBM has made a significant investment in rebuilding its analytics system to increase the company’s ability to deliver personalized sales messages, says Ari Sheinkin, VP of marketing analytics and media at IBM. With IBM’s database management platform (DMP) feeding into its personalization engine, “I would say with a lot of confidence that we know enough about any targeted individual to put a relevant experience in front of them,” he says.
   But being able to do something is not the same as actually doing it. “Whether we have a really compelling piece of content to put in front of them is a different question,” he says. “Just reaching the right person and calling them by the right name or title is not enough. You have to present them with the right material.”
   For IBM, that means changing the way it approaches content creation. “It’s enormously challenging, but we have a new content leader at IBM,” Sheinkin says. “A lot of what he talks about is less content but more relevance, creating content that is more connected to a journey around people.”
   
2. Choose the right personalization methods. According to a 2016 Demand Metric Benchmark Report on content personalization, 80 percent of surveyed marketers reported greater success meeting their objectives when content is personalized. The report also found a connection between the type of personalization used and how well the content met objectives.
   The five types of personalization studied were segment specific, persona specific, stage specific, account specific, and lead specific. The results suggested that greater usage of persona specific (personalized for specific buyer types) and lead specific (personalized for an individual lead) personalization methods contribute to content that is more likely to meet the objectives set for it.
   
3. Use personalization in ABM. LiveRamp, a provider of identity resolution services, uses account-based marketing (ABM) to provide prospects with information that helps them learn about industry trends in an environment that fosters the growth of long-term client relationships, says Rebecca Stone, head of demand generation and international marketing. Its latest ABM campaign includes:
   • Account-level customized display advertising
   • Marketing email promotion, with content specifically tailored to individuals’ roles
   • Multitouch sales development rep (SDR) email, phone, and social outreach sequence
   • Direct mail touchpoints, with a personalized note from the same SDR
     
4. Avoid mistakes that might alienate your target. Forrester’s Laura Ramos tells the tale of a personalized sales message gone wrong that she experienced a few years ago. She received a dimensional mail piece that included a wallet. It contained typical things you’d expect to find in a wallet — matchbook, laundry ticket, business card, etc. — and each item carried a sales message. “The problem is, it was a man’s wallet,” she says. “If my name were Pat or Chris, I could have let it slide. But Laura? Honestly?”
   In today’s data-rich marketing environment, that kind of mistake should never happen. Marketers have access to multiple sources from which to pull personalization data, as well as technology solutions to automate much or all of the process.
5. Measure results and make adjustments as needed. The three most common types of metrics business-to-business marketers use to measure content effectiveness are consumption (downloads, views, etc.), engagement (session duration, sharing, conversations), and financial (value of opportunities generated, ROI), according to the Demand Metric report. Many ABM platforms include functionality to measure the impact of personalized sales messages on conversion rates and lead generation, and there is no shortage of standalone technology solutions available.
   LiveRamp uses the business-to-business marketing attribution and planning software from Bizible. “It allows us to track and measure all touchpoints that a prospect or customer has with our brand,” Stone says. “We can slice and dice the customer journey in any way that we want — first touch, last touch, multitouch, etc.”
   The company is also building out a data lake that incorporates both known data about LiveRamp’s customers and anonymous data about its advertising and website visits. Stone is hopeful the combination will help LiveRamp understand more about how its customers interact with the brand, enabling it to provide them with better messages.
   — M.J.M