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Campaign optimization, resource gaps, and doing more with less

Quick take

Verizon’s Public Sector Demand Gen team solved their resource gap by partnering with Ascend Marketing to provide campaign optimization expertise and hands-on execution to improve performance.

Challenge

Without resources dedicated to analytics, content performance, and lead processes, campaigns were falling short of their goals. Budget cuts, time constraints, outdated content, and other issues kept audience engagement on a downward trend.

Solution

Ascend provided a goal-driven FlexTeam that included content strategists, data analysts, and certified Marketo experts to immediately “plug into” the organization to fill crucial skillset gaps and enable ongoing campaign optimization.

Results

Ascend helped the team significantly improve campaign performance, with an efficient, data-driven, and sustainable process of continuous optimization. Results included a 467% increase in MOLs and a 420% increase in Click to Open Rate (CTOR).

Better together: A marketing partnership built for results

Today’s marketing teams are expected to produce campaigns that deliver an ever-growing list of objectives: Make a bigger impact. Drive revenue. Accelerate growth. And to keep doing more and more with less and less: Shrinking budgets. Fewer resources. Tighter deadlines. In this climate, when getting campaigns planned and launched on time is challenging enough, prioritizing campaign monitoring, analytics, testing, and iteration—and having the right expertise in-house to carry it out—may seem next to impossible.

This was the challenge Verizon’s Public Sector Demand Gen team faced. Though they recognized the importance of each component of campaign optimization, they lacked the internal resources and time to execute them. To make the “impossible” expectations possible, they turned to Ascend Marketing, who provided a results-oriented FlexTeam to “plug into” Verizon with specialized skills and an unwavering focus on measurable outcomes.

“Ascend has been a great asset to our team. They are 100% embedded into our teams and 100% focused on measurable results. They take an insightful, big-picture approach to our campaigns to uncover the insights that allow us to meet—and exceed—our goals. I appreciate their initiative to look deeper to find opportunities to improve.”

Charity Chittum

Senior Digital Marketing Manager

Take care of your content and your content will take care of you.

Running a lean, fast-moving team (and sometimes a team of one) in an organization as large as Verizon keeps the focus on launching the next campaign. Chasing deadlines for new content and new lead sources doesn’t leave time to keep an eye on the campaigns that are already in market to see what’s working and what isn’t, make adjustments and optimize them. Over time, the Public Sector assets became less engaging for the federal audiences, showing signs of aging and in need of a forward-looking strategy.

The Ascend team found several key barriers to optimal campaign performance, each based on lack of resources to:

Oversee content performance, run testing, update assets or ensure accurate content mapping
Manage lead sources, lead intake process and prioritization
Continually analyze performance metrics and own the back-end reporting

The solution was a FlexTeam with deep marketing and analytics experience to lead Verizon to higher-performing campaigns. From content strategy to analytics tools and Marketo expertise, Ascend brought a diverse collective skillset that filled the gaps and immediately expanded the Verizon team’s capabilities.

The core of campaign optimization: Strategize. Analyze. Adapt.

(Then do it all over again. And again.)

Campaign Advancement is Ascend’s specialty, and Verizon’s content plays a big part in what drives or doesn’t drive results. The FlexTeam started with a comprehensive analysis of the content in all of the currently running campaigns, including:

Content inventory and asset mapping to the journey stage
Engagement data for all assets and emails
Flagging content for refreshing or retirement

Campaign insights and optimization: Never stop improving.

The team then put Campaign Advancement in motion, including:

Developing a consolidated program to streamline content and improve the prospect buyer journey
Creating and monitoring performance dashboards; conducting testing and optimization; quarterly reporting
Improving lead intake process and lead list management efficiency, driving new leads to correct funnel stage
Recommending data-based content strategy shifts
Plugging in as an extension of the marketing team to oversee and execute the optimization process

Here’s what doing more with less looks like.

Equipped with robust, constantly monitored data and the Ascend team’s capabilities, Verizon’s Public Sector Demand Gen team has mastered the art of doing more with less. And the results are more than impressive:

Increase in MOLs

0 %

Increase in Click to Open Rate (CTOR)

0 %

Increase in content downloads

0 %

Increase in Open Rate

0 %

Improved resource management, marketing efficiencies, and enablement of continuous campaign optimization.

The right people, the right expertise and the right results-oriented mindset prove that anything is possible.

With Ascend’s unique FlexTeam approach, Verizon got a force multiplier that closed the gap between their resources and their goals. The Ascend team provided a holistic view of the Public Sector campaigns and opportunities for ongoing campaign optimization, as well as hands-on, “plugged in” execution of the ongoing work it requires.