In this post I want to focus on the trends in Marketing Automation for 2010. Manager, Inbound Marketing, Marketo. The vast majority of leads generated on a website never have a meaningful conversation with a sales rep. If there is no mechanism to pass the lead back to the marketing team (in an automated or semi-automated fashion), the lead is gone forever. Marketing automation solutions can facilitate remarketing to inactive leads, or so-called lead recycling, which helps drive value from a marketer’s most valuable asset, his or her lead database. MORE >>

Here’s the shocking reality of B2B lead generation – 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales opportunities. B2B marketing and lead generation experts point to a lack of lead nurturing as the primary cause of this poor performance. Why is lead nurturing important? Handing off these semi-qualified and not sales ready leads to sales before adequate lead nurturing only reinforces the impression that “marketing generates crappy leads.”. So, less than 10% of all leads are actually followed up.”. What is lead nurturing? MORE >>

At this week’s Marketo Summit , I realized we’re right in the middle of B2B Marketing Event Season. In this post I’m giving a short impression of the Marketo Summit. The Marketo User Summit was BIG: 600 customers and partners were attending. Marketo University. The program started with the Marketo University, with a beginner and an advanced track. attended the advanced track, and it was a nice combination of detailed feature descriptions and lead management best practices. Global Marketo Roll-Out. How Marketo Uses Marketo. MORE >>

Most readers of this blog will know that I’m passionate about Marketing Automation and Lead Management. To accelerate this learning process I’ve decided to join the Marketo consulting team, in which I can focus 100% on Marketing Automation and Lead Management. Marketo gives me access to more projects, and also the interesting projects that I wouldn’t be able to get as an independent consultant. Both of those are independent from Marketo, and done in my own time. As LeadSloth I did a lot of blogging, but my consulting practice paid the bills. MORE >>

Without further ado, here are the top 10 most popular blog posts from our blog, “ The Point ” in 2010 (as measured by page views). 21 Tips & Other Impressions from the Marketo User Summit. Blog Makeover Nets Sales Leads for Software Company. In fact, I’ve written much more in the last 12 months about social media and lead nurturing, yet many of those posts didn’t make the cut. Normally, a survey like this might indicate something about hot topics or key trends, but here instead the popularity of the top posts has everything to do with one word: search. MORE >>