The Total Economic Impact™ Of Slack For Marketing Teams

Improved Productivity Of Marketing Team

Evidence and data. Interviewees and survey respondents noted that the overwhelming benefit of Slack was the ability to enable asynchronous productive work for distributed teams. They offered many ways in which Slack improved the productivity of marketing teams, including:

• Empowering collaboration across a globally dispersed marketing team. The interviewees’ organizations all operated globally with marketing team members spread across the world. The dispersed nature of the teams made global collaboration across different time zones difficult. Slack enabled the interviewees’ marketing organizations to work asynchronously, creating a new way to collaborate. The global head of partner marketing at an information technology company shared: “[Without Slack], we’d still hire that team in Bucharest. But we would have been less productive, would work very differently, and be less effectively.”
• Using AI capabilities to further enhance marketer productivity. Interviewees took advantage of Slack AI capabilities like Slack AI Recap and explored beta options from Slack on future AI capabilities and found that their marketers gained additional productivity as a result. The senior manager of marketing operations at a software company shared: “When my electricity went out for a week, it was so much easier to get caught up with the Slack AI recap feature. I was able to get caught up within half a day when usually it takes me a day and a half, which was awesome.” Survey respondents noted an 18-minute savings per day using native AI capabilities.
• Reducing the volume of emails sent internally between colleagues. Moving communications with internal colleagues into a centralized channel reduced the reliance on email as the primary form of communication. Interviewees noted that when the same information was shared both via email and Slack, employees engaged more actively with the Slack message. Amongst survey respondents, 68% stated that they agreed or strongly agreed that Slack improved information sharing within the internal marketing team. The senior manager of marketing operations at a software company shared: “We try to keep internal emails to a minimum. Once a month, we get an internal employee newsletter that also gets posted on Slack, but everyone interacts with it on Slack.”
• Connecting marketers directly with partners and agencies. Interviewees found they worked more easily with external partners and agencies when using Slack. Amongst survey respondents, 79% agreed or strongly agreed that Slack improved their collaboration with external agency partners, contractors, and/or customers. The global head of partner marketing at an information technology company shared: “I get paid to make sure my company and Salesforce are working as nicely and productively together as they can as we take things to market. If it was not for Slack, my job would be harder. Having [everyone working] both synchronous and asynchronous across company lines in the same tool is absolutely invaluable to me.”

• Faster issue resolution from integrations with technology vendors’ support teams. Interviewees noted that many of the tools they use to perform their jobs have integrations into Slack. When an issue arose with those tools, the marketers were able to troubleshoot and engage with the tools’ support teams within Slack. This made the marketers more productive because it enabled them to stay within a single tool, add visibility for other marketers that might be experiencing a similar issue, and directly connect to the tool’s support teams, resulting in faster resolution of the issue. The senior manager of marketing operations at a software company shared: “We have dedicated Slack channels for support with [our ETL (extract, transform, and load) and email builder tool vendors]. If anyone from [my software company] has an issue, we can go to that dedicated channel and connect with the support team ASAP. It’s awesome streamlining for our marketers, they’re able to get help right within that Slack channel. They are each saving about 45 minutes per month, depending on the team.”

• Reducing the frequency of update meetings. Interviewees noted that Slack had a positive impact on their ability to keep stakeholders updated in near real time on campaign status. For example, a common method of keeping stakeholders updated was through weekly check-in calls. With Slack, interviewees found that they were able to replace these “what’s the status” meetings with asynchronous Slack updates. The senior field marketing manager at a software company shared: “My manager held two to three meetings per week, and now we’re down to one meeting per week. We do a [marketing team] stand-up via Slack on Mondays and Fridays, sharing wins, updating blockers, and asking for help when needed. Then [Slack] drastically cut [down on] my meetings with sales. I would have to attend five different meetings per week just to share [updates] and make sure everyone is reading their emails. Now I don’t attend any of those meetings and I just share on Slack. That saves at least 5 hours per week.” Furthermore, when meetings were the most effective choice, interviewees found they were more purposeful in who needed to be in that meeting, reducing the number of unnecessary stakeholders in the room.

• Providing a central place to access campaign history, which reduced context switching and improved marketer focus. Interviewees noted that the more integration and campaign information kept with Slack, the less marketers needed to context switch to other tools. This enabled them to stay focused on the task at hand. The global head of IT at a software company shared: “We use [a customer service] tool to deal with support [tickets], but users don’t want to log into it. But they have no problem going to Slack and using the bot to say, ‘Can I get a new keyboard?’ They don’t have to go somewhere different, so we keep engagement and focus on as few windows as possible. People like fewer things to focus on.” The marketing teams did their best to avoid using multiple tools, streamlining their daily efforts. The global head of IT went on to describe: “Anyone who lives in the modern era has problems with too many blinking lights and things distracting them. The more times your brain resets every day, the harder it is to get deep into anything. You can get more done if your attention is focused on fewer things. So, the way we’ve approached work here is we do most of our work in [project management tool] and Slack. “
• Democratizing access to experts. Interviewees noted that communicating through email with subject matter experts or leadership was formal and could be intimidating. With Slack, the global head of partner marketing at an information technology company shared: “One of the benefits of Slack is that it breaks down the walls around subject matter experts and leaders. Slack has democratized access to expertise and made it more acceptable culturally to send any person a Slack. Whereas, if you are sending that email to a senior leader, you hope they’re going to respond but it also needs to be really tight and really good. I can do that over Slack in a way that still has this formality to it. It’s a different mentality and so that’s where I think is an underappreciated value of Slack is that democratization of expertise.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization has a growing team of global marketers with 360 marketers in Year 1, 378 in Year 2, and 397 in Year 3.
• On average, each marketer saves 60 minutes in Year 1, 80 minutes in Year 2, and 100 minutes in Year 3 as a result of using Slack. This increases over time as the organization adds additional integrations into Slack and improves best practices and adoption, and marketers get more savvy on how to use the tool to add efficiency.
• The fully burdened hourly rate for marketers is $46.

Risks. Forrester recognizes that these results may not be representative of all experiences. The impact of this benefit will vary depending on the following:

• The size, scale, and complexity of the organization.
• The number and type of integrations into Slack.
• The level of change management and training efforts the organization invests in to shepherd adoption of Slack.
• The fully burdened rate for marketing resources. The size and type of company, location of the employees, and employee seniority will all factor into their fully burdened rates.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 5%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $1.4 million.

Increased Revenue From More Campaigns

Evidence and data. Interviewees reported that key tasks for executing marketing campaigns like project initiation, document collaboration, and review and approval cycles were accelerated with Slack. This enabled the marketing teams to add additional campaigns to their marketing plans. Amongst survey respondents, 66% agreed or strongly agreed that Slack increased the number of campaigns they can complete. Interviewees provided the following examples of how Slack impacts their campaigns:

• Streamlined the approval process, increasing the speed of campaign creation. Interviewees were able to get campaigns planned and delivered more quickly by reducing bottlenecks for approvals from nonmarketing stakeholders. The senior manager of marketing operations at a software company shared: “We communicate with external agencies on campaigns for design and copy. [Without Slack], it would be very hard for us to communicate with them. It would be horrifying, and we would be stuck looking through threads of emails to figure out where we are within a campaign. Without Slack, [a campaign would take] twice or maybe even three times as long.”
  
  Survey respondents noted that they could execute campaigns 18% faster on average compared to their prior environment without Slack.
• Workflow automations and templates accelerated speed of campaign creation. Interviewees noted their marketers set up automations of repetitive tasks and used campaign templates to accelerate their time to market for campaigns. The field marketing manager at a software company shared: “Our [Slack] workflows have been instrumental in automating information sharing and pulling in of new members into a project. For example, when we want to create a new Salesforce campaign, there’s a workflow that we can fill out. It automatically tags a specialist who will then go and build it, and it tags us again when we need to share relevant documentation, images, things like that.”
• Centralized campaign information, which reduced collaboration barriers. Interviewees noted that using Slack as the central system of record for campaigns reduced collaboration barriers. For example, marketers were able to ask questions without losing answers and acceptance and review process steps did not get lost. The senior manager of marketing operations at a software company shared: “With Slack, we’re not all over the place like we used to be. We would always be all over the place with briefs communicating and that was a mess. So, we decided not to communicate within the brief, and instead to communicate within the Slack channel. Overall, it has definitely saved us time.”

• Accelerating the marketer’s ability to incorporate timely campaign and operational insights and improved quality of campaigns. Interviewees noted that as campaigns were in progress, marketing campaign performance reports were created through automated integrations with dashboarding and reporting tools and accessed within the campaign’s Slack channel. They noted that this kept the team accountable for results and reduced the delay in receiving in-flight campaign results. Interviewees shared that they used Slack as a notification layer to surface important alerts as set by relevant performance threshold alerts. This enabled the teams to respond quickly to near-real-time insights.
  • The customer marketing lead at a software company shared: “Slack improves the quality of campaigns because if we need to make a huge pivot, we can notify people right away so they do not continue working on something that will need to be redone. Most people have notifications turned on for the campaigns that they are a part of but if you send an email, it easily gets buried. That’s where Slack is most helpful in terms of improving quality — because we’re able to pivot and implement feedback faster.”
  • The global head of partner marketing at an information technology company shared: “Would the quality of campaigns be different [without Slack]? Yes, I think it would be because we’re doing more rounds of quality checks in the same amount of time. So, we are getting better quality outputs in the same or shorter amount of time because of our ability to quickly ping [a reviewer] and not need a meeting for a super formal review.”
  • The senior field marketing manager at a software company shared how this helped their field marketing team improve content and avoid a potential lost deal from a bad customer experience. They said: “Threads in Slack are a really powerful place to get feedback that I can easily act on instantaneously. Yes, a webinar is free for us to run, but a bad experience could have an impact on the sale cycle and could increase the time to close. Good experiences can increase their awareness of different products for cross-sell or upsell. I think it has a lot of financial impact.”
  • The field marketing manager at a software company shared: “A real-life example of the value of real-time feedback that I’m going through right now is escalating issues. At our upcoming conference, we have an executive program that sellers need to nominate their customers to engage in. An important C-level prospect was having an issue getting into the program. So, because of Slack, I was able to easily escalate that issue to my VP who escalated it to sales leadership. And in getting that prospect into the program, they’re way more likely to move forward in the sales process by being accepted into this high-level executive program.”
• Improved campaign performance and outcomes. Interviewees and survey respondents noted that Slack likely contributed to creating better performing campaigns due to smoother collaboration. Amongst survey respondents, 58% agreed or strongly agreed that Slack has improved their key KPIs. Examples of improvements included more leads, more revenue per campaign, better lead conversion, marketing qualified leads (MQLs) to sales qualified leads (SQLs) conversion, deal wins, and reduced customer acquisition costs. See Unquantified Benefits for more information related to campaign outcomes.

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization runs 35 global campaigns annually before adopting Slack. A major campaign is defined as having associated costs, repeats annually, and generates revenue. These campaigns are important to the business.
• With Slack, the composite organization increases the number of major global campaigns by 15%.
• On average, the major global campaigns generate $300,000 in campaign revenue.
• The composite organization has an operating margin of 10%.

Risks. Forrester recognizes that these results may not be representative of all experiences. The impact of this benefit will vary depending on the following:

• The number of additional major global campaigns that the organization adds, which depends on many factors, including brand strategy. Because the value of this benefit depends on the number of campaigns added, the benefit will increase or decrease proportionally with the number of campaigns added.

• The average revenue generated by a major global campaign.
• The adoption and usage of Slack by marketing teams and nonmarketing employees and partners

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 15%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $317,000.

Marketer Onboarding And Experience Savings

Evidence and data. Interviewees and survey respondents noted that Slack drives improvements to the marketing employee experience, retention rates, and employee performance. Interviewees provided the following examples of how Slack impacts their marketing teams’ employee experience (EX) and more efficient onboarding:

• Automated relevant information sharing for new team members. Whether new to the company or new to a campaign, interviewees noted that marketers got up to speed more quickly because of Slack features like automatic notifications and pinned content. Furthermore, when reviewing historical information related to a campaign, Slack provided contextualization within the comments. Before Slack, campaign context was more likely to be connected to an individual. The customer marketing lead at a software company shared: “We have a very clear marketing onboarding process. Where Slack comes into that is you automatically get added to specific Slack channels based on your role when you start. And what is great about that is that you have historical context and can see what each channel is for and how we engage.”

• Enabled self-service onboarding and reduced manager effort. Slack enabled interviewees to create self-service onboarding plans for new hires. This allowed the new hires to onboard asynchronously at their own speed and avoided the need for a manager to be continuously involved with each step of the onboarding process. The senior manager of marketing operations at a software company shared: “The benefit of Slack is that it is very easy for team members to hop onto a project, get caught up to speed, and then find their part in the project to continue to build it. This includes linking back to certain Slack threads, having a campaign Canvas, and the search feature within Slack. If we are bringing on a new team member, a lot of times they can get exactly what they’re looking for right within Slack’s search.”

• Reduced the number of tools a new marketer needs to learn how to use. Interviewees noted that by integrating other tools into Slack, they avoided the need to train new marketers on each of those individual tool sets, accelerating their time to value. The global head of IT at a software organization noted that each solution a marketer was exposed to during onboarding took approximately 30 minutes while learning to use the same integrated capability within Slack took less than 5 minutes. They shared, “Part of Slack’s magic power is that it’s very self-explanatory.”
• Improved employee retention by increasing the marketer’s sense of belonging. Survey respondents and interviewees noted that Slack had a positive, humanizing impact on employees, enabling them to create a mechanism for recognition and gratitude. Features like emojis and GIFs provided a nonverbal way for employees to connect to each other and react to posts with humor. As a result, they connected Slack to improved retention. Survey respondents 70% agreed or strongly agreed that Slack reduced their marketing team turnover. Amongst survey respondents, the median employee retention was 50% before Slack and improved to 70% with Slack. The senior field marketing manager at a software company shared: “I 100% think Slack makes a difference [for EX]. Slack helps [the marketing team] to have a sense of belonging, that we’re going in the same direction, and that we have connection with one another. We have Gratitude Tuesday posts where we shout out team members. Feeling like you’re appreciated and recognized for good work play into employee retention and job satisfaction.”
• Prevented burnout and improved performance. In addition to increasing employee retention, interviewees noted that Slack also contributed to marketers avoiding burnout. The reduction in emails was cited as a major brain drain and with Slack, the marketers were able to focus on more strategic projects. Amongst survey respondents, 72% agreed or strongly agreed that Slack improved employee performance. The senior field marketing manager at a software company shared: “Managers are using Slack to avoid burnout — we do Monday and Friday posts to share when I’m stressed, or need more resources, or have blockers. That certainly prevents burnout and makes it more transparent for managers to know areas that are causing difficulty.”

Modeling and assumptions. Based on the interviews, Forrester assumes the following about the composite organization:

• The composite organization has a growing team of global marketers with 360 marketers in Year 1, 378 in Year 2, and 397 in Year 3.
• The composite organization has a 10% combined turnover and growth rate, resulting in 36 new marketers onboard in Year 1, 38 in Year 2, and 40 in Year 3.
• The onboarding time for marketers in the prior environment was 45 days.
• With Slack, the onboarding time is accelerated by 40% in Year 1, 45% in Year 2, and 50% Year 3.
• The fully burdened daily rate for marketers is $480.
• Forrester assumes that 50% of the time savings is recouped in value to the composite organization.

Risks. Forrester recognizes that these results may not be representative of all experiences. The impact of this benefit will vary depending on the following:

• The size, scale, and complexity of the organization.
• The number and type of integrations into Slack.
• The level of change management and training efforts the organization invests in to shepherd adoption of Slack.
• The burdened cost of marketing resources. The size and type of company, location of the employees, and employee seniority will all factor into their burdened costs.

Results. To account for these risks, Forrester adjusted this benefit downward by 10%, yielding a three-year, risk-adjusted total PV (discounted at 10%) of $411,000.

Unquantified Benefits

Interviewees and survey respondents mentioned the following additional benefits that their organizations experienced but were not able to quantify:

• Greater collaboration and engagement with sales. Interviewees noted that B2B marketing teams worked very closely with sales and using Slack improved this cross-team collaboration. Interviewees gave examples about improving marketing influence on deals, responding more efficiently to RFPs, the timely sharing of assets, more engagement, and better handing off of leads.
  • The global head of partner marketing at an information technology company shared: “An important metric for us is marketing influence and this metric is directly related to our use of Slack and relationship building. I get invited into deal channels and help them respond to key questions, help them with next steps, and point out the assets that should be shared. If these were phone calls instead, nobody would invite me but it’s super easy to invite me to the Slack channel.”
  • The field marketing manager at a software company shared, “Our programs get more engagement from sales because of Slack because now they’re reading [marketing posts], can find all the information, and they can tag each other.”
  • The customer marketing lead at a software company shared: “If sales reps have specific questions, Slack helps us get the information out to them because we can quickly share links to [our sales collateral tool]. It’s very clear where they need to go to access things. And because of the visibility, folks will often chime in share other materials.”

• More consistent collaboration with customer success. Similar to the cross-collaboration with sales, interviewees shared that Slack helped B2B marketers collaborate with customer success. Specifically, interviewees noted that they were better equipped to gather customer testimonials because they had a conversational surface to build a relationship very quickly between the marketer and the customer success person. The senior field marketing manager at a software company shared: “I have an automated workflow that asks once a month if there are opportunities or stories they want to share. Also, our sales teams have specific channels, and they share customer stories. It is helpful in gleaning insights and success stories.”
• Better engagement enterprisewide due to the ability to amplify communications. Interviewees were part of B2B organizations that had enterprisewide deployments of Slack, making communications to the entire organization possible. The interviewees noted their marketing teams found that they had greater engagement with Slack posts versus emailing the same information. This led to more adoption of marketing assets, especially from Sales.
  • The senior field marketing manager at a software company shared: “We create marketing campaigns and sales invites customers and prospects. The average number of customers and prospects attending a webinar has seen an across-the-board increase because of Slack because we’re not relying on sales sharing an email, all they do is to click a button and invite their customer.”
  • The customer marketing lead at a software company shared: “We will publish new materials within [our project management tool], but potentially not everybody sees that update. So, we’ll amplify messages to the larger group via a Slack message that links back to new marketing materials.”
• An audit trail of decisions. Interviewees noted that Slack provided a clean and accurate historical record of decisions. The global head of IT at a software company shared: “Slack creates a clear and accurate historical record of exactly what was said. There aren’t 35 email threads going in different directions. Slack creates a single place to refer back and helps with velocity of keeping people informed.”
• Improved marketing KPIs and campaign outcomes. Although difficult to tie marketing performance metrics directly back to use of Slack, interviewees and survey respondents noted that their marketing teams’ use of Slack correlated to higher marketing KPIs. The global head of partner marketing at an information technology company shared an example of how collaborative edits made to campaigns in Slack outside of formal content reviews had an impact on the campaign’s outcomes. They shared: “The changes we made will increase conversions of that webpage. One edit was a stronger call to action and two of the edits were for stronger messaging delivery. That will ultimately lead to higher conversion rates.”
  • Between 63% and 69% of survey respondents indicated that they agreed or strongly agreed that Slack contributed to increased web traffic volume, increased leads generated from campaigns, and increased lead conversion.
  • Survey respondents noted a 14% increase in web traffic on average with Slack compared to their prior environment.
  • Survey respondents noted a 9% increase in MQL and SQL, a 10% increase in conversion rate, an 8% increase in return on ad spend (ROAS), a 9% increase in average order value (AOV), and a 9% increase in customer lifetime value after implementing Slack on average.
• Improved reporting capabilities. Interviewees noted that with Slack, they could tie metrics to marketing campaigns and have reporting and conversations within Slack. The senior manager of marketing operations at a software company shared: “[Without Slack], we would send out a Salesforce or Tableau report and then communicate through email. That would be a mess. So we link Tableau dashboards within Slack and we’re able to dive right into the stats and have a conversation right within the Slack channel. We wouldn’t be able to do that without Slack.”
• Risk mitigation with notifications to engineering and security. Interviewees shared that automated notifications within Slack alert to degradations, enabling engineers and security teams to react more quickly to mitigate risk. The senior manager of marketing operations at a software company shared: “Slack mitigates risks because our engineering and security teams get a notification within Slack when different degradations happen. Or when we have some third party that is constantly safe hacking into our stuff, they are able to push a ticket right from Slack and our security team is able to jump right on it.”
• Reduced licensing and maintenance costs related to legacy collaboration systems. Although the interviewees did not retire any prior solutions because of their Slack investment based on their early adoptions, amongst survey respondents, 59% indicated that they agreed or strongly agreed that Slack enabled them to reduce their legacy collaboration systems. The average amount saved per year by respondents’ organizations was $207,951.

Flexibility

The value of flexibility is unique to each customer. There are multiple scenarios in which a customer might implement Slack for their marketing teams and later realize additional uses and business opportunities, including:

• Exploring additional AI capabilities and continuing to build centralized bots and integrations within Slack. Interviewees noted that Slack directly and indirectly will have a larger role in exposing AI to employees. For example, their organizations could create AI-powered Slack bots that surfaced collateral and AI searches that found info about past campaigns and summarized them. Interviewees noted that it was an easier interaction than learning a new AI tool.
• Exploring additional Slack capabilities like Canvas and Lists. Interviewees noted Slack continued to develop new capabilities within the platform, enabling their organizations to further centralize within a single tool as well as present opportunities for additional savings from retiring legacy tool sets.
• Exploring custom solutions using the Slack consulting arm for custom Slack solutions. Interviewees noted that if they needed something custom, they could engage Slack’s consulting arm to create a solution.
• Leveraging Slack external connections to connect directly with customers. One interviewee noted future plans to extend Slack capabilities to include direct access to their organization’s customers, enabling more conversations with them and a better understanding of their day-to-day needs.

Flexibility would also be quantified when evaluated as part of a specific project (described in more detail in Appendix A ).