Transforming the ICF Marketing Team to Meet Next-Generation Challenges

Marketing is undergoing transformative change at many organizations. ICF, a global consulting and digital services company with over 7,000 employees, wanted marketing to be more of a strategic asset. It sought to change both marketing’s processes and how the marketing team interacts with the organization.

As Adam Monago, vice president of digital and performance marketing, noted, “We knew we needed to engage with sales more closely to both find opportunity and inform sales about the buyer journey. Internally, we needed to improve repeatability, transparency, and our ability to attribute activity to specific campaigns.”

Marketo Engage Delivers on ICF’s Requirements

ICF is utilizing Marketo Engage, a part of Adobe Experience Cloud, to improve organizational interaction, particularly with sales, and to deliver more insight from marketing’s campaigns. For example, the team can see how campaigns tie directly to sales opportunities. This makes the value and revenue contribution of campaigns much clearer, and results in greater support for them. Marketo Engage is the foundation for better integration with sales, and it also provides new intelligence about how customers perceive the brand and the details of the customer journey.

One of the most important benefits of Marketo Engage is the ability to identify cross-over or “add-on” deals. The sales team needed a better way to identify these “white-space” opportunities and Marketo Engage was able to help do just that.

Marketo Engage improved both agility and speed, essential to supporting new processes. With the data from this platform, prioritizing successful campaigns is now possible, as is iterating them to get more reach into the customer and prospect base. In addition, field and product marketers can now do their own campaigns using the Marketo Engage platform, and the activities and results are visible to the core marketing team.

As Monago noted, “Without Marketo Engage, the marketing team couldn’t get dynamic views of the customer database to support new campaigns. There was no ability to get the details about customer journeys either. This product unlocked all of that critical information.”

Enhancing the ABM Program

Although ICF has had a focused account process in place for many years, to make it an effective account-based marketing (ABM) program required more from marketing. Marketo Engage provided the central hub that synchronized numerous sales and marketing activities that had been too scattered to be effective. The starting point was to get the account lists organized and centrally managed. Another important element was to align terminology and the CRM system so that everyone was speaking the same language. Marketo Engage also provides integration of third-party target account lists to drive ABM. The platform provides a holistic view of an account, allowing ICF to mobilize around target accounts much more efficiently and effectively.

Many marketing teams find themselves in situations not dissimilar from ICF’s. Monago has some advice for those starting the journey. “To start, sales and marketing teams need ongoing alignment, with a clear set of facts,” he said. “Also, focus on the big things and don’t try and do too much. You’ll see new opportunities as you gain experience. And when you have success, don’t focus on taking credit. It’s a team success, so treat it as such.”

With Marketo Engage, ICF’s marketing team is now a critical component of organizational success, a trusted partner to sales, and represented at the highest levels of the company’s management.