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Episode 88

A B2B Marketing Masterclass with Jon-Erik Valetti, Head of Marketing at CARFAX

On average, millennials stay with an employer for just two years and nine months. But after 17 years leading marketing at CARFAX's Banking and Insurance Group, Jon-Erik Valetti has cracked the code on marketing and sales alignment.

In this episode, Elena and Angela explore how Jon-Erik transformed B2B marketing within a major consumer brand. From viewing marketing as a revenue center to building a thought leadership strategy that resonates with millennial buyers who make up 75% of B2B buying teams, learn how the Banking and Insurance Group grew from 11 employees to a major revenue driver for CARFAX.

Topics Covered

• [01:00] Why millennials job-hop—and what keeps talent long-term

• [05:00] Creating shared goals between marketing and sales

• [10:00] Using a flywheel approach to define team roles

• [15:00] Building B2B brands within a consumer company

• [20:00] Why modern B2B buyers want self-guided research

• [24:00] The marketing experiment that led to angry faxes

Resources:

2024 MarketingWeek Article

Jon-Erik's LinkedIn

CARFAX Marketing Flywheel

Today's Hosts

Elena Jasper

VP Marketing

Angela Voss

Chief Executive Officer

Jon-Erik Valetti

Head of Marketing at CARFAX

Transcript

Elena: I'm Elena Jasper. I run the marketing team here at Marketing Architects, and I'm joined by my co-host, Angela Voss, the CEO of Marketing Architects. And we're joined by a guest today, Jon-Erik Valetti.

Jon-Erik is the head of marketing at Carfax. He's worked at the brand for over 17 years and leads the marketing efforts for the division responsible for their largest revenue growth, the Banking and Insurance Group. He earned a spot in Marketo's annual Fearless 50 class, recognizing the top marketing thought leaders worldwide.

He's an expert in bold marketing transformations and connecting marketing to revenue growth. And we're excited to learn from him today. Welcome Jon-Erik.

Jon-Erik: Thank you. I'm happy to be here. I'm really excited to talk a little bit about B2B marketing.

Angela: Absolutely. I don't often come across someone that's been with the same brand for 17 years. I think you and I both started at our current companies in 2007 somewhere around there. 17 years is a long time to be at one brand, especially for someone in the marketing function and so much has changed. I'm curious what's kept you at Carfax for so long.

Jon-Erik: Yeah, that's a great question, Angela. Millennials, we typically don't stay at one company for that long. Some people have said that millennials are the job-hopping generation.

And so I looked it up the other day and on average, a millennial will stay with an employer for two years and nine months. So as I approach 18 years, I think there's probably two reasons why I've stayed at Carfax that long. The first is really the opportunity. So when I started within the banking insurance group, I think I was employee number 11 or so, and the marketing they were doing was very, very limited.

They did some direct marketing via direct mail pieces and they did some conferences, so I saw a really great opportunity to develop out a robust marketing plan and team and help scale this new startup within a larger brand. Almost 18 years later, you think things might have changed a little bit, but what keeps me there now, still at almost 18 years later, is that opportunity still really exists.

Our team continues to innovate and bring new solutions to the marketplace, helping insurance carriers, auto lenders and other industry businesses make better decisions. Second, I think it's really the people that I work with. They're intelligent, they're team players. Everyone I work with on my management team has been there for over a decade.

So we really have a clear understanding of not only where we've been, but where we want to go and how our individual roles really can work together to achieve success.

Elena: That's amazing. That's a short time.

Jon-Erik: I tell my friends, they're like, I can't believe you've been there that long. And I did the math the other day. I think it's 43 percent of my life has been at Carfax. And when you look at it from that perspective, it's kind of eye opening.

Elena: Well, that's a testament to the company and must be a great brand to keep you around for that long. And I'm excited to get more into that with you today. So let's get into things. We're back with our thoughts on some recent marketing news. We always try to root our opinions and data research and what drives business results. And this interview with Jon-Erik is part of our effectiveness workshop.

It's a series where we talk to marketing leaders who are leading the way for effectiveness in the U.S., and I usually kick off our interviews with a piece of research or an article.

And for this one, I found one from Marketing Week. It's titled "Over a Third of B2B Marketers Often in Conflict with Sales.” It's written by Hannah Rash Bass. It summarizes findings from Marketing Week's 2024 State of B2B Marketing Survey. And according to the research, 34% of B2B marketers frequently experience tension with their sales teams.

The main reasons for this conflict include sales not understanding marketing's priorities and the perception that marketing exists solely to serve sales. 40% of marketers report that sales sees marketing's role as purely lead gen. 60% of marketers identify the head of sales as their most important internal relationship.

But only 33% feel that sales fully understands what marketing does. But on the positive side of things, 74% of marketers report having a close working relationship with sales. And that rises to 83% for senior marketers. So Jon-Erik, I wanted to open with that article because I was digging into Carfax's bank and insurance group or BIG division, which love that acronym.

And what stood out right away was your B2B focus and the fact that you are running marketing for a big revenue generating division within the larger Carfax brand. So I'm assuming that you work closely with sales and that you also have high expectations for how marketing influences revenue. So I want to start with this question: What does the relationship look like between marketing and sales at Carfax and how do you manage any potential friction between your two teams?

Jon-Erik: Yeah, great question. When I started at Carfax many years ago, marketing and sales were really siloed. And even though I was very young in my career, I knew the importance of generating alignment between those two teams. And so one of the first things I really focused on was creating that strong alignment between marketing, sales and even product.

And as you mentioned, of course, the teams aren't always going to agree, right? There's going to be friction, but there are a few things that we really focus on to try to limit that friction. So first, one of the things that we do that I think really helps is we identify and set shared goals. So for example, the sales team obviously has annual revenue goals and metrics that they're trying to hit. Well, my team has an annual marketing influenced revenue goal.

Sales has goals around number of new contracts, number of upsell contracts. My team has goals around the number of marketing influenced new contracts and the number of marketing influenced new upsell contracts.

When you have shared goals like that, it demonstrates that both teams are working towards the same thing. Second, when we build out our marketing personas and our messaging strategy, we include sales in that conversation.

And I think that's very important. They're the ones who are speaking directly with our prospects and our customers. So they have the best understanding of their pain and passion points. Third, communication is really key. We set bi-weekly marketing, sales and product meetings. So all three teams get together and we educate one another.

This is a really great way for us to have a better understanding of what's working well and what's not working well. For example, we're doing an upsell campaign right now and we want to get some qualitative feedback on how that campaign is performing. Also we want to know, have there been any changes within a particular vertical, like for the sales team and the auto finance vertical, our banks and credit unions, sharing with them any changes within the marketplace. Perhaps now they're seeing an increase in auto loan defaults. Well, if that's the case, then maybe marketing should change our message to really focus on how we can help them combat that challenge.

And finally, I think it's wise to really have a clear understanding of the role each team plays. So my marketing plan is based on a flywheel approach. So at the center of the flywheel are your customers. And then the outermost ring of that flywheel, you're looking to attract first, then engage, and then delight.

The idea being, if you attract customers, engage with them, delight them, those delighted customers will help you attract more customers and the flywheel will accelerate. So, in between the outermost ring and that center ring, I list the teams that are primarily responsible for each part of that flywheel and the metrics associated with those stages.

So when you think of attracting new folks, who's predominantly responsible for building that awareness and attracting folks? Well, that's marketing. But then when you think of engaging customers, that's really marketing and sales working together. And then when you think about delighting those customers, well, that's marketing working together with your account sales management team, or your account management team, and your customer service team.

So it really has a clearly defined set of players that are going to help us achieve these goals. And I've found that really following those steps has helped us maintain strong alignment between marketing and our sales teams.

Elena: I love how you broke that down. And especially the first point about shared goals. And it seems so simple, but I can see how it could be challenging in some organizations. If you've always been siloed, it probably takes work to bring everybody together, but having people definitely helps. So you talked a little bit there about your flywheel approach, how you approach marketing, but I wanted to ask you more about that because we've talked to actually quite a few different B2B CMOs as part of this series. And it's become clear that the job of a B2B CMO can vary a lot depending on your brand. So I'm curious, what's the job of your marketing team at Carfax and any tangible metrics or KPIs you're accountable for, if you could talk through any of that, that'd be great.

Jon-Erik: To answer this question, I like to give a little bit of background around how the banking insurance group is structured. So think of the banking insurance group or BIG, right? We call it BIG internally as a microcosm of Carfax. We have separate products and separate teams, and I've always viewed it when I started there many years ago as a startup, and our VC or our backer was Carfax Proper.

We have three core verticals that we work with. So there's insurance underwriting, obviously auto lenders are the financial services vertical and then insurance claims. And I have a marketing leader that's dedicated to serving each of those verticals, and they're responsible for obviously attracting, engaging, and delighting our customers.

So each leader is responsible for specific metrics at each stage of that flywheel. And they're really designed to help us achieve the overarching goal that is set around increasing revenue, acquiring new customers, and of course expanding adoption of new products or new initiatives. So for example, when speaking specifically around tangible metrics, if you look under the attract stage of the flywheel game plan, there are metrics around marketing generated new names, cost per marketing generated new name, number of unique visitors to our websites, whether that's Carfax for Insurers, Carfax for Lenders, Carfax for Claims, and of course, product awareness.

In the engage section, we're really looking at the number of marketing qualified leads, marketing influence new contracts or marketing influence upsell contracts, specific dollar amounts around marketing influence new contract revenue or an upsell contract revenue, and even the number of virtual event attendees.

And then in Delight, we're looking at our customer satisfaction scores. Did our NPS number go higher than a certain percentage? Did the NPS increase? What are our retention percentages looking like? Are we retaining our customers? Are we having a leaky bucket? And of course, the number of testimonials that we received, just to name a few. So there's a couple metrics that we really look at and that the team is responsible for across that entire flywheel.

Angela: Jon-Erik, I love that startup with backer as Carfax proper. That really puts you into the mindset of what you're trying to do and the importance of being able to drive results as that startup. Love the flywheel attract, engage delight. One of the things that we were excited about when we learned about your background was your interest in connecting marketing to business results and that impact, but it's not so easy to do. I think everyone's trying to do that and it looks so different across different brands, B2B, B2C. You've talked a lot just recently about what you measure, but how does your team measure and prove that impact of marketing efforts down to business bottom line?

Jon-Erik: Absolutely. So historically, a lot of people view marketing as a cost center. I always hear people say, look at all the money marketing spending on ads or look at the money they're spending on research, et cetera. And I really believe that marketing should be viewed as a revenue center. To that end, we have a dashboard that we create.

This dashboard shows the direct impact that marketing is making specifically as it relates to those metrics that we just discussed, such as marketing influence revenue.

Additionally, we share how each campaign performs not only during the campaign, but then of course, after the campaign ends. So for example, we're running a upsell nurture campaign that I mentioned earlier in our bi-weekly meeting with the sales team. We share the total number of marketing qualified leads, the number of marketing influenced revenue opportunity associated with those leads, and then the total marketing influenced recognized revenue from those leads that have become closed won.

Finally, these numbers are also shared with the entire team once the campaign is concluded in our internal monthly newsletter that we call the Big Month Ahead. So there really is a focus on full transparency into the impact marketing is making within the division. And anyone within the company inside BIG or outside of BIG can go on to what we call Fox Net, which is our intranet and see our dashboard and see how marketing is performing against the metrics we've set and the impact that we're making to the company.

Elena: I bet your CEO loves that. We were talking about marketing transparency on the show the other week and that sounds like a great tool for everybody. One thing I wanted to ask you about is how this BIG division works within Carfax because I'm guessing people listening are familiar with Carfax.

I am. We see them on TV all the time. They've got that Fox mascot. What is it like running B2B marketing for a division of Carfax when there's such a big, large consumer advertiser? What does that relationship look like? Because personally, I'm just going to be honest, when I was looking into your side of the business, I was like, okay, it's the B2B side, like the Fox is pretty cool.

But then as I dug into it, I was like, oh, this is super interesting. I really think it is - maybe I'm just a B2B marketing nerd. So I'm curious, how does that kind of relationship work within the brand?

Jon-Erik: Yeah. There are pros and cons, right? There are some challenges, some advantages. I think the biggest advantage of running a B2B marketing organization within a larger consumer brand is the fact that there is very strong brand awareness and specifically within Carfax, there's a very high level of trust within the brand.

The challenge is the majority of people will kind of view your company through that consumer lens. So when people think of Carfax, they think of 'I'm going to run a Carfax vehicle history report before I buy this car in Craigslist or wherever.' They also think of it as 'when I go to the dealer, I'm going to ask the dealer to show me the Carfax.'

That was a huge ad campaign we did. So this means that when we would go to insurance conferences or auto finance conferences or other B2B conferences, people would be a little confused as to why Carfax is there. Especially earlier on, we would have folks come up to our booth and say, "Wait a second, what is Carfax doing here?"

Elena: Do you know where you are?

Jon-Erik: Exactly, are you guys at the right conference? This is for actuaries and insurance actuaries, or insurance claims professionals or auto lenders. I don't understand why Carfax is here. So I knew that when I was building out my marketing strategy and my marketing vision for the banking insurance group, that I really needed to establish a branded house.

And I did that by creating the Carfax for Claims brand, Carfax for Insurers brand, and Carfax for Lenders brand. But then I needed to really position each of those brands as thought leaders within their respective markets. So now we routinely get asked to speak at industry events, or we see a very strong attendance in our virtual events and webinars that we host, and we're viewed as experts on the role data is playing to help these businesses make better decisions across their entire business.

So by positioning us as thought leaders, it's no longer "what is Carfax doing here?" It's "hey, can you come to my conference and speak about the role that you're playing in helping insurers make better decisions within their business process or lenders make better decisions across the entire auto loan life cycle?" So in terms of the relationship between the two teams, I think we have a really good working relationship.

We routinely bounce ideas off each other and support one another. I haven't really seen any sort of hiccup being part of a larger consumer brand and working with our consumer marketing team from a B2B perspective.

Elena: I love how you've leaned in instead of completely detaching yourself. You could have made just a whole new brand, whole new company, but I liked that idea of the branded house and working within the brand awareness that you already had and becoming more of a thought leader.

That's really smart. And speaking of brand awareness, that's sort of a hot topic right now in B2B marketing, like the thought of doing more brand campaigns and investing more in the long as well as the short. And it sounds like you're a bit of a case study for that. So one thing that I wanted to ask you about is marketing effectiveness, because short and long, that's kind of a principle of the marketing effectiveness movement you could say.

Elena: So we've been asking heads of marketing and CMOs that come on this podcast: What does marketing effectiveness mean to you? And do you agree with some different thought leaders that there's a gap here in the United States?

Jon-Erik: Yeah, it's an interesting topic. And when I think of marketing effectiveness, obviously the first thing that really comes to mind is the impact that marketing makes. So for example, is your demand generation strategy producing marketing influence revenue, or are your campaigns driving a noticeable increase in brand awareness that you just mentioned?

And one of the things that some marketers would say is they might say, "Oh, well, customer acquisition costs really equates to effective marketing. If you have a low customer acquisition cost, you're an effective marketer," but I don't think that's necessarily accurate. It's probably a really good idea to define the difference between effectiveness and efficiency.

Effectiveness is really producing that desired outcome - that marketing influence revenue we discussed before, or retention numbers or the awareness. That's really how you can measure your effectiveness while efficiency is more so achieving those desired outcomes with the least amount of effort or waste. So to me, a low customer acquisition cost, well, that demonstrates efficiency, but not necessarily effectiveness.

And I do think there is a little bit of a gap here in the United States. I hear a lot of marketers talking or touting high email open rates or email click rates, and they view that as a sign that their marketing is effective. Sometimes they tout the number of impressions that they're seeing generated by a campaign, and they view that as effectiveness. And to me, those are vanity metrics. Bots can create those numbers for you. We really need to go a layer deeper, I think, to really understand the effectiveness of marketing. So I'm not sure that within the United States, sometimes we go down to a deep enough level to really understand how effective our marketing is.

Angela: Totally agree. Jon-Erik, we believe deeply that a key piece to driving success for our brand is to uncover insights or positions that would be considered not the norm, really contrarian points of view. I think effectiveness versus efficiency, hopefully it becomes more than just a number. We're a culture that is obsessed with data and last click has put a lot of data in front of marketers that maybe has been harmful. I feel the pendulum swinging back a bit to how do we be effective versus just be efficient. And so we challenge ourselves to be contrarians at Marketing Architects. What would you say is your most contrarian marketing belief?

Jon-Erik: Yeah, so this is gonna sound a little funny, but I think the tactic of gating content should be rarely, if ever, used. It's an interesting thought, but around a decade ago, Forrester coined the term - you're probably familiar with the age of the consumer - to really describe how increased access to information has really shifted the balance from seller to buyer. These new B2B buyers, they want to be anonymous. They don't want folks to know who they are. They are emotional.

Typically, historically, you just thought of the consumer as emotional, but no, these new B2B buyers, they're emotional because the decisions they make could shape their company or their career. And they want to have unfiltered access to information that they can digest across multiple channels on their own terms. This preference for self-guided research is really especially strong amongst millennials.

I'm myself one and I do all my research before I go to buy something. I do all that self-guided research. I don't need to talk to a salesperson ahead of time. But I think this is important to note here because millennials now make up 75% of business buying teams. So these are who we're selling to as B2B buyers - these folks who really have a preference for self-guided research. So as a B2B marketer, we really need to focus on helping and not selling.

And we can do that by positioning our brands as strategic partners and showcasing our industry expertise. So these buyers, they want to hear from industry thought leaders. As I mentioned before, that's kind of why I positioned Carfax Banking Insurance Group and the three brands in our branded house that way. They want to hear from these industry thought leaders and if you're able to position your brand as a thought leader, but then you gate your content, I think you're really doing yourself a strong disservice.

Elena: Our head of content is going to love this interview because we actually share that contrarian belief.

Jon-Erik: I'm glad. Because sometimes there's a lot of back and forth within the marketplace. Some people are like, if this content's very valuable, you should gate it cause you're going to miss out on leads. And then there's other side of the house, which I fall in that if the content's not valuable, especially when 75% of your business buying teams are millennials, why are you gonna gate that content? I mean, myself, I've done it. I'll admit I've put in fake email addresses to get the content cause I wanna see it, but I don't wanna talk to anybody. I don't wanna talk to anybody until I raise my hand. The gate should be that contact us form at the end of the day. So you digest that content and then you raise your hand and say, "Hey, I'd like to get a little bit more information."

Angela: I think when you're in that mindset and you step into that position and embrace it, you start to see things like if we're just valuable to them repeatedly, they will come back. That's what we're trying to do.

Jon-Erik: Yeah. One of the things I appreciate that you all did is there's a lot of noise within the email channel and I'm a big subscriber to the idea of merging your online and offline marketing. And one of the things you guys did, I know you sent me emails about coming on this show, which I get hundreds of emails every day. And most of them are from vendors, and I just put them to the side, right? Focus on the ones that are most important to the business. But then you went from the online channel offline, and it wasn't until I got that direct mail piece at the office that's where you really cut through the noise.

And we do that a lot within Carfax within the banking insurance group. We merge our online efforts and our offline efforts. So those that are most engaged with us in the online channel from a behavioral standpoint, but not necessarily have moved further along in their buyer's journey - maybe they've moved a little bit, but not to where we want them to be - we cut through the noise by going offline with the direct mail campaign. It's very targeted because you don't want to spend a lot. Direct mail is expensive, but we've seen great results. And I appreciate the way you all did that, because that's really how you cut through the noise and grabbed my attention about this.

Elena: Yeah, it works well for us. Because like you said, it's expensive, but we have a very small list of marketers that we want on the show that we want to talk to. So it takes longer, it's more of an investment, but hey, it pans out because it probably wouldn't have gotten you on the show now without a direct mail piece combined with the online.

Well, Jon-Erik, this has been wonderful. It's like B2B marketing therapy for me listening to you talk. So I've really enjoyed it. And I hope this last question doesn't annoy you cause I know you're probably always kind of distinguishing yourself from the car facts consumer brand, but I do love the fox, I love the mascot. So I wanted to end with a mascot-themed question. What is your favorite mascot? And we'll make it easy. You can't choose the Carfax fox. That one's off the table.

Jon-Erik: Yeah, it was funny because you're right. The Car Fox originally started as a tool for the consumer side of the brand. But B2B, they've actually really developed a liking to the Car Fox as well. We give out these little Car Fox plush dolls, and people love them at conferences.

We actually did a test campaign where we targeted specific folks at this conference and we sent them a message saying, "Hey, we reserved a Car Fox doll for you. Come pick it up between this time at the booth." And we saw a huge amount of traffic to the booth because of that. And then they came and they learned more about why we're there, the solutions that we offer, and the impetus was they love the Car Fox.

So since it can't be the Car Fox as my favorite mascot, I'm going to have to go with the Hokie bird. I went to Virginia Tech, so the Hokie bird holds a special place in my heart. And people always ask what is a Hokie? And the answer always is, well, if you went to Virginia Tech, you say, "I'm a Hokie." So some people call it a turkey, but the Hokie bird is definitely my favorite mascot.

Elena: Oh yeah. Everybody should look up this bird. It's a weird looking bird. The first Google result is, "What's a Hokie?"

Jon-Erik: Yep, that's because it is a unique thing.

Elena: All right. Well, I'm so happy to hear that you use the Car Fox and I would like to put my name in for one of those Car Fox dolls.

Jon-Erik: Yes, we'll connect after the show. I can send you both one.

Elena: I would honestly really like one.

Jon-Erik: No problem. Make it happen.

Elena: All right, Ange. What about you?

Angela: I went with a bit of a brand character, I guess it's a mascot, but I went with the Energizer bunny. Do you guys know the backstory to the Energizer Bunny?

Jon-Erik: I don't think so.

Angela: Was originally created as a parody to a Duracell commercial. So Duracell ran the spot with all of these little pink bunny toys playing drums. And it showed that the bunny that was powered by Duracell was the one that lasted the longest was playing the drums. They all stopped, slowed down and stopped. To which Energizer responded with their pink Energizer Bunny commercial informing consumers that The Energizer battery was never invited to that playoff. Just stuck.

Elena: I didn't know that. That's fun. So mine is also a college mascot. My husband went to Syracuse and I remember one point we were dating. I was like, what's the Syracuse mascot? He's like, oh, it's an orange. I said that can't be. It literally is. Their mascot is Otto the Orange. He's in the mascot hall of fame. And it's truly like they're the Orange. It is just, they went really literal. They're like, it's just an orange. It's what he is. So he's pretty cute though. So yeah, Otto the Orange is my favorite.

Jon-Erik: Cause when you think of oranges as a brand, you think of Florida, right? Florida oranges. You don't really think of Syracuse.

Angela: Not at all. Maybe that's why it works.

Elena: Great. Well, Jon-Erik, thank you again for joining us.

Jon-Erik: No, I don't think so. I just thank you very much for the time today. It was really, I enjoyed our conversation and I think there was a really good discussion.