Get to Know Your #FullFunnel16 Speaker: Emily Wingrove – Social123

On June 16th 2016, Heinz Marketing is hosting a group of nationally recognized speakers to talk about all things Full Funnel Marketing (click here to join us!).

Marketing success today requires far more than delivering leads to sales – it requires a full-funnel approach that addresses every stage of the buying journey and sales process. We are going back to the basics to address specific best practices, habits and proven methods used by modern B2B marketers to increase the measurable impact of their work.

Before the event starts, meet Emily Wingrove. She’s a real marketing pro. Here’s what she has to say:

Title:  Director of Marketing, Social123

Hometown:  Gloucester County, Virginia (small farm town)

How did you get into Marketing in the first place? My first role out of university was actually a sales role and as I quickly learned, sales is just not my forte and I wasn’t hitting my number. As a way to remedy my low numbers, I reached out to my company’s corporate HQ to learn more about this ‘email blast’ software I had heard some buzz about and asked if I could play around with it. To my surprise, they acquiesced. I went into our CRM and started segmenting data and picking content and writing messages to send to each relevant segment. The results were absolutely overwhelming and I ended up assigning out leads and doing the follow up. After a couple of campaigns and a couple of months later, my pipe was full and I hit my number. The downside – I was reprimanded because I wasn’t actually doing ‘sales’ anymore, I was doing what everyone else calls ‘marketing’….and I never went back to sales.

What’s the worst marketing and sales misalignment story you’ve ever heard? I’m not sure that a totally perfect alignment between marketing and sales exists, there will always be some areas that are slightly disjointed. But no matter what the degree of misalignment, anytime it is communicated outwardly or publicly is a very bad look. The first step to solving sales and marketing alignment is communication, but internally and interdepartmentally, NOT publicly.

Why do marketers need to focus on supporting the entire sales funnel, not just at the top? Marketing and sales HAS to be a joint effort (with product, customer success and all other functional departments) for the entire customer journey from the prospect not even knowing your product all the way down to becoming a customer. No single department can be successful without the support and collaboration with other department.

What best practices have you seen work particularly well in driving greater sales results? In my experience, when marketing and sales actively work together on something, whether it be a demo deck or a new ad, each side feels a sense of ownership and it allows us to get excited about the same things and to celebrate together on big wins. When marketing extends its hand to collaborate and seek help from sales, they get behind our campaigns with the same excitement that we do…and that is a beautiful thing!

How are marketers (either in your organization or that you’ve seen) addressing the ABM opportunity? Most of the marketers in my network are either already employing an ABM strategy or have recognized the value in ABM and are working towards building out a company-wide ABM strategy. In my org, we are running an ‘account based everything’, as Jon Miller calls it, because we believe at Social123 that each department adds different value to the customer journey and we understand that each department must look through an account focused lens in order to achieve ABM success.

What’s your favorite saying, quote or piece of advice that helps you get through the day? “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou

Want to meet Emily in person?  Register Now for Full Funnel Marketing: How to Impact Every Stage of the Buyer’s Journey to hear her insight and perspective on a Full Funnel Marketing approach.