Customer Experience Matrix

JANUARY 4, 2012

The list of independent marketing automation systems shrank by one yesterday when Leadformix was purchased by sales enablement vendor CallidusCloud for $9 million. The price is surprisingly low for an established marketing automation vendor. In my VEST report from last July, LeadFormix reported 210 clients, concentrated among mid-size firms, and 82 employees.

Marketing Automation Services 192

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Management Marketing Automation Automation 192

Customer Experience Matrix

JULY 31, 2012

I’ve just released the latest edition of my B2B Marketing Automation Vendor Selection Tool (VEST), which contains detailed analysis of all 22 B2B marketing automation systems. Serious marketing of the new edition is yet to begin, but anyone considering purchase of a marketing automation system can buy the VEST now at the www.raabguide.com Web site. The new report contains a rich trove of industry information.

Marketing Automation Services 190

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Marketing Report Marketing Management 190

Customer Experience Matrix

JULY 1, 2012

I wrote last week about the difficulty of linking marketing leads to sales results. One reason the topic was on my mind is I’m also thinking a lot these days about lead scoring. The practical use of lead scoring is to decide which leads to pass from marketing automation to sales, or, even more pragmatically, to predict which leads will be accepted by sales.* But the ultimate goal is to identify the leads most likely to generate revenue.

Lead Ranking 189

Lead Ranking Lead Scoring Sales Qualified Leads Budget Programs 189

Customer Experience Matrix

JULY 10, 2012

Last week’s post on lead scoring attracted more positive attention than I expected. This was doubly surprising because first, I didn’t think lead scoring was such a hot topic and second, I don’t really agree with the approaches I described. To clarify that second point, I’m not saying what I wrote was wrong or insincere. Rather, I consider it an accurate description of an approach I find problematic.

Top of Funnel 188

Top of Funnel Marketing Funnels AIDA Lead Ranking 188

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 1, 2012

I released the 2012 edition of our B2B Marketing Automation Vendor Selection Tool (VEST) report today, an event that deserves more hoopla that I’ve given it. The VEST provides by far the most detailed, objective information available on industry vendors. It includes nearly 200 data points on 21 products, thumbnail sketches of each vendor’s strengths and weaknesses, and three industry quadrants showing leaders in different market segments.

Marketing Automation Services 188

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Report Marketing Automation Automation 188

Customer Experience Matrix

JANUARY 7, 2012

Research firm Gleanster released its free “Gleansight” report on marketing automation late last month. I was principal author for much of the document and drafted the survey questions, although I didn’t write the individual vendor profiles or administer the survey. (I’ll also share in the revenues, which come when vendors pay for the names of people who download the report.

Marketing Automation Services 188

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Automation Work Management 188

Customer Experience Matrix

JANUARY 25, 2012

I had an intriguing demonstration yesterday from social CRM vendor Nimble. Since “social CRM” could mean just about anything, it’s important to explain what Nimble actually does: it combines traditional contact management with automated access to social media information about those contacts. That might not sound like much, but in practice it’s pretty darn slick.

CRM 187

CRM Work Management Paid Search Agency Marketing Management 187

Customer Experience Matrix

DECEMBER 18, 2012

‘Tis the season for industry predictions. I’ve already fielded a couple of requests for my thoughts, which usually requires some pondering before I reply. But this time I was able to answer right away because I’ve just finished a white paper on the future of B2B marketing automation, sponsored by Leadformix and available here for free download. The question answered by the paper is “What will marketing automation vendors do next?

Marketing Automation Services 186

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Marketing Management Automation 186

Customer Experience Matrix

APRIL 15, 2012

One of the things I’m enjoying about my new role as head of analytics at Left Brain DGA is being closer to hands-on marketing than I was as a consultant. This leads to different questions than I used to get, including the ever-popular “what’s a reasonable response rate for our emails?” That one came up last week and led me to review my files on industry benchmarks.

Advertising Benchmark 186

Advertising Benchmark Eloqua B2B Click Rate 186

Customer Experience Matrix

JUNE 5, 2012

Salesforce.com yesterday announced agreement to buy social media publishing vendor Buddy Media for $689 million, thereby adding another big fluffy piece to its “marketing cloud”. Oracle followed suit this morning with an acquisition of social media monitoring and semantic analysis vendor Collective Intellect. This followed Oracle’s $300 million acquisition last month of social publishing system Vitrue.

Resource Management 183

Resource Management Salesforce.com Marketing Automation Services Marketing Management 183

Customer Experience Matrix

AUGUST 30, 2012

HubSpot yesterday launched a “completely re-envisioned and rebuilt” version of its marketing system at its Inbound 2012 user conference. The main thrust of the new release was dynamic customization of emails, landing pages, and forms based on each contact’s profile and behaviors. This is a major expansion beyond HubSpot’s original focus on “inbound marketing” to attract leads.

Hubspot 180

Hubspot Top of Funnel Ideal Customer Profiles Landing Pages 180

Customer Experience Matrix

MARCH 30, 2012

I recently gave a Web presentation comprised almost entirely of slides from different surveys. This was a bit of an experiment and, sad to say, it didn’t seem terribly successful. I did weave the slides into a nice little story line – marketers know they need better technology, poor data is the root of their problem, and we know how to solve this – but even that wasn’t enough.

Barriers 180

Barriers Customer Surveys Budget Programs Process 180

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 5, 2012

Last week's post took a horse race approach to data from our newly available B2B Marketing Automation Vendor Selection Tool (VEST): who’s ahead, who’s behind, and who is coming on strong. But that’s more important to industry insiders than the marketers who actually use these systems. Real marketers care about what the systems can do. The VEST survey, covering nearly 200 items per vendor, answers that question in glorious detail.

Marketing Automation Services 179

Marketing Automation Services Enterprise Management Work Management Marketing Management 179

Customer Experience Matrix

SEPTEMBER 27, 2012

I wrote last August that it’s still possible for new B2B marketing automation vendors to challenge the industry leaders. This was based on the observation that several of the smaller vendors have quickly reached the 1,000 client benchmark. But it didn’t answer the more interesting question of what it would take for a new vendor to really bypass the current leaders.

Marketing Automation Services 175

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Automation Adwords 175

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 22, 2012

I’ll be speaking about optimization this Wednesday at the Online Marketing Summit conference in Santa Clara, CA. Since I’m very comfortable with the actual topic, most of my prep time has been spent looking for pictures for my slides. One discovery was the image above, which shows is how I think most people imagine optimization: a team of dead-serious revenue engineers carefully tweaking dials and watching gauges until they find the perfect balance among alternative marketing investments.

Work Management 173

Work Management Paid Search Agency Conference Optimization 173

Customer Experience Matrix

AUGUST 2, 2012

I’ve been so busy analyzing the new VEST data that I missed the announcement that Eloqua’s would make its initial stock offering today. The valuation was a bit disappointing – $368 million, or just over four times revenue trailing 12-month revenue – but certainly a good return on its backers’ investment of about $41 million. And the stock did rise 12% on the first day.

Marketing Automation Services 173

Marketing Automation Services Vendors Comparison Marketing Automation 173

Customer Experience Matrix

AUGUST 1, 2012

I’ve gotten used to thinking of the B2B marketing automation industry as entering a consolidation phase, during which a handful of dominant vendors emerge and small vendors drop away. That’s why I was a bit surprised when yesterday’s blog post showed that the “big four” industry vendors (Infusionsoft, HubSpot, Marketo, and Eloqua) are actually growing slower than the “next four” largest (Pardot, Act-On Software, Net-Results, and SalesFusion).

Marketing Automation Services 172

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Automation B2B Marketing 172

Customer Experience Matrix

MAY 23, 2012

Ask most marketers how they measure performance, and they’ll tell you they look at results: incremental revenue or return on investment if they’re available, or response rates if they're not. Industry experts take a similar approach, focusing largely on the need for better revenue measures. The situation – and barely concealed frustration – is captured perfectly in the headline from a recent Forrester Consulting study sponsored by Silverpop : “Response Metrics Are Used To Evaluate Success, Leavi

Lead Ranking 172

Lead Ranking Contingency Planning Planning Lead Scoring 172

Customer Experience Matrix

MARCH 16, 2012

Salesforce.com yesterday announced the launch of Site.com , an enterprise-class Web site management system. The news didn’t seem to get much attention, perhaps because Salesforce.com itself pretty much buried it. But Salesforce.com VP of Product Management Anshu Sharma did post a detailed explanation of the rationale on a Salesforce.com blog. My original reaction was “I told you so”, since I’ve been talking about the convergence of CRM and Web site management for years.

Salesforce.com 170

Salesforce.com Enterprise Management Marketing Automation Services Marketing Management 170

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 7, 2012

My last post looked at data from our just-released B2B Marketing Automation Vendor Selection Tool (VEST) to understand general industry trends and identify the greatest areas of improvement. Today we’ll look at the VEST data to see what’s still hard to find. As before, the charts show three columns: change in feature availability over the past year among core marketing automation vendors; current availability among core vendors; and current availability among enterprise vendors.

Enterprise Management 170

Enterprise Management Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management 170

Customer Experience Matrix

MAY 21, 2012

Experian Marketing Services yesterday announced its acquisition of marketing automation vendor Conversen. This is the third marketing automation acquisition in the past month, following Intuit’s purchase of Demandforce and FICO’s purchase of Entiera. Conversen is somewhat similar to Entiera in offering sophisticated multi-step campaigns, although its main differentiator is multi-channel dynamic content that makes it relatively easy to deliver different messages to different segments across multi

Marketing Automation Services 168

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Management Advertising Agencies Marketing Automation 168

Customer Experience Matrix

MAY 2, 2012

Intuit last week announced an agreement to acquire local business marketing vendor Demandforce for $423.5 million. That’s a hefty sum for a company with a reported revenue of $37.5 million, although it has been growing at a blistering pace – more than doubling last year – and now has over 35,000 customers. Still, the move makes perfect strategic sense, giving Intuit a stronger foothold in the marketing side of its small business customer base.

Marketing Automation Services 168

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Management Small Business Marketing Vendors 168

Customer Experience Matrix

JANUARY 10, 2012

I had an earful last week from Genoo president Kim Albee, who told me that I’ve misclassified her target customers as “micro businesses” (under $5 million revenue) for the past two years. She tells me nearly all of her clients are larger than that. I’ve revised my big list of demand generation vendors to reflect this. The main cause of my misunderstanding was Genoo’s starting price of $199 per month, which is below any small or mid-size business system.

Marketing Automation Services 167

Marketing Automation Services Enterprise Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation 167

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 26, 2012

One of first marketing automation systems I ever saw – this would be during the Reagan Presidency – was a custom-built dial-up network to distribute collateral to farm equipment dealers. This and similar seeds have since sprouted into a forest of products that help brand marketers work with dealers, distributors, franchisees, and agents. Some of these channel marketing systems focus on lead distribution, some on locally-customizable promotion materials, and some on campaign management.

Marketing Automation Services 166

Marketing Automation Services Enterprise Management Advertising Agencies Work Management 166

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 9, 2012

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. New-ish marketing automation vendor NurtureHQ showed me its product recently. It’s really nice. Clean interface, easy to use, all the standard marketing automation features. Particular strengths in: • split testing (separately for email subject lines and versions) • lead scoring (automatically reduces scores from older events) • CRM integration ( Highrise , Capsule CRM , Sugar CRM , Salesforce.com , and an open API) • marketing analysis (users can track mult

Marketing Automation Services 166

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation 166

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 10, 2012

I’ve now done more detailed research into the SetLogik B2B data management system I mentioned in my Dreamforce post. If anything, I’m even more impressed. I originally saw SetLogik as a tool to associate marketing leads with sales opportunities, even when they are not connected directly within Salesforce.com. That’s important in itself, since those missing links are the greatest obstacle to showing the value of B2B marketing efforts through revenue attribution.

Enterprise Management 163

Enterprise Management Work Management Lead Ranking Marketing Management 163

Customer Experience Matrix

APRIL 18, 2012

With its usual fanfare, Marketo today announced the acquisition of social marketing campaign company Crowd Factory. Crowd Factory is a certified cool product, which is probably reason enough for Marketo to buy them. But what I find intriguing is how little the two businesses overlap. Marketo is primarily focused on business marketing, and in particular lead generation, nurturing and analytics.

Act-On 163

Act-On Marketing Automation Services Marketo Buy 163

Customer Experience Matrix

JANUARY 5, 2012

Here’s more proof that the apocalypse is near: I’ve discovered the “remove background” feature in Powerpoint. This makes it even easier for me to doctor photographs for my presentations. The fabric of reality cannot long survive so much stress. The immediate subject of my attentions is next Tuesday’s Webinar “ Marketing Automation: One Step at a Time ”, sponsored by Act-On Software.

Marketing Automation Services 163

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Work Management Automation 163

Customer Experience Matrix

SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

When I first wrote about ClickDimensions in a February, 2011 post , the concept was intriguing – a marketing automation add-on to Microsoft Dynamics CRM – but the product itself had been available for less than six months and claimed barely 50 clients. Since then, the company has grown its customer base more than ten-fold (it won’t release specific figures), won the Dynamics Marketplace Solution Excellence Partner of the Year award, signed up more than 250 channel partners around the world, and

Marketing Automation Services 156

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Automation Marketing Management 156

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 29, 2012

I spent the early part of this week at SAS ’s annual analysts conference, where the company reviewed the past year and presented its vision for 2012. The story this year was simple: “big data”, and SAS’s “high performance analytics” approach to taming it. Of course, “high performance analytics” is what SAS has always done and, like “big data” itself, the term is relative.

Analytics 156

Analytics Paid Search Agency Enterprise Management Conference 156

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 16, 2012

You may have seen yesterday’s announcement that Raab Associates’ marketing technology practice* has become part of LeftBrain DGA , an agencyspecializing in demand generation strategy and execution. My role at Left Brain will be to build the “optimization”practice, which means working on marketing analytics as well astechnology. I’m looking forward to deeper involvement in client marketing programs than the project-oriented work at RaabAssociates allowed.

Demand Generation Agencies 156

Demand Generation Agencies Work Management Marketing Automation Services Paid Search Agency 156

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 2, 2012

As I mentioned in my Marketing Automation Beer Goggles post, KXEN introduced a free lead scoring app for Salesforce.com users at Dreamforce. KXEN has since given me a closer look at the lead scoring product, underlying technology, and future plans. First for details on Predictive Lead Scoring itself. As originally reported, it’s free and requires no configuration to set up.

Lead Ranking 152

Lead Ranking Salesforce.com Automation Lead Scoring 152

Customer Experience Matrix

AUGUST 20, 2012

One of my favorite parts about putting out a new edition of the VEST report is I get to dive into a pile of new data about industry trends. Think Scrooge McDuck and his pool filled with gold coins. Indeed, with 208 data points on 22 vendors, there’s so much data that it’s a challenge to make sense of it. The approach I settled on this time is to compare the average score of each item against its average in the previous edition, six months earlier.

Marketing Automation Services 152

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Management Vendors Marketing Report 152

Customer Experience Matrix

MAY 13, 2012

Three weeks ago, Intuit shook up the low end of the marketing automation universe by purchasing small business marketing shooting star Demandforce. Last week the action shifted to the high end, where FICO announced its purchase of Entiera , one of the few remaining enterprise class products. FICO, the company formerly known as Fair Isaac and originator of the influential FICO credit score, first dipped its toe into marketing automation services and software when it acquired DynaMark in 1992.

Marketing Automation Services 152

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Automation Buy 152

Customer Experience Matrix

APRIL 14, 2012

Infusionsoft introduced its latest release earlier this month. This included a full revamp of its customer interface, a new campaign builder and shopping cart, and new capabilities for Web analytics, lead scoring, and lead source reporting. Stated so plainly, this doesn’t sound like much. But Infusionsoft says it’s the biggest release in company history and I've no reason to doubt.

Lead Scoring 152

Lead Scoring Lead Ranking Analytics Campaigns 152

Customer Experience Matrix

SEPTEMBER 3, 2012

I’ve just ended my six month tour as VP Optimization at LeftBrain DGA, and am now returning full time to my usual consulting, writing, and general shenanigans. It was fun to work again as a hands-on marketer. Here are some insights based on the experience. - lots of content. We all know that content is king, but sometimes forget the king has a voracious appetite.

Multivariate analysis 226

Multivariate analysis B2B Marketing Planning B2B 226

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 11, 2012

ExactTarget announced its acquisition today of mid-tier marketing automation vendor Pardot , for just under $100 million ($95.5 million, to be exact). In one way, this was surprising: Pardot had seemed less interested in being purchased than others in the industry. But Pardot was also the only major marketing automation competitor without serious outside funding.

Enterprise Management 185

Enterprise Management Marketing Automation Services Peer-to-peer Marketo 185