Market View
Beyond MQLs: Reframing success in B2B marketing
Sponsored by:
Produced by:
Jordy van Gent
Director of Revenue Marketing at Puzzel
About Jordy van Gent
Jordy van Gent is the Director of Revenue Marketing at Puzzel, a leading provider of contact centre software in Europe. With extensive experience in B2B marketing, Jordy oversees revenue marketing strategies, focusing on expanding Puzzel's market presence across the Nordics, UK, Ireland, and the Benelux region. He manages go-to-market strategies, leads regional marketing efforts, and steers the overall marketing team, driving innovation in product review and marketing execution.
How is the trend towards account-based marketing (ABM) influencing marketing effectiveness measurement in B2B settings?
The ABM trend has been shaping our approach for several years now, significantly impacting marketing effectiveness measurement. Our current focus is on defining our ideal customer profile—identifying which customers we can sell to and retain most effectively, and who derive the greatest value from our products. This naturally leads us to target accounts matching this profile and base our marketing programs around them.
We're currently implementing a mix of one-to-few and one-to-many marketing programs, as we're still in the early stages of our ABM strategy at Puzzel. Interestingly, Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) still play a crucial role, especially in the European market where GDPR constraints make lead generation more challenging. We use MQLs as indicators of engagement and intent within specific accounts, particularly where it's difficult for sales to initiate contact.
In terms of measurement, we're moving away from evaluating our marketing team solely on specific opportunities generated. Instead, we're integrating go-to-market teams that include sales, revenue operations, and customer success units. This holistic approach helps us consider the entire customer journey and measure marketing's influence throughout.
While we continue to assess marketing as a channel source, we also explore other metrics. Our primary metric is the marketing pipeline; we analyse what percentage is directly attributable to marketing and how much marketing activity influences other accounts and pipeline forecasts.
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It's important to recognize that prospects don't differentiate between interacting with marketing or sales—they simply engage with the brand through multiple touchpoints.
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Our primary guide, our North Star, is the revenue we generate, represented through dollar values of deals won.
What are the top three key performance indicators for marketing in your organisation right now?
Our top three KPIs are closely tied to our revenue objectives. Our primary guide, our North Star, is the revenue we generate, represented through dollar values of deals won. We focus on achieving a specific percentage of the total pipeline and of the total won deals.
The pipeline is particularly crucial as it serves as an early indicator of a successful program, given that our typical sales cycle is about six months. So, the qualified pipeline becomes a significant measure to monitor in the near term.
Another key KPI revolves around our activities lower in the funnel, especially in regional marketing. We work closely with our sales development representatives to track SQLs (Sales Qualified Leads), which, in the context of Puzzel, translates to qualified book meetings for sales. The number of meetings generated from marketing activities is critical, and we also monitor the conversion rates between these stages.
How do you approach account selection and creation of your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), and what challenges have you encountered in this process?
Account selection and ICP creation are critical processes that require a multifaceted approach. One of the key challenges we've faced involves identifying specific characteristics within accounts that align with our products, such as our contact centre software or CX platform. A critical identifier for us is the number of agents an account has, which can be challenging to ascertain from third-party sources.
To overcome these challenges, we've developed a comprehensive strategy. We collaborate closely with our product marketing team to conduct thorough research, including historical win-loss analysis and data from our Salesforce system. This helps us define ideal account profiles and their lookalikes.
Quality research is fundamental in establishing a baseline. We then utilise data providers to expand our pool based on identified data points. Additionally, we leverage insights from our partners and network to keep abreast of market trends, such as shifts from on-premise solutions to cloud-based services and the integration of AI technologies.
We tailor our strategies to the specific dynamics of each regional market. Adjustments are necessary between larger markets like the UK and smaller ones like Finland to ensure we're targeting the most relevant accounts given the different market conditions.
To enhance our account selection process, we use tools like Cognizam and Lead Forensics. These help us gauge intent more accurately, such as identifying if potential leads are visiting our website. These tools are instrumental in constructing a more holistic view of our engagement efforts.
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We're currently piloting this technology to automate the creation of email content, sales briefs, or battle cards.
How do you see the growing role of generative AI impacting B2B marketing, and in what areas are you trialling it?
Generative AI is having a profound impact on B2B marketing, and I believe its influence will only grow. We're leveraging it on several levels, primarily to enhance workflow efficiency within our team. Given that we operate across multiple European markets, localisation is a constant focus, and AI is proving invaluable in this regard.
In the MarTech space, we're utilising AI for data enrichment and to integrate various systems. For instance, AI helps pull information from third-party platforms and LinkedIn to enrich our customer accounts. This provides us with a more comprehensive view of our potential clients and their needs.
We're currently piloting AI technology to automate the creation of email content, sales briefs, and battle cards. This significantly reduces the manual labour involved in analysing multiple accounts and creating tailored outreach sequences. By automating these processes, we can provide our commercial team with more personalised account summaries. These summaries highlight market signals, such as acquisitions, which may affect how we approach a business.
Specifically, we're focusing on content optimisation, account enrichment, and data analysis. AI helps identify trends within our data, optimising our campaigns and connecting data points from larger datasets. While many tasks could be done manually, AI tools are crucial for analysing the performance of paid marketing on platforms like LinkedIn and Meta, and integrating this with conversion data from our
About Puzzel
Puzzel is a pioneering Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) provider based in Oslo, Norway, offering innovative omni-channel solutions for mid-market and enterprise customers across Europe. Known for its user-friendly platform and focus on innovation, Puzzel empowers businesses to deliver exceptional customer experiences. With a strong presence in the Nordics, UK, and Ireland, Puzzel continues to expand its reach and enhance its capabilities to meet evolving customer needs.
About 6sense
6sense is on a mission to revolutionise the way B2B organisations create revenue by predicting customers most likely to buy and recommending the best course of action to engage anonymous buying teams. 6sense Revenue AI is the only sales and marketing platform to unlock the ability to create, manage and convert high-quality pipeline to revenue. Customers report 2X increases in average contract value, 4X increases in win rate and 20-40% reduction in time to close deals. Know everything, do anything, with 6sense.
