Communicating With Execs: Give Them the News They Can Use
The admen of the 1960s could pitch a campaign over lunch and call it a day. Almost everything about marketing has changed since then, but one tactic from that era, and even earlier, survives: the corporate magazine. In its modern form it is the executive newsletter, and it is still one of the best ways to reach busy senior people, whether they are your own leadership team or the executives in your target accounts.
From glossy magazine to digital briefing
Corporate magazines go back at least to the early twentieth century. Early versions promoted products to consumers with glossy pictures and celebrity endorsements; later, technology companies published serious magazines for business readers. Print became too slow and expensive in the digital era, and the format moved online as e-newsletters and briefings. Content marketing surveys around 2013 found that most B2B marketers used e-newsletters and rated them among their most effective content formats.
Six rules for reaching executives
- Credibility first. Back your points with outside evidence and data, not only your own claims.
- Actionable and timely. Plan content around what is relevant this quarter and next.
- Summarise. Put the bottom line first and let readers drill down if they want.
- Channel matters. Executives read on phones between meetings; design for that.
- Go beyond common knowledge. Offer a view they have not already heard.
- Move from technical to strategic. Present problems, ideas and solutions, not features.
Reporting marketing results upwards
The same rules apply when marketing reports to its own executives. A CEO or CFO does not want open rates. They want three numbers and a sentence: pipeline created, revenue influenced, cost per opportunity, and what you will change next quarter. Put the ROMI and attribution detail in an appendix.
| Executive question | Metric that answers it |
|---|---|
| Are we growing? | New pipeline and closed revenue sourced or influenced by marketing |
| Is it efficient? | Cost per opportunity, ROMI, customer acquisition cost |
| Is it getting better? | Stage-to-stage conversion and velocity, quarter on quarter |
| What next? | One or two decisions you need from them |
How the casino industry briefs its boardrooms
Publicly listed casino groups offer a good model of disciplined reporting. Their quarterly results lead with a handful of measures every investor understands: gaming revenue by region, hotel occupancy, adjusted EBITDA, and for online businesses, active customers and net gaming revenue. Marketing and promotional spending appears as a cost to be justified by those numbers, and loyalty programmes are discussed in terms of member growth and play, not in terms of mailings.
Marketing leaders in any industry can borrow that discipline: a few stable measures reported the same way every quarter, so executives can see the trend at a glance. For the measurement behind it, see the casino loyalty programme ROMI case study; for the reporting rules that apply to marketing in regulated gambling markets, see compliance-aware marketing.
Start small
A monthly one-page briefing, sent consistently, beats an ambitious magazine that appears twice and stops. Curate, summarise, link to the deeper content, and ask for feedback. Executives notice who saves them time.
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