Over at Marketo, Jon Miller wrote a fascinating post recently on “ The 4-1-1 Rule for Lead Nurturing ” in which he posits (and here I’m paraphrasing) that lead nurturing campaigns don’t always need to feature the latest white paper, Webinar, or video, and that these kinds of offers or promotions are best interspersed with what Jon refers to as “educational or entertaining content.”. In my last post , I talked about creative campaign ideas for when you have no content to offer. Which leads to another question: do certain types of campaigns even need an offer in the first place? MORE >>

Recently I was asked to contribute some thoughts to Marketo’s new ebook, “ The Definitive Guide to Marketing Automation.” You can download a free copy of the ebook – 100 pages on everything you need to know about marketing automation – what it is, how it’s different from CRM, common features, keys to success, and more – by clicking here. What are the most important things to look for in a marketing automation vendor? How often do you release product enhancements? What do you think the future of marketing automation will look like in the next few years? MORE >>

This obviously allows you to match your customers with sales transactions, but more importantly for marketers it allows you the option of layering on a marketing automation system that can deliver targeted messages at the right time without continuous management by additional personnel. You may even be sophisticated enough to break down your list by sales group, product, region, or industry. Marketing automation, what is it? Automate processes like these and scale the number of touch points, leads generated, and sales routed. You can scale your processes. MORE >>

The growing adoption of marketing automation systems is empowering B2B marketers to develop, produce, and execute email campaigns more efficiently, and more effectively, than ever before. lead nurturing) or when you want to segment emails by product line or target audience. Marketo users : Download a free set of professionally-designed email and landing page templates, along with complete instructions for how to download into Marketo, now available on the Spear Website. Here then are some tips to keep in mind when designing templates for your email campaigns: 1. MORE >>

final installment in my series of posts on leaders in the different B2B marketing automation sectors, as determined by the ratings in our VEST report. Most require the full set of marketing automation functions but apply these in simple ways. They have one to fifteen marketing automation users. The leaders quadrant in this sector is quite crowded, with Act-On , Eloqua , Pardot , and Marketo all jostling for position. This isn’t at all to say that the products are equivalent. Today I’ll present the third and (mercifully?) And, no, they’re not my client.) MORE >>