Industry: Technology

From SaaS platforms to device manufacturers to network providers, technology leaders need to do more than pitch a great product and hope the latest release cuts through. Attributes well beyond the tech functionality itself—including security, sustainability, UX and brand experience—influence (and often sway) technology buying decisions.

To serve the myriad needs of tech buyers while sustainably growing revenue, leaders and their teams need to be focused, deliberate and sophisticated in their GTM approach. They must deeply understand their buying syndicate, design specifically for them, target effectively and engage audiences with value that goes well beyond features and benefits.

At Marketbridge, we draw on deep technology and technology buying expertise to help growth leaders build mindshare and market share fast. We identify right-fit markets, channels, audiences and messages; build resilient and resonant brands; and design, activate and optimize integrated
in-market experiences that connect emotionally and convert confidently.

The impact of AI on go-to-market strategies, programs, and investments

Research and insights from high tech market leaders

Generative AI (GenAI) is beginning to revolutionize sales and marketing by enabling highly personalized customer interactions, automating complex processes, and providing deep data-driven insights. To explore this further, we surveyed high tech market leaders. The resulting insights can help inform the future of marketing and sales motions—and where to place investments to deliver more effective and efficient Go-to-Market (GTM) strategies—in the age of AI.

This report covers

Top areas of expected AI disruption
Timeframe for adapting new GTM models
Most promising areas for GTM disruption
Reimagining jobs to be done within marketing, sales, and strategy
Key inputs needed to optimize GTM performance in the AI era
Delivering on the promise—top areas of investment needed

Select insights

60% of respondents believe changing “Competitive Landscape” is the top area of expected disruption.
Over 54% of respondents recognize the urgency to explore new growth opportunities and fund these initiatives more swiftly due to the rapid pace of AI innovation.
58% of respondents predict the most significant change in selecting channels and routes to market.
While all leaders recognized the need for substantial investment requirements, not all agreed on where.

Whether you’re navigating the impact of AI on customer personalization, content development, or strategic agility, this report provides the insights needed to stay ahead of the curve.

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What’s Next?

Whitepaper

Enabling marketing innovation in highly regulated industries

Organizations struggle with the intricacies of modern marketing technology, notably traditional Customer Data Platforms (CDPs). Despite a solid 67% adoption rate, Gartner's findings reveal a striking reality: only a mere 17% report high utilization. Explore the benefits of developing and maintaining owned, in-house Go-To-Market Data Lakes (GTMDL) as a supplement to traditional software-based Customer Data Platforms (CDPs).

Growth Strategy, Operational Optimization

Research

The impact of AI on go-to-market strategies, programs, and investments

Engagement Design

Whitepaper

Accelerate growth through test-and-learn marketing culture

Marketing Effectiveneness, Marketing Planning

Audience Insights case study: Behavioral segmentation improves acquisition efforts

A Marketbridge client in the identity protection space was struggling to drive meaningful growth. The category was experiencing increased competition with lower-cost products entering the market, stealing share from incumbents. Despite increased marketing investment, our client’s revenue was relatively flat. The new customer segment was showing some growth, but other business metrics weren’t improving. Here’s how Marketbridge helped the client understand whether recent brand efforts were driving the new customer segment, and how to optimize investment to drive additional growth and scale.

Seeking insights to optimize opportunities

The objectives of the engagement were two-fold:

Understand new customers

Analyze the new customer segment to understand drivers of growth and examine how the segment has changed over time to provide insights into how the client can enhance targeting in the future.

Behaviors and demographics
Product mix
Sales over time

Model brand responsiveness

Use media mix modeling (MMM) to understand how the new customer segment responds to brand efforts and identify optimization opportunities for the campaign.

Channels that perform best with new customer segment
Optimization opportunities for brand campaigns
Cost per acquisition ranges

Keywords:

Audience Insights, Marketing Effectiveness, Media Mix Modeling (MMM), Segmentation

Segment muddiness illuminate the root issue

During analysis, we uncovered that the new customer segment was actually two distinct segments: customers who were brand new and returning customers who upgraded their product. Combining these two segments camouflaged that the brand-new customer segment was shrinking. We dug into the other customer segments and found similar issues and inconsistent logic that was hampering audience targeting.

Creating new
behavioral segments

We built new behavioral segments that leveraged internal client data for actionable audience targeting that goes beyond finance-led segmentation.

Created data-driven behavioral segments that are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive (MECE)

Deployed new segmentation in the marketing database for real-time audience targeting and conversion labeling

Enabled reporting on these segments over time to ensure shifts in audience mix support client’s strategic goals

How brand-new customers
respond to brand efforts

We used MMM to understand which channels drove the brand-new customer segment to purchase and how to optimize for increased acquisition.

Provided clear insights on which channels and platforms drove the largest sales impact

Found that past brand campaigns did drive increases in brand-new customers, which was masked by previously combined segmentation

Created true cost per acquisition benchmarks for this brand-new customer segment

Improved targeting and optimized investment

Lookalike audiences using the former “new customer” segment had limited success due to inexact targeting and muddied segmentation. Leveraging the “brand-new” customer segmentation resulted in better signal and improved conversion rates, decreasing acquisition costs.

Perhaps not surprisingly, brand-new customers were attracted by awareness efforts, while more mid-funnel activities and affiliates drove product switching among current customers. This data led to executive approval to move budget up-funnel. Our client also moved current customers into upsell campaigns and suppressed them from certain acquisition efforts to improve ROI across both initiatives.

Marketing Effectiveness case study: Optimizing member outreach campaigns improves health outcomes

Despite investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in marketing outreach campaigns, measuring effectiveness was a challenge for this Fortune 50 payer. See how Marketbridge leveraged marketing analytics to empower the payer to enhance outreach, increase preventive screenings and optimize marketing spend.

Creating healthier campaigns
to drive healthier outcomes

Quality member care is a crucial part of the long-term success of healthcare payers. Better member health outcomes not only mean healthier members but also lower medical costs, less member disenrollment and improved Medicare Advantage star ratings and bonus payments from the federal government. A Fortune 50 healthcare payer sought to improve member health outcomes by engaging members with specific gaps in care.

The payer invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in outreach campaigns that asked targeted members to complete certain preventive screenings. The hypothesis was that these marketing-funded campaigns would make a meaningful difference in closing member gaps in care. However, the ability to measure the effectiveness of these marketing campaigns was a challenge for the healthcare payer.

Keywords:

Marketing Effectiveness, Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA), Propensity Model

Unraveling
the challenge

The campaigns consisted of multiple touchpoints across offline (direct mail, phone calls) and online (digital media) channels, which made determining which tactics were contributing to preventive screenings difficult. In addition, the long-tail response curves of these campaigns, coupled with the time it takes to receive claims data, meant having to wait months to capture and analyze results. This hindered the payer’s ability to make optimizations in a timely manner.

Measurement challenge accepted

Our team began by identifying the three key objectives that would enable the marketing team to measure and optimize the marketing-funded campaigns.

Determine campaign effectiveness

Are certain marketing campaigns effective in persuading members to take a breast cancer screening, colorectal cancer screening or address diabetes maintenance (A1-C and retinopathy)?

Drive continuous improvement

How can we infuse timely data-driven learnings into our ongoing marketing cycles so we can continuously test and learn?

Understand audience-level response

Which segments are responding to which marketing tactics, and how do we capitalize on each using data?

Implementing a two-part
measurement approach

MTA

A multi-touch attribution (MTA) model assigns fractional credit to each touchpoint in gap closure campaigns, revealing each channel’s influence on preventive screenings. However, the long maturation period for response data (member claims) delays insights until after the next campaign cycle, limiting timely optimizations. To address this, Marketbridge proposed a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) alongside the MTA model.

RCT

The RCT proved effective, showing that three out of four campaigns successfully drove incremental gap closures. This allowed the Marketing team to reallocate funds from the ineffective campaign to successful ones, enabling timely adjustments. The MTA model’s long-term results validated the RCT findings, confirming most campaigns were effective.

Two is better than one

The RCT analysis helped this Fortune 50 payer prove that all but one of the four campaigns in-market were successful in driving an incremental lift in gap closures. These results allowed the Marketing team to quickly reallocate funds away from one campaign that was not working and toward the other three campaigns that were working. This bought the Marketing team time to “retool” the unsuccessful campaign for testing in a future campaign cycle—an opportunity that would have otherwise been lost without using the RCT approach. As for the MTA model, the overall long-term results validated the findings of the RCT analysis and proved that most of the marketing campaigns were working.

We looked at member segments, too

We applied a propensity model to understand marketing impact by member segments. It showed that members with a higher likelihood of closing care gaps had lower cost-per-closure rates. As a result, the marketing team tested sending more notices to high-likelihood members and fewer to low-likelihood members, aiming for cost-effective strategies.

Optimized campaigns.
Healthier members.

Improved member outcomes:

Marketing care gap campaigns were successful in driving members to get preventive screenings, improving their health outcomes.

Optimized marketing spend:

Members with a higher likelihood of closing a care gap had lower cost-per-incremental-closure. This gave Marketing more room to invest in touchpoints to this segment.

Timely test-and-learn cycles:

The Marketing team was able to work around long-tail response curves to enable year-round testing and learning, which is critical in the pursuit of health outcomes.

GTM Consulting case study: New go-to-market sales strategy improves sales efficiency by 42%

Despite tremendous growth in the previous year, this SaaS company had seen large variations in the performance of their sales representatives with unfair territory coverage. Strong product-led growth left many loyal customer opportunities dormant. Here’s how Marketbridge helped design a more efficient go-to-market strategy that aligned sales motions with revenue potential and customer value for growth.

Scrutinize the strategy
to enable growth

The client’s objective was to gain a top-to-bottom analysis of their current sales strategy and highlight key areas of focus. This analysis would then be used to provide a framework to accelerate growth and scale effectively. Through interviews with key stakeholders, it was observed that there was a lack of knowledge on how to market and communicate to customers beyond the end user. Additionally, there was a disconnect between the different players throughout the sales process, along with the sentiment that sales-led accounts could have been performing well above their current ARR.

Key gaps were also observed in both current segmentation and coverage. A bifurcated segmentation model blurred the lines for account coverage, with 43% of accounts misaligned due to poor segmentation, and inconsistent role definitions created a lack of connection to revenue objectives and the sales cycle. With this information, our goal was to design and implement a revised go-to-market sales strategy, aligning revenue potential, customer value and sales motions to enable future growth.

Keywords:

Compensation Design, Coverage Design, Customer Segmentation, Role Design, Territory Design

A multi-pronged approach to optimization

Baseline assessment and strategy alignment

Marketbridge performed a baseline assessment of the current strategy and coverage structure. Customer segmentation, role definitions, territories, and marketing strategy were then analyzed. Significant gaps were found that needed to be addressed within each area of focus. Marketbridge identified three distinct sales plays that the client could utilize to enable future growth opportunities.

Segmentation, role definition and coverage design

Using the baseline analysis, Marketbridge applied a data-driven approach to model opportunity at the account level, finding that ~75% of all ARR and opportunity fell within the top two deciles. This calculated information was then used to suggest alternative segmentations that could be aligned across roles and throughout the sales process.

The new design also included updated role definitions, allowing for more specialization and deeper knowledge of the requirements. Marketbridge also recommended a reallocation of current accounts and a change in coverage design —considering time zones when allocating both existing and new accounts to ensure that resources could engage with clients consistently and influence future hiring strategy.

Implementation of territory models, compensation and coverage design

These recommendations were translated into a driver-based financial model for the new fiscal year. The model incorporated channel economics to ensure a profitable and highly scalable approach to growth. It created new dynamic territories and more evenly allocated accounts across the Sales team. With this, the client could enable dynamic territories and optimize resource allocation over time. In addition, new sales compensation plans were outlined to pay for performance and align incentives with role requirements. Roles were then allocated across the sales cycle in a detailed coverage map that clearly defined each person’s role through each phase.

Primed for future growth

42% improvement in sales efficiency and target attainment

With the new account allocation, opportunity was evenly distributed across sales staff. This decreased expense to new bookings by 42% and allowed all sales staff to reach target ARR goals. Detailed roll definitions also improved connectivity and collaboration throughout the sales process.

Greater alignment of Sales  and Marketing functions

Improved coverage structure helped align future sales plays and marketing efforts. This allowed both teams to communicate a consistent value proposition to both existing and potential customers. Consistent segmentation also reduced the number of misaligned accounts to 0, allowing for more collaboration across all departments and roles.

Scalable go-to-market strategy  for ARR growth

Our implementation has influenced a net ARR increase of 130%. New dynamic territories created by the model enabled the client to distribute new accounts across the Sales team effectively as their customer base grew. This more efficient allocation of resources ensures consistent customer engagement and can adapt, continuing to promote revenue growth.

Raymarine case study: A new life on a hundred-year story

Since 1923, Raymarine has been a trusted, leading name in the marine electronics industry. But, due to stiff competition and product-forward advertising, their brand story was getting lost in a sea of sameness for their boaters and anglers in the United States. The writing was on the wall: They had to do something different. And that’s exactly what we did.

Play video

Leave doubt in your wake

When it comes to marine equipment, there is no room for error and doubt. Boaters and anglers need reliable products they can count on. So, we tapped into that emotional need in order to give Raymarine a new, refined voice that exudes confidence, rugged reliability and trust. We combined influencer partnerships, lifestyle branding and creative storytelling to deliver a brand refresh and 360 campaign that spoke directly to the hearts of those who dare the deep.

Keywords:

Brand Identity, Content, Creative, Influencer Marketing, Media, Messaging, Social, Video

Coast Guard stamp of approval

There’s saying your product is trustworthy, and then there’s actually backing it up. The fact that the U.S. Coast Guard was already relying on Raymarine only reinforced our messaging, and having them as brand ambassadors spoke volumes to our audience.

Not just a new brand.
A campaign with bite to launch it.

From the logo to becoming a lifestyle brand, we made a significant shift, found a compelling new storyline and reinvigorated the brand to be forward-thinking yet in tune with the lifestyle of boaters and anglers. We helped support it on the website, as well as through an integrated digital and social media plan to break through the noise.

Putting the pros at the helm of the story

We also partnered with a wide network of pro ambassadors and influencers to capture their own content and show just how well Raymarine’s equipment holds up, even in the toughest waters.

Play video

Bitrise case study: Buckle up for a really good campaign story

Following a recent round of Series C funding, Bitrise—the world’s first and only Mobile DevOps company—needed to build mindshare and market share…and fast. To do it, they needed to convince tech leaders and their development teams at big financial institutions that when it comes to creating extraordinary app experiences, the best things in life aren’t free.

Making the case for mobile-first

Mobile has made huge leaps forward in the past couple of years. To stay relevant and competitive, organizations that jockey for consumer attention and membership, like banks and insurance firms, have to go all-in on apps. At the same time, developing for mobile has become infinitely more complex, and legacy approaches simply can’t cut it in a mobile-first world. Free, open-source platforms—the kind traditional web experiences are built on—were never made for mobile. And it shows, manifesting on the back end as sluggish builds, bottlenecks and a ton of manual (read: risk-laden) work.

Keywords:

ABM, Creative, Digital Experiences, Managed Technology Operations, Martech Application Implementation, Media, Messaging, Personalization, Social

We needed to shift
the mental model

Bitrise had a strong product offering and an exciting brand. But to drive awareness and consideration, we needed to shift the mental model and convince tech leaders that investing in a Mobile DevOps platform and retooling their development protocols is better than having a mobile-first competitor snatch your customer base.

Selecting and segmenting for campaign success

Leveraging the predictive intelligence capabilities of ABM platform 6sense, Bitrise identified ~200 accounts in the financial services space that fit their ICP and showed a strong likelihood to purchase a solution like theirs. Marketbridge validated the account selection and acquired contacts to fill coverage gaps across the buying committee through sales intelligence platform SalesIntel. We segmented the audience into two groups—Practitioners (the DevOps doers) and Tech Leaders (the budget-holders), creating unique messaging and mapping content that would resonate with each audience’s motivations, challenges and goals.

Creative unites agility and security (Yes, really!)

The Bitrise brand is playful, confident and attention-getting. To amplify it for ABM, we needed to inject relevance for a finance audience whose main objective is maximizing app experience while minimizing risk. “Buckle up with Bitrise” became our rally cry, suggesting a sense of security but also an impending takeoff.

Our creative big idea focused on the elements of Bitrise’s platform that resonated strongest with our financial audience: the increased speed of development it offers teams and the comprehensive security features built into the platform.

The GTM play gets personal(ized)

The program kicked off with a “Surround & Nurture” play designed to capture attention and raise awareness. Channels and tactics included account-targeted media (display, native and social) and marketing-led emails that Marketbridge helped implement and deploy across their martech tools and platforms.

The most highly engaged accounts coming out of the “Surround & Nurture” play were funneled to a more highly personalized “Engage & Connect” outbound play focused on generating interest and engagement. Following outbound tactics, contact engagement was evaluated in Marketo using 6sense data and routed to Sales to begin an Outreach email sequence—which was automated on behalf of Sales.

The head-snap moment: account-personalized benchmark experience

Downstream in the “Engage & Connect” play, we directed contacts to a customized digital experience built and hosted in Marketo. Visually, the page was personalized with the account’s logo and name. But that wasn’t the exciting bit. Drawing on data from competitive intelligence platform Apptopia, we benchmarked the account’s mobile app performance against competitors across three key predictors of app store success. For some, the benchmark results were validating; for most, they were a wake-up call.

Buckle up for big results

The program saw wide reach and deep engagement across targeted accounts, and we added hundreds of new contacts into Bitrise’s marketable database for future campaigns. Additionally, we drove impact in buyer journey progression. Using 6sense to benchmark and track pre- and post-campaign buying journey stage movement, we pushed a third of accounts forward 1+ buying stage and grew accounts in Decision and Purchase by 44%. The campaign has gained traction in B2B awards circles as well. “Buckle up with Bitrise” was a finalist in the 2023 B2B Marketing Elevation Awards for Best Account-Based Marketing Program.

The team attributes campaign success to two key factors:

A highly automated campaign

That leveraged a strategic martech stack to deploy and coordinate the cross-channel experience at scale, reducing manual monitoring and management.

Meaningful use of personalization

Across the creative touchpoints, which helped the work stand out and sink in.

0 %

Accounts moved forward 1+ buying stage

0 %

Growth in decision
and purchase stages

0 %+

Decision maker
Leads acquired vs. Target

0 X

Known account
engagement

0 s

New contacts added to database

“The level of personalization and automation [Marketbridge] brought to  this campaign made all the difference. It up-leveled our execution to get  our message in front of the right eyeballs.”

– Marketing leader | Bitrise

A CRO’s guide to transforming the channel for XaaS success

Research and insights on optimizing channel strategy to outperform the competition

In facing an uncertain economic climate ahead, technology businesses are rethinking already complex routes-to-market and partner channels. Coupling uncertainty with the rapid progression to XaaS selling models, CROs are faced with a burning question,“How do I transform and future-proof my partner channels to drive efficient revenue growth in the subscription economy?”

Our analysis

In conducting both quantitative benchmarks and interviews with today’s fastest-growing technology leaders, we set out to highlight the challenges and priorities in 2023 and beyond. In addition, we present a clear path forward for CROs to transform their partner channels for XaaS success.

This report covers

The need for change accelerated by the uncertain economic climate
The value pivot occurring in the channel
Direct-from-the-source challenges and priorities heard from tech executives
Four steps to building a modern partner model

Select insights

Modern partners (MSPs, CSPs, SIs, ISVs) are 2X more likely to ‘Significantly Increase’ XaaS revenues in the next 5 years
Only 35% of respondents on average were ‘very satisfied’ with partner performance outside of initial opportunity identification
Executives are 3X more likely than managers to believe they are behind the competition in quantifying the right number/mix of partners to deliver target revenues

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Subscribe to Marketbridge Updates

What’s Next?

Whitepaper

Enabling marketing innovation in highly regulated industries

Growth Strategy, Operational Optimization

Research

The impact of AI on go-to-market strategies, programs, and investments

Engagement Design

Whitepaper

Accelerate growth through test-and-learn marketing culture

Marketing Effectiveneness, Marketing Planning

Research and insights from high tech market leaders

This report covers

Select insights

Thank you for Downloading

Subscribe to Marketbridge Updates

What’s Next?

Enabling marketing innovation in highly regulated industries

The impact of AI on go-to-market strategies, programs, and investments

Accelerate growth through test-and-learn marketing culture

Audience Insights case study: Behavioral segmentation improves acquisition efforts

Seeking insights to optimize opportunities

Understand new customers

Model brand responsiveness

Segment muddiness illuminate the root issue

Creating new behavioral segments

Created data-driven behavioral segments that are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive (MECE)

Deployed new segmentation in the marketing database for real-time audience targeting and conversion labeling

Enabled reporting on these segments over time to ensure shifts in audience mix support client’s strategic goals

How brand-new customers respond to brand efforts

Improved targeting and optimized investment

Marketing Effectiveness case study: Optimizing member outreach campaigns improves health outcomes

Creating healthier campaigns to drive healthier outcomes

Unraveling the challenge

Measurement challenge accepted

Determine campaign effectiveness

Drive continuous improvement

Understand audience-level response

Implementing a two-part measurement approach

MTA

RCT

Two is better than one

We looked at member segments, too

Optimized campaigns. Healthier members.

Improved member outcomes:

Optimized marketing spend:

Timely test-and-learn cycles:

GTM Consulting case study: New go-to-market sales strategy improves sales efficiency by 42%

Scrutinize the strategy to enable growth

A multi-pronged approach to optimization

Primed for future growth

42% improvement in sales efficiency and target attainment

Greater alignment of Sales and Marketing functions

Scalable go-to-market strategy for ARR growth

Raymarine case study: A new life on a hundred-year story

Leave doubt in your wake

Coast Guard stamp of approval

Not just a new brand. A campaign with bite to launch it.

Putting the pros at the helm of the story

Bitrise case study: Buckle up for a really good campaign story

Making the case for mobile-first

We needed to shift the mental model

Selecting and segmenting for campaign success

Creative unites agility and security (Yes, really!)

The GTM play gets personal(ized)

The head-snap moment: account-personalized benchmark experience

Buckle up for big results

The team attributes campaign success to two key factors:

A highly automated campaign

Meaningful use of personalization

Research and insights on optimizing channel strategy to outperform the competition

Our analysis

This report covers

Select insights

Thank you for Downloading

Subscribe to Marketbridge Updates

What’s Next?

Enabling marketing innovation in highly regulated industries

The impact of AI on go-to-market strategies, programs, and investments

Accelerate growth through test-and-learn marketing culture

Locations

Creating new
behavioral segments

How brand-new customers
respond to brand efforts

Creating healthier campaigns
to drive healthier outcomes

Unraveling
the challenge

Implementing a two-part
measurement approach

Optimized campaigns.
Healthier members.

Scrutinize the strategy
to enable growth

Greater alignment of Sales  and Marketing functions

Scalable go-to-market strategy  for ARR growth

Not just a new brand.
A campaign with bite to launch it.

We needed to shift
the mental model