| | | Customer Experience Matrix | | | | 9 articles |
| Page 1 of 1 | Previous | Next | CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MATRIX DECEMBER 13, 2011  Marketing Automation Skills are Scarce: Strategies to Close the Gap The marketing automation industry continues to grow quickly, with many vendors announcing their client bases have more than doubled in 2011. But there’s also a growing realization that many marketing automation systems are used for only simple tasks – often no more than email, landing pages, and CRM integration. Surveys, like this one from IBM , show many obstacles to successful deployment. | CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MATRIX DECEMBER 8, 2011  Social Media Features in Marketing Automation Systems: Who Does What? Social media is arguably overhyped as a marketing trend: it gets well under 10% of marketing budgets (different surveys have figures from 3% to 8%) and results are questionable (it was rated the least effective content marketing tactic in a recent MarketingProfs study ). But social is clearly growing fast and has great potential. Results are summarized in the table below. | | | | | |
| CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MATRIX DECEMBER 19, 2011 Influitive Helps Marketers Build an Army of Advocates Marketers recognize the potential reach of social media, but are rightly frightened that they can’t control the message. Most social marketing applications sidestep the issue by focusing on creating communities ( Jive , Lithium ), monitoring conversations (Radian6 , Trackur ) and running promotions ( CrowdFactory , Nextbee ). Marketing automation vendors have mostly worked on making it easy to post and share messages and to capture social data. See my December 8 post for details.) Influitive tackles the control issue head on. It applies game-based motivational methods to company advocates. | CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MATRIX DECEMBER 21, 2011  Beyond Marketing Automation: Building a Complete Marketing Infrastructure This started as a post about Empathy Logic , a company that merges data from marketing automation, CRM, Web tracking, order processing, social monitoring, and other systems; lets marketers segment and select from this more complete set of data; and sends the resulting lists back to message delivery systems such as email and Web sites. So, yes, there’s a need for a company like Empathy Logic. | CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MATRIX DECEMBER 15, 2011  Marketing Automation Interfaces Need Radical Surgery Several vendors have shown me their new campaign management interfaces recently. All were refined, attractive, and thoughtful. Each had subtle features that appeal to a connoisseur: floating tool pallets! Fly-over icon labels! Dynamic menus! Now, I’m not saying marketing automation vendors should find a new approach just because I’m bored with the old one. Something more radical is needed. | CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MATRIX DECEMBER 6, 2011 SDL Buys Marketing Automation Vendor Alterian for $107 Million So, it turns out that while I’ve been obsessing over vendor selection workbooks, our friends at marketing automation vendor Alterian up and got bought last week by language technology vendor SDL for about $107 million. Why didn't somebody tell me? m most familiar with SDL as a Web content management vendor, although their financial statements show that just over 75% of their revenue comes from manual and automated language translation. The company had more than $300 million revenue last year and is nicely profitable. | | | | | | | |
| -
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MATRIX | WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2011  LeadLife Bundles Services with Marketing Automation
LeadLife released a completely rebuild version of its marketing automation system last month. The new system features a cleaner interface and revised capabilities that reflect what LeadLife has learned about the needs of small to mid-size companies since its original product launch in 2008. This involves a careful balance between complexity and power. The best example of this balance, and the most notable change in the system, is campaign design. LeadLife originally used a linear sequence of steps, while the new system uses a branching flow chart. Other companies have taken a similar approach. MORE >> -
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MATRIX | TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2011 How to Assess Marketing Automation Vendor Services Before You Buy - Yet Another Workbook
I wrote yesterday about our new workbook for marketing automation cost estimates. Today I’ll describe the other one: evaluating vendor services. Both are available free at the Raab Guide Web site. The problem with services is simple: you won’t use them until you’ve already bought the product. So the trick to evaluating them is to ask lots of questions in advance to understand whether they’ll meet your needs. Of course, there are two parts to that mission: building a clear picture and knowing what you need. Different companies have different needs in each area. MORE >> -
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MATRIX | MONDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2011  New Workbook: Estimating the Cost of Marketing Automation
We released two more vendor selection workbooks last week, both sponsored by Eloqua and available for free on the RaabGuide Web site. One is about estimating the cost of a marketing automation system and the other is about evaluating vendor services. The cost workbook was a particular challenge because the subject is so complex. After much thought, I came up with four cost categories: direct system costs : the actual price paid for the marketing automation software itself. This is where most buyers focus their analysis, but it’s a tiny fraction of the value at play. of revenue. MORE >>
| |
