Late last year I had the pleasure of interviewing Douglas Laird, VP of Marketing at QlikView, as a part of the Marketo User Summit Executive Interview Series. During the interview, Doug discussed the successful implementation of QlikView’s global, multi-touch lead generation campaign during the 2010 World Soccer Finals. Doug also provided us with some insights on his vision of QlikView’s global expansion in the future, and his thoughts on how other companies can earn a seat at the revenue table.
In addition, Doug commented on the importance of personalizing the nurture stream because of the sea change in buying behavior caused by the web and social networks. Addressing the changing roles of marketing and sales in today’s modern revenue cycle, Doug noted that companies can take their revenue model to a whole new level when they have a targeted dialogue with buyers when they are ready to buy.
I invite you to watch the video below to learn more about how one innovative company is transforming the sales and marketing model and creating a Revenue Revolution.
Fernandez: Hi, I’m Phil Fernandez CEO of Marketo. I’m here today with Doug Laird, who’s Vice President of Marketing for Marketo’s customer QlikView. So Doug, why don’t you take a minute and tell us about the World Cup experience and some of the program results and then we’ll start to talk about the future.
Laird: We saw a fantastic opportunity to really tap into this global interest in the World Cup event – and what I call “soccer” and they call “futbol.” We find that when people trial our product we’re really able to accelerate the marketing to sales process. And so what we decided to do was execute a fully integrated campaign, in 13 languages, and then email it out to one million people. And so we came to you with that challenge and you guys really stepped up and really partnered with us to make that happen. So we decided that instead of having each country execute the campaign, we were going to execute that campaign at the center. And so we pioneered within our own company this concept of “marketing as a service,” where we would centrally execute the campaigns. What was challenging about this campaign was that it was in 13 languages, it was 3 touches and the touches were timed to the games and to the matches. And we worked very closely with our partner The Pedowitz Group and with your services team, and we were able to execute this flawlessly. As a result of this we drove 13,000 trials and we absolutely blew the doors off. We were really excited about this result and where we could take it next.
Fernandez: Doug, one of the things that I am tremendously impressed by is the way you’ve been able to accomplish a major impact with this in just a few short months. But as you and I have talked in the past, the thing that I find most exciting is actually your vision for the future and where you’d like to take this from here. So maybe, could you start by giving us a high level of what your vision is for where this all leads and what are some of the next steps you have in mind?
Laird: I guess from one standpoint – once again were a global company- so we’re going to take this into more countries. We’re in 15 countries now and we’ll be in over 20 countries, by first quarter of next year. So I think there is a fantastic opportunity to broaden the footprint of this product to mirror our distribution system globally. The other thing that we’re looking to do is to go deeper inside each country. We’ve been doing a lot at corporate marketing at the center, and doing these centralized campaigns, but we want to give the regions more and more ability and roll it out to more people inside the country so they can handle those things that are specific to their country. And just really give people a platform where they can accelerate their business.
Another part of where we’re taking this is and where we think this is headed is really personalizing the nurture stream or the dialogue. If we’re going to have a dialogue with people over an 18 month period, when they are ready to buy not when we’re ready to sell, it needs to be about the dialogue they want to have with us. So more and more we want to take advantage of the opportunity to really personalize that dialogue with that customer and really take it to that next level. And I think that that will bring us to a whole new level.
Fernandez: Clearly, in a company that is an analytics leader and with your track record of driving demand, I think you’re way out in front of a lot of other companies. Do you have one or two ideas for people that are coming along the maturity curve about where to start and how to think about earning that seat at the revenue table that you’ve clearly earned at QlikView?
Laird: Well, I think what’s really important is that sales is a very numbers driven exercise and I think many marketing organizations don’t have the metrics to come to the table with. They can’t measure what they are doing and they can’t really set expectations well. And I think that through the use of marketing automation, and that’s Marketo for us after a very thorough evaluation, plus with QlikView, we’re able to really participate in that discussion. People just need to get their feet wet and do it; I can’t imagine trying to run your marketing organization without a system like Marketo. Because it really provides you with an opportunity to better understand what’s in your pipe, how fast it’s moving and to help it along.
