Inside the Demand Generation Agency

Inside the
Demand Gen
Agency
Interview Series

It takes an
entire agency
to create a
meaningful lead
INSIDE THE DEMAND GENERATION AGENCY
Welcome to HiP’s Inside the Demand Gen Agency!
In this new ebook, HiP turns inward to its in-house experts for
their thoughts and insights on executing content-centric demand
generation. Herein you’ll find in-depth interviews with each of our
department leaders. They’ll share their expertise and experience
in the day-to-day operation of our demand gen agency while
communicating tips, best practices, and a broader understanding
of our organization and its contributions to our clients.
See for yourself why I so often say, “It takes an entire agency to
create a meaningful lead.”
With more than 25 years in the
demand Generation industry, Bret
Smith has built a name for himself as
a thought leader in the fields of Sales,
Sales Prospecting, Lead Generation,
and Content Marketing. In this time,
Bret has presented in countless webi-
nars and spoken at tradeshows across
the country. He was recently named a
“Top 25 Marketing Influencer of 2014”
by InsideView.
Before founding HiP, Bret was a
successful entrepreneur, cofounding
WebAttract, LLC, and the Head of
Americas Sales Prospecting for Pitney
Bowes Software. Outside of the office,
Bret is a loving husband and father of
six children.
BRET SMITH
FOUNDER & CEO

with
Q
What is the Client Services’ mission at HiP?
Client Services’ mission is to ensure that we successfully manage our
clients’ campaigns from beginning to end, by communicating our
clients’ needs to the rest of the team at HiP to get everything done
on schedule. We run a huge volume of demand generation campaigns
each week, so we maintain the balance to make sure everything runs
smoothly to be able to make client deliveries on time.
Based on what you know of other B2B agencies, what is unique or
differentiating About HiP’s Client Services?
Here at HiP, Client Services doubles as the marketing automation
team. This enables us to have more flexibility over scheduling and
staying on track to fulfill campaigns within schedule and within
ALLIE STRONG
CLIENT SERVICES
DIRECTOR
scope. Whenever we run into an issue with a specific campaign,
whether its’ engagement was unexpectedly low or the ESP ran into a
sending issue, we are able to quickly make the changes necessary to
ensure that campaigns stay on schedule for on-time deliveries to our
clients. This also gives us a direct view into the progress of demand
gen campaigns, providing us greater detail for client communications.
What traits do you look for in an effective Client Services person?
An effective Client Services manager is someone who can see
the bigger picture of maintaining client satisfaction overall, which
managing all the small daily tasks that go into running the high
volume of campaigns smoothly. This means having an ability to
communicate on a client-specific basis, and being flexible to all the
daily chaos that ensues from our campaign volume.
INSIDE THE DEMAND GENERATION AGENCYINSIDE THE DEMAND GENERATION AGENCY
Q&A WITH ALLIE STRONG
CLIENT
SERVICES
Allie Strong is the Client Services Director at HiP. Allie graduat-
ed from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a BBA
and a concentration in Marketing. After 3 years of business
experience, she arrived at HiP and has been a driving force in
HiP’s Client Services department ever since. At HiP, Allie and
her Client Services team are tasked with executing client cam-
paigns, delivering leads, and ensuring high quality outcomes for
clients.
A&

Can you relate for me ‘a day in the life’ of executing a typical client
lead gen campaign?
Campaigns are broadcast in two segments each day to break up
campaigns with similar target groups. Client Services receives the
campaign creative from the Creative Services team, pairs it with
its appropriate target group, and broadcasts accordingly. Those
campaigns are data-matched by our Data team later that evening
once the campaign has received maximum contact engagement.
Those contacts are sent through our Call-Verification (CV) team to
ensure their authenticity the next day. At that point, Client Services
receives the leads back and preps them for client delivery.
Does your Client Services team leverage agile project management,
reporting systems, and client communications as part of its
roadmap for client success and retention? Can you offer details
and examples around each?
We absolutely do, and we’d be completely insane without them! We
use a whole series of checks and balances to make sure that we’re on
track to fulfill client campaigns within their time-line and to keep the
rest of the HiP team up to date on where each campaign and client
stands.
After a few months of searching, we were finally able to come to a
consensus on a project management system for HiP to utilize (to
make all of our lives easier). We went with Axosoft, which is typically
a software development PMS. This enabled us to personalize the
entire system to mimic our unique work-flow. We’re only a few weeks
into on-boarding the system, and everyone absolutely loves it.
We also use the Integrate platform for reporting and delivering leads,
providing a method to double check that each campaign is being
delivered with the appropriate data. We are able to deliver leads to
clients in whatever manner they prefer, whether it is directly through
the platform, via API, or by a simple CSV file.
What other steps, meetings, SLAs or processes do you have in
place to ensure client expectations are met?
Internally, we stay in constant communication with each other to
ensure that all client needs are being met, and that all the pieces are
in motion to stay on schedule. We meet with the data team and the
creative team at least once each day to make sure that we are on the
same page and ready for the next day’s broadcasts and deliveries.
As for our clients, we firmly believe that each and every client has
a unique set of requirements, wants, and needs, and we shape our
process around those individually. Certain clients like to communicate
via email on an as-needed basis, while others like to have scheduled
calls to discuss overall planning. We love either.
What techniques do you use to conserve business when a client
relationship is damaged or broken?
The best technique is obviously to never let a relationship make it to
that point. Unfortunately, sometimes it happens – where we seem to
be moving in different directions. Any time I have seen this happen,
it’s been due to poor communication or miscommunication. The first
step is always to sit down with that client, one-on-one, and go over
the issues. Once these have been put on the table, acknowledge these
We firmly believe that each and
every client has a unique set of
requirements, wants and needs.

issues and figure out how to move forward. If this means shifting
the communication methods or honing the internal processes to
better serve that particular client, then by all means, we’ll make it
happen. Sometimes on the agency side it is easy to get stuck in our
process, as we get lost in the daily chaos. However, taking the time
to understand and listen to your client may enlighten you to a newer,
better, and more efficient way of doing things.
Where do you see Client Services going in 2015 and beyond?
Client Services here at HiP will maintain its role as the hub of current
client relationships. We are striving to make our communication
techniques more efficient and effective, and ensure increased client
satisfaction across the board. As HiP itself grows and new clients are
on-boarded, the Client Services team will have to adjust the way to do
things while maintaining our flexibility and efficiency. Each new client
brings a new set of requirements, needs, and desires, which provide
us an opportunity to get creative about our current process.

Technology, at HiP, drives every aspect of the business. What are
the types of tools you and your team use each day to accomplish
our task of quality demand creation for clients?
We would not be able to deliver quality leads to our clients without
a robust database of contacts and companies from which segment
pursuant to the demographic and firmographic requirements of our
clients. We utilize a relational database model using SQL (Structured
Query Language) to pinpoint and extract target groups for loading
onto our ESP platform for email broadcasting. In addition to the
contact/company data, we also capture and store hard bounce and
unsubscribe records in our database for exclusion from all future
campaigns. We also capture engagement metrics across all our
campaigns which allows us to send broadcasts on multiple IP’s by
non-engaged vs. engaged for which we are realizing 5-10% open rates
for our previously engaged contacts. Beyond our relational database,
Excel is our primary tool utilized to extract, translate, and load data
across our various systems.
Ultimately, creating a lead at HiP, begins with your data. Can you
describe the “journey” a contact record makes from data source to
client delivery?
Contacts start life out in our database with all the corresponding
demographic and firmographic information. On a monthly basis,
we send the entire database through email hygiene to identify
undeliverable and spam-trap contact records which are then removed
Q&A WITH ED GUNDRUM
ED GUNDRUM
VICE PRESIDENT
OF TECHNOLOGY
with
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TECHNOLOGY
Ed Gundrum is HiP’s Vice President of Technology. Ed joined
HiP after spending more than 10 years at Pitney Bowes Soft-
ware, where he supervised data analysis. His background in
information management, coupled with his business acumen,
make Ed an important contributor to tactical and strategic de-
cision making. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Utica College
and an MBA from Golden Gate University. As the Vice Presi-
dent of Technology, Ed and the Data team are tasked manage-
ment of HiP’s contact database, as well as analysis, reporting,
and modeling.

from our database. Upon receipt of an insertion order, we extract
the matching contacts from our database and load them into our
email platform for the campaign broadcasts. Engagement results
are extracted after the campaign is complete and loaded into our
instance of Salesforce.com for processing by our Call Verification
team to primarily validate titles and phone numbers. Once Call
Verification is complete, the resulting “valid” contacts are identified
and provided to Client Services for review and delivery to our clients.
The final step in the contacts journey is to upload records back into
our database and apply updating information discovered by our Call
Verification team, such as title, phone number, department, etc.,
which is important, especially if the contact has changed jobs or
been promoted, and allows us to segment them correctly for
future campaigns.
What is the biggest Technology challenge you face in the
business today?
Our use of technology allows us to accurately segment our data
and to provide the most targeted leads to our clients. Our biggest
challenge is efficiently and effectively managing the volume of data
that we have and maintaining its accuracy. Data stewardship is
crucial in allowing us to deliver targeted leads to our clients, so we
are constantly reviewing titles, departments, and functional levels
to ensure these are maintained and updated accordingly. We use
automation/scripting as much as possible, but we are always looking
at better ways or available tools to assist in this endeavor.
Where do you see HiP’s use of Technology and Data going
in 2015 and beyond?
We will continue to focus on data stewardship and refined
segmentation models in 2015. This will allow us to “right-size” our
target groups, which in turn will reduce email volume and produce
results more closely aligned with our client needs. Focused target
groups also reduced fatigue and unsubscribe rates, improves
outcomes, and reduce time spent internally on reviewing and
filtering the campaign results, on call verification, and overall reduced
processing time. Another area of focus for 2015 involves building
a Topical Engagement Model which will utilize two plus years of
engagement by campaign “topic” to produce a score of each contact’s
interest in various topics (e.g. Cloud Storage, Marketing Automation,
Network Security, etc.). Our hope is to layer these scores into our
segmentation model and to build our target groups with those
contacts that have shown a prior level of interest in the offering of
our clients. Additionally, we hope to build out a campaign quoting
tool which will allow our Sales team to quickly determine the size
of target groups available and quickly provide accurate and
competitive quotes.
Let us know what you think.
Do you have any questions for Ed?
How does HiP’s data processes
compare to that of your organization?
What are your biggest challenges
in working with data?
Q&A WITH ED GUNDRUM
Our use of technology allows us
to accurately segment our data
and provide the most targeted
leads to our clients.

Zach Klinger is HiP’s Director of Business Development. Zach is
a proud Ithaca College Alumni, earning both his Bachelor’s and
MBA there. Before joining HiP, Zach began his business devel-
opment career with ChannelEyes – a Gartner Cool Vendor that
offers an enterprise mobile platform design to streamline com-
munication with channel partners. Zach brings his unique brand
of relationship-oriented selling to HiP’s Business Development
team. Since arriving at HiP, Zach has helped to on-board a slew
of new brands and agencies, both established and emerging.
Based on what you know of other agencies in the B2B demand
generation space, what do you describe as differentiating about
how HiP gets the job done for clients?
Demand generation is a combination of science (data, automation
software) and art (targeting, content). The main HiP differentiating
factor is our blend of this duo.
Rather than utilizing a rigid, step-by-step approach to demand gen,
HiP treats every campaign uniquely, providing it with the attention
and strategic vision it deserves. First and foremost, we allow our
clients to tell their own story. We operate as brand guardians, aiming
to act as the unseen seeder in the harvest process. We get to market
with exceptional speed while remaining flexible and agile during the
campaign creative process.
Our creative services team and small army of copywriters produce
derived content (abstracts, landing pages, thank you pages, etc.) to
be approved by the client within 48 hours. The carefully crafted
message is then broadcasted to a precisely defined target audience
during optimal time frames. HiP keeps historical broadcast records
that allows us to track engagement by days of the week, time of day,
type of offering, target group, etc. – this is key. It’s also vital to note
that clients have dozens of targeting options ranging from job title,
industry, department, geography, company size, revenue, etc.
Another big differentiating factor of HiP’s services resides near the
end of the process. Our team of call verification analysts verify each
lead delivered. Without ever fatiguing the lead, a member of this team
will likely speak to a gatekeeper to confirm the current employment
and title of the lead. A brief 30 second call makes a noticeable
Q&A WITH ZACH KLINGER
with
QA&
BUSINESS
DEVELOPMENT
ZACH KLINGER
DIRECTOR OF
BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

difference in lead quality and return rate. In sum, HiP is efficient.
Despite implementing intricate practices throughout the campaign
process, HiP never fails to act swiftly and effectively to deliver the
highest quality leads from your defined audience.
With HiP as a content-centric demand gen agency, we strive to
‘drink our own champagne’ when we do demand generation for
ourselves. Can you describe what that means to you?
In short – this means utilizing methods that are tried and true. Our
own internal best practices, if you will. Start to finish would look
something like this:
First – ensuring that we choose the most appropriate asset for the
defined target audience of that particular campaign (content,
language, tone, design, stats, etc.). Is this going to resonate with my
audience? Am I accomplishing my primary goal? The primary goal
being high-level brand awareness and familiarity with the product or
service at hand – and perhaps shaking loose some low hanging fruit.
Second – optimizing subject lines, abstracts, and calls to action. We
cover all of the minute details before broadcast.
Third – responsive form and email design for mobile users. It is
crucial to account for this audience.
Fourth – optimizing the broadcast schedule by utilizing historical
engagement data. We like to get granular – time of day, day of week,
and accounting for time zones and target group fatigue, etc.
Fifth – the big question is always, what do you do when the
campaign is over? We like to personally send one to one email leads,
thank them for their interest in the topic, and finally, offer to answer
any questions or provide guidance on future endeavors. We’ll also
provide a supplementary piece of content to keep the lead engaged.
This methodology is tried and true, and has produced fruitful
demand gen harvests for HiP and our clients countless times.
In most companies, sales and marketing alignment is an elusive
goal. How would you say that’s different at HiP?
Why does it work here?
Sales and Marketing alignment is crucial in any business for a
plethora of reasons, including setting expectations, planning and
executing campaigns, analyzing results, and determining what
success looks like.
Advantages at HiP include close office proximity. Yes, it makes a
difference. This is especially helpful because the next success
factor to our alignment is the interweaving of work. My Marketing
Director, Matt Leap, involves me in writing campaign language and
I typically serve as his proofer of copy/content. Imagine that? In
turn, I ask my Marketing Director to assist me with crafting follow-up
messaging to leads. Essentially, we intertwine our efforts while
leveraging our individual strengths. I’m more process, big picture,
communication oriented while Matt is more detail and numbers
oriented. We also take on joint projects to collaborate, most recently
working with our Creative Services Director, Jory Hutchins, to
redesign our entire website.
We both understand our success is vested in the other’s
performance. Successful marketing campaigns equate to sales.
We get to market with exceptional
speed while remaining flexible
and agile during the campaign
creative process.

And of course, more sales means more money in his budget!
Finally, we travel to trade shows together and stay well versed in
the other’s road-map.
So what do you keep in your business development briefcase?
Being responsible for business development at HiP requires attention
to detail. Typical buyer persona’s include syndicators, agencies, and
direct clients. Depending on their needs, solutions will range from
traditional email marketing lead generation, sales prospecting, or
webinar/event audience recruitment. I’ve been fortunate enough
to help implement each of these solutions to companies from
syndicators to start-ups.
Oh, and in regards to my physical business development briefcase–
I don’t have one. But that is a great idea!

JORY HUTCHINS
CREATIVE SERVICES
DIRECTOR
Jory Hutchins is the Director of Creative Services at HiP. Jory
joined HiP as a Web Designer, soon after graduating from the Col-
lege of St. Rose. He quickly rose through the ranks to his current
role. Jory brings a diverse skill set that encompasses technol-
ogy, design, communications, and project management. Jory
and the Creative Services team create the derived content that
enables client campaigns in addition to miscellaneous content
creation in support of Marketing and Sales. The creative output
of Jory’s team graces the walls throughout our office, with stellar
examples of work done for Dell, Google, VMware, IBM, Oracle, and
many others.
In your opinion, what is it about HiP as a demand generation agency
that is unique from more traditional marketing agencies?
What sets HiP apart from traditional marketing agencies is our
speed to market. Most all of our creative team is in-house, and
because of this, we are able to get through the creative process very
quickly and supply a proof of concept for the client usually within 48
hours. This means that the asset will get copy written by one of our
experienced copywriters; sent to a web designer to develop a creative
set comprised of an email, a landing page and a confirmation page;
and ultimately tested to ensure browser/email compatibility, all within
48 hours. This speed to market requires an experienced and
dedicated team with a strong attention to detail to ensure nothing
falls through the cracks.
Can you describe ‘a day in the life’ of a new client asset as it flows
through our design process?
The design process of a new client asset was outlined briefly in the
last question, but let’s dive into a more detailed view. First – The asset
is sent to a copywriter who writes the promotional copy of the asset,
including enticing titles and subject lines.
Second – The asset and copy is sent to one of our in-house web
designers who create an email, a landing page, and a confirmation
page. All of our designs are responsive and in-line with modern web
design trends. We ensure that every design we create can be viewed
on any device which is very important considering nearly 60% of our
readers open the email on a smart-phone.
Q&A WITH JORY HUTCHINS
with
QA&
CREATIVE
SERVICES

Third – The email, landing page, and confirmation page are tested in
Litmus across all major email clients and browsers to ensure that the
content can be consumed properly no matter what combination the
reader uses.
Lastly – The proof of concept is sent to the client. If all looks good,
then we are clear to begin broadcasting. If they want any changes, we
will gladly make them and send them back for approval, but usually
the client is very pleased with the first proof of concept.
What important design, copy-write, or analytics tools are involved
in the HiP creative work-flow?
As mentioned, everything we create is responsive by nature. Given the
current technology trends shifting towards mobile, this is a no-brainer.
We use a series of basic templates to ensure each email is consistent
and responsive.
We also utilize third-party tools in our design process. One of these
tools is Litmus, which allows us to test each of our designs to ensure
that they look good across all major browsers and email clients.
Another tool that we use is SendForensics, which allows us to dig into
the code/copy to look for issues that could affect deliver-ability of
the email. Over time, we can use this tool to find which phrases and
words most often affect deliver-ability and avoid them in the future
giving our emails the best possible chance to reach every in-box.
What is your group’s greatest challenge today?
Trying to stay on top of web design trends and incorporate them in
our designs. Like technology, web design is a constantly changing
field and requires us to be always changing our designs to stay
modern. What was modern one month may be considered outdated
the next month. These shifts can be easy to miss when we are
producing the number of designs that we do each month, which is
why we are always sharing links and bookmarks that we find when
doing personal research. We try to sit down as often as we can and
discuss our designs and how we can improve them.
As we progress into 2015 and beyond, what is your sense of new
tools, approaches and technologies that will become part of the
design process?
Our biggest focus moving forward is to get a robust content
management system on top of all of our topic-based domains where
we host our content. This would make it much easier to get from the
email to the promoted content and when that happens, everybody
wins. Aside from the CMS, we are always looking for new tools to test
our designs and track how they perform to ensure that we are doing
our part of the HiP process to the best of our ability.
Q&A WITH JORY HUTCHINS

JIMMY DORATO
CALL VERIFICATION
COORDINATOR
Jimmy Dorato is HiP’s Call Verification (CV) Coordinator*. Jimmy
is currently an MBA student at the College of Saint Rose. He’s
been part of CV from its original deployment and has helped it to
evolve to where it is today. Call Verification has become an im-
portant part of HiP’s lead delivery process, providing clients with
the most accurate and up-to-date contact data possible. Jimmy
and the other CV team members are tasked with calling contacts
and confirming that our information is up to date.
*Since this interview was conducted, Jimmy has been promoted to Data Oper-
ations Manager, giving him expanded responsibilities to manage the CV team,
manipulate production data, and ensure timely delivery of such information.
Tell us what Call Verification entails at HiP. What technologies
are used?
The Call Verification team at HiP focuses on one thing: data
validation. We take the data from campaigns and confirm the title,
company name, and phone number, thus ensuring the top-quality
records are delivered to our clients. Most of our verification comes
from speaking with an operator or a front desk receptionist at the
companies that we call. This works out well because these people
are often more than willing to help us – friendliness and politeness is
key for us. Friendliness tends to produce more friendliness. There
really is nothing better than a friendly exchange that gets the
information we need for our clients. As far as technology, we use a
combination of Salesforce and an add-on called InsideSales to sift
through the data quickly and efficiently.
This combination allows us to make anywhere from 200-300 calls
per day, without ever once dialing a phone number. We also use
LinkedIn for the information that is not available through the phone,
that is, when we get someone’s voicemail or an unsure operator.
These three pieces of technology are what allows us to do our jobs
with such efficiency. Furthermore, InsideSales custom-built a button
for us in their system, which allows us to search names LinkedIn and
return matched values without leaving the interface. This saves both
time and effort for all of us.
Q&A WITH JIMMY DORATO
with
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VERIFICATION

How is call verification different that lead verification?
What are its goals?
Well, lead verification is a lot more hands-on and (usually) requires the
lead verifier to actually converse with a potential lead to gather the
required information and interest. Call verification is more basic data
collection; more often than not, the verifier never talks to the actual
lead. In simple terms, call verification would be done before lead
verification because we would want to ensure the phone number, title,
and company name of the potential lead qualifies, before we take the
time to get to know them better for our clients.
When you aren’t able to make contact by phone, do you have
an alternate method to enhance call verification?
As I mentioned before, LinkedIn is a great tool for such a situation;
however, there is really no substitute for getting someone on the
phone and validating the information that way. It is no secret that
information gathered online is not always accurate or up to date. With
LinkedIn, we have to trust that the information is right, which requires
the lead to keep it updated. This really lowers our confidence level in
the information. We strive to be 100% sure of all of our data before we
deliver it back to the Data Department. If there is any doubt we are
sure to let everybody know.
How has your expanded role in data changed how you
view CV/Research?
My expanded role has really given me a better view into the HiP
process as a whole. Outside of just call verification, there is a ton
of work that is put in by our Data Department in broadcasting our
clients’ messages to the right target groups, collecting that data from
those broadcasts, and then checking (and double checking and triple
checking) that everything is right before Call Verification even sees
the data. As a result, I am even more careful when I am doing Call
Verification and research because attention to detail and validity is so
important throughout the process. In all, it has shown me just how
many moving pieces there are in creating and delivering a lead to our
clients. At the same time, it has cemented the validity and importance
of call verification in the lead generation process. Without the Call
Verification team, we would have a much lower confidence level in the
records that go to our clients – and, as we all know, if the clients are
unhappy, nobody is happy.
Q&A WITH JIMMY DORATO

CATE MILLER
CLIENT ENGAGEMENT DIRECTOR
Cate Miller is HiP’s Director of Client Engagement. Cate was
HiP’s first hire and has been associated with the company for
all of its 6 years of existence. In this time, she has worked in
various areas across the business, including Data, Voice Pros-
pecting, and Client Support. Her current focus is the manage-
ment of HiP’s largest, long-term client relationships.
Can you tell us what Client Engagement’s mission is at HiP?
In a broad sense, Client Engagement’s mission at HiP is grow client
relationships. To do this, I try to be as adaptable as possible and focus
on client satisfaction.
When a current client runs a campaign, I am involved from the
very beginning. I quote new offers and coordinate campaigns in
association with our Data, Design, and Client Services teams. I’m
lucky to work in such a communicative environment; it certainly
makes my job a lot easier!
By gathering knowledge from my co-workers and staying up to date
on our current contracts and campaign schedule, I am able to give the
best possible information to clients on new offers. This ensures we
follow best practices and give the client the best achievable outcome!
How is HiP’s Client Engagement what is similar or different, based
on what you know of this role at other B2B agencies?
One major difference in my role here at HiP, versus CE teams in other
agencies, is my collaboration with other departments. As I mentioned
before, communication is key for success! Another key differentiator
is our detailed client records. This documentation allows for more
Q&A WITH CATE MILLER
with
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CLIENT
SERVICES

insight when quoting new offers, suggesting time-lines, and predicting
yields. This data is not just my holy grail, it can also be useful to my
teammates in Sales, Marketing, and Client Services.
What’s ‘a day in the life’ like for HiP’s Director of
Client Engagement?
Though I try to plan as much of my day out as possible, the majority
of it is unpredictable. I handle everything from quoting new offers to
drafting insertion orders to covering off on broadcast schedules and
deliveries with clients. As Client Engagement Director, I have to be
ready for anything!
What safeguards or processes are used to make sure we meet
client expectations?
At HiP, we have our own set of unique “best practices”. To guarantee
that we can deliver our clients the best possible leads, we segment
our data into target groups, based on various fields from our database
(department, employee range, title level, etc.). Therefore, we only send
a client’s campaigns to the group that is most likely to consume the
content. Over our long campaign history, we’ve discovered optimal
broadcasting times, which we use to drive the most engagement.
We are also very conscious of fatigue to our contacts and we make
sure to leave an appropriate amount of time between scheduled
broadcasts to the same group. This ensures that people stay
interested and consume the content without feeling harassed.
Finally, our data is also consistently hygiened, which helps us make
sure we have the most up-to-date information on our leads.
When a client relationship is damaged, do you have techniques for
conserving the business?
Absolutely – although we never want that to happen – we always
have to be prepared for such a situation. As I said earlier, we listen
to clients and try to accommodate them as much as we can.
Obviously, there are some situations where both sides are just too
far apart. Even then, we do everything we can for a clean and amiable
break. This goes back to being easy to do business with, we do our
best to be a well-oiled machine here at HiP.
In the remainder of 2015, what are Client Engagement’s biggest
challenges and initiatives?
I’d say our biggest challenge for the remainder of 2015 is scaling.
Between ongoing business with our current clients and constantly
incoming new business, we have to grow to meet increasing demand.
Client Services is always trying to build upon the prior month’s
business, which means there are always challenges ahead. There’s
nothing I want more than to see HiP continue to grow and enjoy
even greater success!
Q&A WITH CATE MILLER
We’ve discovered optimal
broadcasting times, which we use to
drive the most engagement.

MATT LEAP
MARKETING DIRECTOR
Matt Leap is the Marketing Director at HiP. Matt has a Market-
ing Degree from Champlain College and brings several years
of both B2B and B2C marketing experience to HiP. He heads
up all of the content marketing endeavors at HiP, supporting
both new customer acquisition and customer development. As
importantly, he’s proven himself quite valuable in strategic plan-
ning and in the development of our efforts in branding, promo-
tion, reporting, lead generation, and lead nurture. Matt is also
a frequent contributor to the HiP blog, known for his insightful
original posts.
Matt, you previously were in marketing management with a
consumer brand. Can you tell us what is different in your
day-to-day when you compare that experience to working for
a B2B agency?
At my previous job, I primarily focused on eCommerce. My top goals
were driving qualified traffic, optimizing the website for conversion,
and reporting on my efforts. Though we certainly worked toward
repeat customers through our subscriber base and re-marketing
efforts, things centered on the individual transaction. Our analyt-
ics made things incredibly transparent–the success (or failure) of
a campaign could be put into very definite, monetary terms. It’s a
double-edged sword. On one hand, very clear ties to revenue made
it easy to justify the costs from efforts like AdWords. On the other
hand, it creates a temptation to overlook efforts that didn’t have as
direct a role in revenue.
Here, in the B2B world, purchase decisions are simply more
complicated; there are longer sales cycles, greater educational
needs, larger purchase amounts, multiple decision makers, smaller
target audiences, and so on. To compensate, we have to put a much
greater emphasis on content and strategy. Conversions in the B2B
Q&A WITH MATT LEAP
with
QA&
MARKETING

marketing/sales funnel aren’t as cut and dry as a transaction
Content marketing efforts are notoriously difficult to measure. We
have to spend more time ‘reading tea leaves’, so to speak. We look at
measurable behaviors that we believe are precursors to the purchase
and assign relative value accordingly. Through segmentation and
personas, we’re then able to monitor and shape the buying vision with
as much relevance as possible. This type of focus on individual
prospects is something that you wouldn’t see in a lot of B2C
industries, especially eCommerce.
These days, a marketing manager has to be a technologist as much
as anything. What tools are you using to measure SEO, assess
deliver-ability, manage social media, etc.?
That’s a very accurate observation. Today, digital marketing has
really taken center stage – it’s become more prominent than many
traditional outlets. With this shift comes new capabilities for
placement, personalization, and reporting. Pair that with an
industry-wide fixation on data and you can see why technology
has become so important to marketing.
There seems to be marketing technologies for just about anything
these days. There’s no shortage of information and communications
around these offerings (as my inbox can attest). Finding useful tools
certainly isn’t an issue, rather, it’s the evaluation and prioritization that
proves to be a challenging. Just about any tool out there will provide
some sort of value, the key is to weight that value in terms of
implementation time, impact on work-flow, compatibility, and
opportunity cost.
At HiP, we have several tools to support core areas of our marketing
efforts and our business as a whole. We recently subscripted to
MozPro to help us improve SEO on our new site. Moz allows us to
track links/mentions, optimize for specific keywords, and compare
our efforts to our competitors. As for deliver-ability, we use a tool
called SendForensics (both for our own marketing communications
and or clients). SendForensics allows us to judge the deliver-ability
of a message before sending. It provides a deliver-ability percentage
and recommendations–both in terms of content (word choice,
tone, coding syntax, etc.) and infrastructure (DKIMs, IP reputation,
etc.)–to improve. Finally, we use Hootsuite to manage our social
media accounts. Hootsuite allows us to schedule posts across
multiple accounts and networks, as well as provides some reporting
capabilities. On the horizon, we’ll be adding a marketing automation
system to help tie our efforts together. By integrating with our
sales team’s Saleforce instance, this system will help us to more
intelligently and effectively nurture our leads.
In 2015, implementation of content marketing is the standard by
which many brands and agencies are gauging their success. At HiP,
can you share what your mission is in that regard?
Essentially, our content marketing efforts have five key goals,
which we often refer to as pillars. Those goals are brand awareness,
lead generation, thought leadership, process differentiation, and
demonstration of value. Each pillar has a set of sub-goals and tactics
associated with it.
Each pillar of our strategy (and its associated activities) is measured
independently. For each pillar, we have a “scorecard”, which allows
us to track key metrics over time. Though these metrics don’t tell the
whole story on their own, they provide reassurance that we’re moving
in the right direction for each of our major goals.
Q&A WITH MATT LEAP
By integrating with our sales team’s
Saleforce instance, this system will
help us to more intelligently and
effectively nurture our leads.

As HiP’s Marketing Director, how do you find the execution of
content marketing for lead generation to be different from its
use in raising brand awareness?
As I mentioned, both lead generation and brand awareness are
separate pillars of our marketing strategy. Accordingly, both have
different sub-goals and tactics associated.
For example, for lead generation, we currently use a combination of
inbound and outbound tactics. On the inbound side, we use gated
content, blog subscriptions, and contact forms to generate leads,
while on the outbound side, we use primarily events and email
marketing. As for brand awareness, we use blogging, social media
marketing, and SEO optimization to help establish a strong web
presence. We also do some event sponsorship, promotional items,
and various co-branding activities to help promote our brand.
Q&A WITH MATT LEAP

There are many takeaways from this ebook!
Fundamentally, though, what it demonstrates is that
agency success in content-centric demand generation
today depends upon the sustainable orchestration of
many factors. Those key elements include:
Leveraged thought leadership content.
Intelligently and responsibly managed outbound
communications.
Applying historical data and engagement insights
to optimize outcomes.
Marketing automation to optimally manage
production and collect/analyze intelligence.
Clearly, without today’s marketing technology,
achieving consistent outcomes would require a
herculean effort. That said, without applying the
passion, engagement, dedication and intelligence
of those behind the controls, our mission would be
impossible to achieve. As I stated at the outset …
“It takes an entire agency to create a meaningful lead.”
BRET SMITH
FOUNDER & CEO

Inside the Demand Generation Agency

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