Customer Success & Marketing: Getting Engaged?

They say opposites attract. We say it’s a good thing they don’t, at least a lot of the time.

Imagine if the moon and sun were magnetically pulled toward one another, or you and your crummy boss found all that haterade a little too irresistible. The point? In many ways, opposites should stay opposite and call it good.

Yet, sometimes, we need a little more of that oppositional attraction. Marketing and customer success are one such case.

Typically, we see these two departments as having little or nothing to do with one another. Marketing is responsible for pulling people in, educating them through Very Informative Blog Posts, and getting them to sign up for the free trial. A good day in the marketing department is one in which stuff converts, like, really well.

Customer Success sits at the other end of the spectrum. Their job is to help folks get started, answer questions as they arise, and give them the tools they need to use your SaaS product well. There, a good day is when many people don’t bail, leaving nothing but dust and harmful reviews in their wake.

At first glance, it’s easy to see why these are opposites – and easy to make the case that they should stay that way.

We respectfully disagree. Companies that manage to unite these two departments get more signups, boast happier customers, and make more money overall. If marketing and customer success aren’t engaged at your company, they should be.

And we’ve got an eBook to prove it.

Marketing and Customer Success: Why Are We Even Talking About This?

As we’ve said, marketing and customer success usually work far away, with a healthy buffer – sales – sitting squarely between them.

As such, most people (and the organizations for which they work) assume this is the natural order. Oil and water. Never the twain shall meet. Et cetera, et cetera.

Yet most people, when pressed, can’t tell you why the two “should” be so distant from one another. Simplified explanations run along the lines of “Well, one department handles leads and prospects, while the other takes care of people who are already customers.”

That makes sense, as far as that goes. However, it fails to consider that existing customers were once prospects, and prospects will become customers. At least, they will if all goes well.

No matter where someone is in the sales funnel/on the customer success bowtie/insert metaphor of choice, if you want them to stick around and give you money, they’ve at least got that in common. That means your audience should be treated as valuable, from leads to prospects to new customers to old customers to superfans.

Back to the original question above: why are we talking about this? And the answer is that many companies fail to treat significant portions of their audiences as though they have value.

In fact, it’s usually the most valuable audience members that get the slightest consideration, if you’ll believe it. And we’d bet our morning mocha that, with the best of intentions, you’re falling into that very same trap.

Want to find out more?

A Mismatched Numbers Game

A trap? you say. We love our customers! We don’t set traps for them! We only set traps for the Break Room Yogurt Thief, but they’re proving more elusive than we expected …

Naturally, no one means to ambush their customers, let them down, or lose them. That’s obviously counterintuitive when it comes to the whole service-for-money exchange. The truth is, you’re setting a trap for yourself by sending your budget in the wrong direction.

We don’t have time to thoroughly hash out why this is here, but we take a deep dive into our eBook, so feel free to download that at any time.

The short version is this: most companies spend a considerable portion (usually the majority) on leads and prospects, trying to wrestle them through the door and turn them into customers. That means your marketing department probably has a massive, possibly even bloated, budget.

With the leftovers, you direct a few funds toward customer success. They do what they can to help everyone who has signed on the dotted line, but usually, it’s not enough.

The genuinely tragic reality is that your existing customers are the ones who pay your bills, keep your lights on, and provide free marketing – but most companies don’t treat them like they matter much at all.

The more your company grows, the more out of balance this ratio becomes, with current users becoming ever-more-shorted as you continue to prioritize growth over customer satisfaction.

The negative reviews grow. Churn seems endless. Occasionally, you consider simply buggering off and taking up chicken farming in Majorca.

Before you do, though, might we suggest you read our eBook to get some answers?

So Happy Togetheeeeeer: Sneak Peeks From the eBook

We’re not saying you can’t do the chicken-farming thing. However, there is a solution to this problem, and it involves a little matchmaking.

See, if you can introduce marketing and customer success … and get them to like one another … and eventually agree to get married … then your company will see significant changes as a result. Where you formerly had a siloed company whose departments jockeyed for some room in the budget and attention from above, you will increasingly see a well-oiled machine whose departments share values, goals, and credit for a job well done.

That’s what our book is all about.

Still not sure if downloading the eBook is right for you?

Fair enough, let us tell you more about what you can expect. Yes, we will tackle some of the abovementioned issues, but it contains many more gems than that. In it, you’ll learn answers to such questions as:

• Why is there such a massive disconnect between marketing and customer success?
• Where does budget play into what’s going wrong?
• How can you reallocate your finances to see more revenue?
• Why does marketing matter to customer success?
• What role does customer success play in marketing?
• What role do digital learning academies play in fixing churn?
• Where in the customer lifecycle should you introduce training?
• How exactly can you connect marketing and customer success for maximum results?

These and other questions matter inextricably to your bottom line, and failing to account for them is keeping many a company well below its potential earnings threshold. If you don’t want that to be your story, it’s time to make a change, and our free eBook is the first step.

With the right mindset, you can see higher marketing conversions than ever before while simultaneously giving customer success the tools it needs to keep those new customers around for the long haul.

No, it’s not magic. It’s simple math, and we’re here to tell you exactly how it’s done.

All right, ready to get the whole scoop? Just click that shiny button below, and you’ll get it delivered straight to your inbox this second.