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The three key functions of marketing automation are the development and analysis of marketing campaigns and customers, management of marketing campaigns, and appropriate customer data organization and storage. In this list, Conversational Marketing readers will find related content to learn more and converse about the latest marketing automation solutions, strategies and best practices.
Landing page creation, optimization and analytics best practices.
A client asked yesterday if I had some benchmark information to justify the cost of her marketing automation project. This set off an hour-long scavenger hunt through my hard drive, followed by sporadic afterthoughts later in the day. Since this is a question that comes up pretty often, I figured I’d share some of the more useful results. If anyone else cares to expand on this list, even better.
Today’s uncertain economy has companies looking to data to influence decisions, inform strategy and anticipate outcomes. Marketers too are using such data to gain insight into consumer interests and preferences to better their customer retention and acquisition programs.
For many data-conscious companies, the use of “Big Data” has become increasingly important. Big Data incorporates multiple data sets—customer data, competitive data, online data, offline data, and so forth—for a more holistic approach to business intelligence.
No doubt, 2011 was the tipping point for the marketing department. Marketing automation, content marketing and analytics entered boardroom conversations. Even at the smallest of companies (for which I consult), marketing directors and channel managers find themselves in the spotlight for the very first time.
So how should the CMO, marketing director and CEO respond?
I think that's the real question McKinsey & Co. attempted to answer in their July 2011 report, "We're all marketers now." (FYI: this report was the #3 most read in 2011, falling in just behind articles on strategy and brainstorming. And in typical McKinsey fashion, their research involved more than 20,000 customers... talk about comprehensive research!)
2011 was a year of collaboration in marketing. Marketers worked more closely with their sales counterparts, partnered with IT to harness new technologies for customer engagement, and even joined forces across marketing silos to improve the multichannel customer experience. But that was just the beginning.
The alignment of marketing and sales will continue to grow in importance as the purchase process continues to evolve. An increasing number of customers are conducting in-depth research and seeking recommendations from their social networks before talking to a company's sales rep. Consequently, industry experts expect that marketing and sales teams will collaborate even more closely to ensure that salespeople have the information they need when they need it—and that marketing communications and lead nurturing are timed to match prospects' stage in the buy cycle.
Experts also predict that 2012 will be the year mobile and geo-location offerings become a standard way of connecting with their on-the-go customers. These mobile efforts will further support the trend of personalizing customers' social experiences, as marketers look to deliver more relevant offers and advertisements based on previous interactions.
Here, several industry insiders offer their forecast on key marketing trends and how companies can optimize their marketing efforts in 2012:
Growing your mailing list and generating leads should be one of your focus points of your marketing efforts. If Groupon didn’t have over 115 million or Appsumo 500 000 email subscribers, they wouldn’t have a business. Too many businesses don’t give it enough attention, and just throw something together (then complain that online lead generation doesn’t work). This post is about building email and sign-up forms that convert. Every field you ask them to fill increases friction. The best thing you can do to improve conversions is to get rid of as many fields as possible. In most cases you don’t need to ask for anything but the email address.
This article offers a good overview of how to truly identify and reengage inactive email subscribers. What struck me was the advice to look beyond opens and clicks to all known data about each subscriber. If someone hasn't opened or clicked an email in several months, but continues to buy your products, then they aren't inactive, per se. Your emails, even if unopened, could be serving as a reminder to directly visit your website and make purchases. Keep reading for additional insight.
I’ll be giving a Webinar this Thursday on evaluating marketing automation software, sponsored by Neolane. Part of the content will be a list of Seven Deadly Sins of Marketing System Selection. I thought that was worth a blog post of its own. So here goes. 1. Ignoring Users. Selection teams often don’t take the the time to understand how future users of the system do their jobs today. The justification may be that everything will change anyway, or that every marketing department has similar needs, or that the users themselves don’t know what they need. The cost of skipping this step is that you don’t learn about existing business processes and user skills. This means you don’t identify what processes need to be changed and what training your users will need. The immediate result is you can’t factor those items into your vendor evaluation. Longer term, your deployment will take longer since you’ll have to stop to gather this information before you can proceed.
Got a great email marketing solution? Got a solid opt-in and scrubbed contact list? That’s half the battle to a great return on your email marketing investment. Here are six simple tips you can use to improve almost any email marketing effort. 1. Remember why it’s called a “message”. If you think of your email campaign as an ongoing dialogue with each prospect, it will change your strategy. For instance, in a dialogue, you have to keep the conversation going – and that means listening to the people you’re talking about. (How are they responding? What actions are they taking?) It also means staying relevant. (If they visited your blog after your last email, but have never been to the products page after several messages, stop sending them messages that try to drive them to the products page – offer them an incentive to take some other action instead.)
Improved segmentation and better targeted content are being credited for the surge in consumer approval of email marketing over the past 12 months, according to the 2011 DMA Email Tracking Study published by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) in conjunction with fast.MAP and Alchemy Worx.
The number of consumers reporting that half or more of the marketing emails they receive are of interest to them has increased more than threefold over the past year, from one in ten (9%) in 2010, to one in three (30%) in 2011. Moreover, just one in four consumers now say that only less than 10% of the marketing emails they receive are of relevance to them – down from two-thirds (64%) of consumers in 2010.
Read more about the findings on MyCustomer.com.
This story from Direct Marketing News covers a new DMA report which reveals that marketers will spend $163 billion on direct marketing in 2011, a 5.6% increase from the prior year. Additionally, the DMA projects that direct marketing ROI will reach $12.03 of sales per dollar of expenditures in 2011.
I’ve long believed that B2B marketing automation is just a passing phase: that, ultimately, B2B marketing automation systems will be absorbed into CRM systems instead of operating independently. It’s a view I discuss sparingly in public, since so many of my friends in the marketing automation industry have a vested interest to the contrary. But there are also a few vendors who have bet in favor of merged systems, so it wouldn’t be fair to ignore their view entirely.
Vendors have made the bet by building marketing automation add-ons to a CRM system instead of building a stand-alone marketing automation product.* I wrote in February about ClickDimensions, which adds advanced email campaigns and Web tracking to Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Of course, the jackpot here is Salesforce.com. At least two vendors have tried to hit it: Predictive Response and BizConnector, whose product is Lead Follow-Up.
The solution to sales alignment, digital methods and accountability? Or a flawed attempt at replicating old sales processes? Peter Johnston explores.
What's in a name? If you are talking about Marketing Automation (MA), the name equates to a lot of confusion. MA indicates a technology solution that's as easy as "set it and forget it." But, the industry is still finding itself and the term “revenue performance management” might be better suited to take over the category.
Teradata announced today that it was entering into an agreement to acquire Aprimo, a privately held enterprise marketing platform company, with a strong focus on Campaign Management and Marketing Resource Management (MRM). Coming on the heels of the acquisition binge by IBM who acquired Unica, Coremetrics, and a bunch of other analytics and data management companies, we can safely say that marketing automation and campaign management solutions are up for grabs.
I was briefed by Teradata and Aprimo executives on the rationale for the acquisition. They expect the deal, valued at US$525 million, to close in Q1 2011. Now this is an even greater premium than IBM paid for Unica. So besides this being a very happy holiday season for Aprimo executives and the board, what does this mean for marketers, CI professionals, and competitors? Here's my take on the deal:
To read the entire article from Forrester Research, click here
Teradata announced today that is acquiring marketing automation vendor Aprimo for a very hefty $525 million - even more than the $480 million that IBM paid for somewhat larger Unica in August.
Given the previous Unica deal, other recent marketing system acquisitions, and wide knowledge that Aprimo was eager to sell, no one is particularly surprised by this transaction. Teradata is a logical buyer, having a complementary campaign management system but lacking Aprimo's marketing resource management, cloud-based technology and strong B2B client base (although Aprimo has stressed to me more than once that 60% of their revenue is from B2C clients).
This is obviously a huge decision for Teradata, a $1.7 billion company compared with IBM's $100 billion in revenue. It stakes a claim to a piece of the emerging market for enterprise-wide marketing systems, the same turf targeted in recent deals by IBM, Oracle , Adobe and Infor (and SAS and SAP although they haven't made major acquisitions).
To read the full Customer Experience Matrix blog post, click here
In an era where personalized experience reigns supreme, retailers are challenged to deliver enhanced customer engagement at every possible touch point. Retail TouchPoints had the chance to catch up with Neolane CEO Stephan Dietrich to discuss successful customer engagement, the next level of memorable prospect interactions and the importance of conversational marketing.
To read the full Retail Touchpoints article, click here
Advanced marketing automation technology makes it possible to create tailored customer experiences across channels. Yet with multiple transactional events occurring online and offline, the marketer has to identify key life stage opportunities, or risk being overwhelmed by data and thus ineffective.
I was lucky to moderate a panel on this topic at the National Conference for Database Marketing in mid-December. We developed a 14-step "blueprint" for marshalling all the resources - human and technology - in order to build a process and system for efficiently creating repeatable and custom customer conversations.
To read the full ClickZ article, click here
Here's a closer look at revenue per employee and marketing automation revenue in general. I get the same answers as before but now have more detail to back it up.
Some of the comments on last week's post on the size of the B2B marketing automation industry led me to dig a bit more deeply into the question of revenue per employee. Looking through my files and asking a few questions, here are vendors for whom I have reasonably reliable information
To read the full Customer Experience Matrix blog post, click here
Sirius Decisions reported a staggering statistic: only 25 percent of marketing automation software users are getting the full value from their system. Marketing automation is a rapidly growing segment of the enterprise software market, but clearly something is missing. Software is an excellent way to automate and streamline processes in the front office, but you can't just install it and leave it. Software requires a strategy for success.
To read the full B2C Marketing Insider article, click here
Arguably the most important value-add of implementing a marketing automation system is the alignment of marketing and sales. By being able to share lead information in real time, you can ensure that you are presenting the best messages to the right prospects at the exact right time. But all of this cannot happen on marketing automation alone. Better alignment is only possible through tight integration of your marketing automation platform with your customer relationship management (CRM) system.
To read the full SYS-CON Media article, click here
As we head into the coldest months of winter, a stay at a luxury resort in Los Cabos sounds like a nice get-a-way. Even so, resorts know that competition for consumer share of wallet continues to be fierce. With the goal of building long-term relationships, many marketers are looking for ways to translate the information from existing loyalty program databases and CRM systems into more relevant marketing campaigns that improve customers' brand experience and drive sales.
To read the full MediaPost blog post, click here
The other day I spoke with a company that sounded like they really had a grasp on their content marketing programs. It appeared that they were doing everything well. They segment their lists, they provide great content their buyers will find helpful and they employ marketing automation to monitor behavior and tune their efforts.
As they were telling me about the solution they wanted to create higher adoption for in a specific industry, I asked a lot of questions and started hearing a recurrance of two issues...
To read the full Marketing Interactions blog, click here
Mobile is an area of intense fascination for marketers and advertisers, partially because it’s so confounding.
Ideally, mobile marketing can be even more effective than search. Its targeted consumers are not sitting on their couches thinking about buying something — they’re out in the real world and are open to suggestions about where to go next. A well-timed coupon or even just a reminder that a store is nearby can create a sales opportunity out of thin air.
That said, there are huge barriers to getting an effective mobile campaign underway, including privacy issues, wireless carriers’ individual policies and the still low rate of [iTunes link], a mobile game that — get this — is powered by the sound of carrots crunching. A Crispin rep says the agency “used lots of complicated science to develop an algorithm that turns the sound of carrot crunches into nitro boosts in the game.” (Internally, this is known as “Crunchonics Technology.”) The crunches guide a guy in the game in a rocket-strapped shopping cart through an urban wasteland. Gamers can get speed boosts and catch air by crunching real carrots into their phone.
Results: A Crispin spokesman says the app got 13,000 downloads in the first week, but current figures weren’t available.
5. Intel’s Rich Banner AdsClickthrough rates for banner ads are notoriously poor, but Beth Lubov Butrymowicz, Intel’s global media manager, thought mobile banners might work better, particularly if they were able to be manipulated — hence Intel’s expandable rich banners that expand when users click on them. After users expand the ads, they see three icons than can be dragged and dropped to the bottom of the screen. Then they’d be asked three quick questions about their technology needs. After qualifying themselves, users would then be led to an Intel mobile site providing more information about what they were looking for.
Results: Interaction rates within the rich banners were five times higher than for in-app placements. Lubov Butrymowicz attributed that difference to behavioral targeting — since users identified themselves by their interests, they were more likely to respond to the ad messages. Behavioral targeting reached users as they were researching computers. “We delivered a utility that helped a user in their decision making process,” she says. “Additionally, this was the first banner of its kind — this level of interaction within the banner had yet to be seen prior to our campaign launch.”
Content syndicated from Mashable
With the massive amounts of customer data marketers now have access to, it's no wonder privacy has become a widespread concern. In continuation of my recent AMA Boston panel blog post, I thought this issue warranted some further discussion.
While we were discussing marketing automation's ability to provide deep customer insight, a question was raised as to whether marketing automation promoted "stalking" and where the line was drawn in terms of the technology's inherent benefits becoming a privacy concern.
I recently read an article in MediaPost that reflects on recent research conducted by Ball State University's Center for Media Design on privacy. The research found that "the real issue is the overall 'lack of transparency' consumers feel about having their personal information tracked, and their anxiety about how it is being used and feeling that they don't have direct control over the process."
In my opinion and according to this article, privacy is not a black and white issue. Based on the University's research, "the notion of privacy is actually 'situational,' and depends on the context of the consumer, the nature of their information being tracked, and the organizations that are tracking it."
It's clear to me that this article as well as other recent privacy research shows that it's not the technology or data that's so concerning, it's how marketers are accessing this data and how they're potentially using the data that's become the issue.
To read the full blog post, click here
In June and August of 2010, Aberdeen surveyed more than 453 executives regarding their 2011 Marketing Executive's Agenda.
The results regarding their most significant challenges were compelling: 61 percent of all companies stated that the difficult economic environment was the top pressure facing their marketing programs. As a result, nearly half of the Best-in-Class companies have used technology to automate their campaigns and measure their results, while nearly 40 percent of all other Best-in-Class respondents are planning to deploy solutions within the next 12 months as a central, core component of a multi-channel, multi-touch marketing lead management strategy to directly impact financial results.
Lead management and marketing automation technologies enable organizations to integrate key prospect/customer information with marketing campaigns to create and prioritize the most "qualified" opportunities. In fact, Aberdeen's research from the July 2009 report "Lead Lifecycle Management: Building a Pipeline that Never Leaks" revealed that top performing organizations are three-times more likely than all other companies to leverage a lead management solution with automated lead scoring capabilities to prioritize "sales-ready" opportunities.
To read the full CRM News article, click here
With a positive, consistent brand experience so tightly linked to customer loyalty and steady revenues, marketers can no longer ignore the critical role marketing automation software plays in developing and executing highly targeted cross-channel campaigns.
However, because implementing marketing automation technology is a relatively new undertaking for many organizations, there are several steps CMOs must take to encourage a smooth transition and ensure that the expected benefits are delivered as quickly as possible.
Industry analysts are also valuable resources, not only in the initial vendor identification stages, but also on related implementation best practices.
To read the full Target Marketing article, click here
In a world inundated with communication, information is power. Competition is greater, customer behavior is more visible, and practically everything we do creates a data point. But, the reality is, your company probably doesn't use information as effectively as it could.
One reason is that most organizational functions still operate in silos. Each function has a specific set of tools and technologies to engage, track and monitor customer and prospect interactions. Today, the three different functional tools for engaging with customers across sales, service and marketing is defined as CRM. Often sales force automation (SFA) and customer service tools are integrated to create a holistic record of customer interactions over time. But what about the third pillar under the CRM umbrella: marketing? Where is the tool to manage and act on this data?
An emerging class of marketing technology has been developed to fill this critical void in CRM data marts. Marketing automation technologies typically include e-mail marketing, campaign workflow, Web analytics, content management, a marketing data mart and robust integration with SFA tools. However, marketing automation solutions are still emerging technologies. A few common misconceptions stunt adoption.
For example, consider this common question: "We use sales force automation to store prospect activity, and we have an enterprise-class e-mail marketing tool. Why do we still need marketing automation?"
To read the full DM News article, click here
In a world inundated with communication, information is power. Marketers use information to try to target buyers with the right products and services; sales uses information to address buyers needs and desires in an effort to win deals; and customer service uses information to meet and exceed customer expectations. But, the reality is your company probably doesn't use information as effectively as it could.
Why? To start, there is simply too much data, and it's impossible to make all of it actionable even with automated technology. But more importantly, most organizational functions still operate in silos. Each function has a specific set of tools and technologies to engage, track and monitor customer and prospect interactions.
Effective customer relationship management (CRM) should consist of sales, marketing and service, customer interactions that are managed by tracking, storing and retrieving information across different customer experiences. Salesforce automation (SFA) tools are used to manage sales data and interactions, whereas call-center and customer service tools manage customer and service data. Often salesforce automation and customer service tools are integrated to try to create a holistic record of customer interactions over time. But what about the third pillar under the CRM umbrella â€" marketing? Where is the tool to manage and act on this data?
Marketing Automation's Role
An emerging class of marketing technology has been developed to fill this critical void in CRM datamarts: marketing automation. Marketing automation technologies typically include email marketing, campaign workflow, web analytics, content management, a marketing datamart and robust integration with SFA tools.
Many email marketing tools have pre-packaged integration with SFA, but the integration is often at an aggregate level. What is actually needed is deep integration across email, web analytics, social media, telesales and field sales. Marketing automation tools have built in workflow triggers and deep integration with salesforce automation tools so prospects can be handed off to sales at just the right time.
Marketing automation tools don't replace web analytics - they use some of the same basic techniques to provide a completely different set of tools for sales and marketing. For example, marketing automation integrated to web analytics and email provides visibility to clicks and tracking of the link and corresponding web activity and behavior. Combined with other marketing history data in the marketing automation tool, this can help to alert sales reps about key account activity or trigger an email campaign based on a customer behavior threshold. Marketing automation makes this web analytics data actionable.
To read the full DemandGen Report article, click here
[Posted by Carlos Hidalgo
CEO, The Annuitas Group]
Marketing Automation continues to be the most talked about technology in the B2B market. A recent Gartner survey revealed that within the CRM market, which is expected to pass $4Billion in 2014, marketing automation has the strongest growth.
More and more companies are looking to adopt automation in an effort to make their marketing departments more effective in managing buyer engagement. However, while more companies are making the move to automation, many are realizing that there is more to automation success than just the technology.
While the market is continuing to grow, most estimates have the adoption rates at less than 20%. However the adoption rate is projected to hit 50% by the year 2015, meaning that over the coming years, plenty of companies will be sifting through the various vendors to determine what solution fits best.
For many marketers, this foray into the purchasing of technology is unchartered territory. So, it's vital that they understand what they'll need in order to make their technology investment successful. With this in mind, here are five things marketers should consider before purchasing marketing automation.
1. Consider the Current State of Your Lead Management Process
There has been considerable research into the value of process as it relates to marketing automation. In its most recent report, MarketScope for CRM Lead Management, Gartner states the following: "Improving lead management processes will increase revenue 5% to 10% through better qualification, prioritization, distribution, augmentation, allocation, tracking and closing of leads from multiple lead-generation sources."
SiriusDecisions also showed in its Measuring the ROI of Marketing Automation report that companies that adopt automation and have average process will achieve a 417% revenue increase.
While these numbers are compelling, other statistics show that many organizations have not achieved a level of process maturity and therefore are not getting the full value from their automation investments.
Before the purchase of automation, organizations need to consider analyzing and developing a Lead Management Process FrameworkSM that will enable them to get the maximum return from their investment. This framework is comprised of the following process areas:
- Data Management
- Lead Planning
- Lead Routing
- Lead Qualification
- Lead Nurturing
- Content Process Development
- Metrics
Once these process areas are developed fully, automation will then enable them. Conversely, not having these processes in place before purchase leaves you to automate very little.
2. Consider the Current Skill Set of Your People
Many automation vendors have gone to market with an "ease of use" message. Some have even gone to the extent of giving a limited version of their solution away for free. The implication is that using marketing automation is extremely easy. While the solutions may be easy to operate, it cannot be assumed that applying automation to the new way of B2B marketing is easy.
In his interview with The Annuitas Group, Steve Gershik, CEO of 28Marketing stated the following, "Honestly, marketing automation is hard to adopt. Adoption rates are going to remain relatively stable until we see greater uptake in building the kind of competencies in-house to make marketing departments successful post-deployment. Otherwise, people revert back to old ways of doing things."
Not having the right people can limit the success you will have with your automation platform. A study conducted in 2010 by Frost & Sullivan and Bulldog Solutions showed that of 250 respondents, 109 (44%) said that not having the right people was a roadblock to their automation success.
Before you purchase automation, look to ensure your people have an understanding of the new B2B buyer, a willingness to work with sales, a process based approach to their marketing, a focus on revenue as an outcome, and that they know the place technology will play in reaching the buyer. In order to get the most from the technology, it takes people with the right skills.
3. Consider Your Current Content Framework
In order to engage the more connected buyer of today, it is imperative that you have relevant content that will foster dialogue along each stage of the buying cycle. In a discussion with one automation owner, he confessed to me that his solution was nothing more than a "spam cannon." He went on to explain that they were sending lots of emails but they had no content strategy or framework. Consequently, their results were falling quite flat.
Before making the plunge into automation, develop your buyer personas (or ideal customer profiles), document the typical buyer's journey and then develop an offer map that corresponds to the journey and the personas. As with most things in marketing, it's vital that you test the response to determine relevance and engagement. Having a solid content framework will enable you to make adjustments quickly and get more value from your automation solution.
4. Determine Your Overall Goals & Objectives
One of the many changes that has occurred in this new era of B2B Marketing is a shift from art to science. B2B marketers are no longer looked to as the team that only provides nice looking brochures, logos and presentations. Organizations are looking to their marketing teams to help drive revenue. Yet, too many marketing departments have not yet adopted this frame of mind when looking into marketing automation.
Before you purchase automation, be sure to determine the goals and objectives of marketing from a revenue perspective. How many qualified leads will marketing produce? How much revenue will marketing look to drive in terms of these qualified leads? What is the expected ROI, overall and from each campaign? All of these questions should be answered before automation is implemented. Once the implementation occurs, use the solution along with your CRM reporting to track, benchmark and report on these all-important metrics.
5. Consider Your Marketing Maturity
There are more than 100 marketing automation solutions available on the market today. There's something for everyone. It's not "one size fits all." So, knowing where you are on the marketing maturity curve will help you select the right automation platform.
As an example, I spoke with one VP from a $300 million company. His company's size would seem to dictate their need for a large enterprise scale platform. Yet as we spoke, he informed me that they had just one year of CRM under their belts, had no email or online marketing program, and only two people in their marketing department. Their marketing maturity was very low. An enterprise solution would have been overwhelming for them. This realization instantly narrowed their field of vendors.
As you consider an automation platform, take a look at the maturity of your organization. And be honest about it. Take an objective approach to determine what will get the job done. Feature "bells and whistles" do not mean much if they are not being used.
There are a lot of considerations when it comes to selecting the right Marketing Automation solution. Considering these five as a start will get you on your way to obtaining a better overall return on your automation investment.
Read more on the Neolane Blog
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