Customer Experience Matrix

JULY 27, 2009

Summary: Genius.com is adding a URL shortener that will tie social media responses into the regular flow of demand generation and lead management. It’s a small but important step towards making social media a standard business tool. This both is and isn’t a big deal. That’s a very small step.

Social Media 120

Social Media Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JUNE 9, 2009

It lets Marketo sell seats to sales departments, which could be more lucrative than selling its core demand generation system. But I expect the sales automation vendors to take the business for themselves. Marketo lets sales reps send emails and add prospects to demand generation campaigns.

Marketo 120

Marketo Work Management Marketing Automation Services Eloqua 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JULY 20, 2009

Summary: Active Conversion helps marketing and sales departments make the best use of leads they’ve generated outside the system. That's fewer functions than traditional demand generation, but if those are the functions you need, who cares? Registration is no longer required.)

Active Conversion 120

Active Conversion Lead Scoring Lead Ranking Lead Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

AUGUST 14, 2014

Whether the company maintains a permanent database on all businesses or only scans when clients request information about specified businesses or segments. It expects to focus on finding trigger events and advising salespeople about the best ways to approach each prospect.

Lead Ranking 120

Lead Ranking Work Management Marketing Management Lead Scoring 120

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. Left Brain’s readiness for an optimization practice reflects changes withinthe larger demand generation industry.

Demand Generation Agencies 120

Demand Generation Agencies Work Management Marketing Automation Services Paid Search Agency 120

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 12, 2009

The company’s marketing is tightly targeted at very small businesses (under 25 employees) but its marketing features are competitive with demand generation products aimed at much larger firms. Three of the five core demand generation functions are clearly there: outbound email, Web forms, and lead nurturing campaigns.

Pricing 120

Pricing Price Impressions Marketing Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JUNE 3, 2009

Second of three posts on demand generation interfaces.) Marketbright uses the two-level approach that I consider an industry best practice: users can build simple linear campaigns with a wizard-driven interface, and embed these in a Visio-style flow chart to manage flows across campaigns.

Work Management 120

Work Management Marketing Automation Services Marketing Management Demand Generation Agencies 120

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 19, 2010

Summary: Alsa Marketing is a late entry to small business marketing automation. They support multiple languages, which should gain them some business. It’s harder every day for a new company to enter the business-to-business marketing automation industry.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Automation Marketing Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 15, 2013

But the news on that front is mixed: a survey by one of the industry’s best analysts , Jim Lenskold, found 60% of marketing automation users reporting increases in the key value measures of lead quantity and quality. If and when that growth does happen, it will be fueled by positive experiences of previous users.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Automation BtoB 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JUNE 30, 2010

Other vendors have similar price points for the small business market (see my list of demand generation vendors ) although I suspect their internal costs are higher. Features, ease of use, and support from the vendor and business partners are usually (and rightly) the main considerations.

Loopfuse 120

Loopfuse Marketing Automation Services Enterprise Management Marketing Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

Summary: I've posted a list of nearly 200 RFP questions that I hope many people will adopt to their own needs. For business software vendors, all three are equally inevitable – and it's not clear which they dislike most. I do have a minor ulterior motive in posting this list. If it's used widely, buyers and vendors both benefit.

RFP 120

RFP Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Automation 120

Customer Experience Matrix

MARCH 12, 2010

Here are some ways to match social media to your business objectives and resources. The chart makes two major points: - different social media meet different business objectives. Tags: demand generation marketing automation social media optimization. At least that’s the official topic.

Social Media 120

Social Media Resources Wiki Media 120

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 15, 2010

Many of the business-to-business marketers at the Marketo conference have exactly this problem: their data volumes are too small to accurately measure the incremental impact of most marketing programs. The best suggestion I can make is that they run whatever tests their volumes make practical. Let me know your thoughts.

Allocation 120

Allocation Marketing Automation Services Marketo Demand Generation 120

Customer Experience Matrix

MARCH 30, 2009

My personal definition of demand generations systems (see Introduction to Demand Generation Systems from the Raab Guide site) explicitly states that they do not incorporate sales automation. See Should Demand Generation and Sales Automation Be Separate Systems? But small businesses are different.

Demand Generation 120

Demand Generation Small Business Marketing Cost Demand 120

Customer Experience Matrix

APRIL 20, 2010

Summary: A survey of business-to-business salespeople finds they (still) consider themselves their best source of qualified leads. But marketing-generated leads are gaining increasing respect and salespeople are increasingly looking for help from outside data vendors.

Lead Scoring 120

Lead Scoring Lead Ranking Customer Surveys Sales Qualified Leads 120

Customer Experience Matrix

DECEMBER 9, 2008

Just paging through his notes, some of his suggestions include: - classifying users in several dimensions, including the job type, experience with the tasks, general computer experience, personality type, and general abilities (e.g. Of course, my own interest is applying it to measuring usability for demand generation systems.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Demand Generation User-Generated Content Customer Surveys 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JULY 11, 2011

We now ask vendors to estimate their client counts based on four segments: - micro-businesses, under $5 million in revenue; - small businesses, $5 to $20 million revenue; - mid-size business, $20 to $500 million revenue, and - large business, $500 million or more revenue. But it’s still worth sounding a note of caution.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Manticore Marketing Automation ActiveConversion 120

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 4, 2010

This seems to contradict my position: if email is run by personalization-oriented database marketers, while Web advertising and (perhaps) site content are run by behavioral-targeting-oriented digital marketers, then email personalization should be more common. It's the best I could do. Sorry for the small print in the charts.

Online Marketing 120

Online Marketing Customer Surveys Advertising Channels Lead Scoring 120

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 26, 2009

On one hand, it’s a rare opportunity to see data from business, rather than consumer, marketers. (Of Of the 230 respondents, 52% were pure B2B and another 36% were mixed B2B and business-to-consumer.) As with the measurement figures, this probably reflects the business of the survey responders.

Social Media 120

Social Media Customer Surveys Social Marketing Media 120

Customer Experience Matrix

AUGUST 24, 2016

Let’s continue the series by looking at differentiators related to Target Scoring, the second sub-function related to the ABM process of identifying target accounts. As the Guide defines it: Vendors in this category use statistical techniques to select target accounts.

Lead Ranking 120

Lead Ranking Vendors Account Based Marketing Lead Scoring 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JANUARY 17, 2009

The heart of my presentation on Wednesday ended up as a list of 37 “best practices” for marketing automation / demand generation programs. A bit of context: the presentation listed a sequence of steps for marketing campaign creation, deployment and analysis. The best practices are organized around those steps.

Demand Generation Agencies 120

Demand Generation Agencies Demand Generation Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation 120

Customer Experience Matrix

MAY 15, 2008

Over the past few months, I’ve had conversations with “demand generation” software vendors including Eloqua , Vtrenz and Manticore , and been on the receiving end of a drip marketing stream from yet another (Moonray Marketing, lately renamed OfficeAutoPilot ). It is now being offered elsewhere.)

Demand Generation 120

Demand Generation Demand Marketing Automation Services Marketing Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

MAY 18, 2007

Somehow I received a copy of “ Increasing Revenue Through Automated Demand Generation ” (registration required), the kind of title that sends chills up my spine.

Manticore 120

Manticore Online Lead Generation Lead Generation Vtrenz 120

Customer Experience Matrix

MARCH 2, 2009

To start back at the beginning, the objective has been to find a practical, objective way to evaluate the usability of different demand generation systems. The idea was to remind people that the question of which system is "best" has no simple answer precisely because different systems are good at different things.

Demand Generation 120

Demand Generation Lead Scoring Lead Ranking Manticore 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JUNE 6, 2008

There are literally dozens of vendors offering “demand generation” software, which can be roughly defined as systems to generate and nurture leads before turning them over to sales. If I’m correct, then the demand generation vendors should be competing aggressively to attract reseller support.

Demand Generation Agencies 120

Demand Generation Agencies Demand Generation Vendors Demand 120

Customer Experience Matrix

DECEMBER 13, 2008

To provide a meaningful and consistent comparison of usability across demand generation vendors, you could: 1. Define a set of business scenarios that must be supported by the system. Would the standard task lists and scenarios make it easier to gather prospects' business requirements? per year?

Demand Generation 120

Demand Generation Work Management Demand Marketing Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

DECEMBER 29, 2010

From a buyer’s perspective, the big questions about vendors are whether they’ll remain in business, whether they’ll continue to support and update the product, and whether they understand the needs of customers like me. I had much less data to work with relating to vendor strength and there are many fewer conceptual issues.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Vendors Marketing Automation Paid Search Agency 120

Customer Experience Matrix

DECEMBER 20, 2012

It seems more likely that Oracle will slow down Eloqua enhancements as it evaluates the product’s direction and decides how to best integrate existing Oracle technologies. That may be the best for Eloqua’s customers in the long run, but the changes will take time to deliver and necessarily distract from near-term product enhancements.

Eloqua 120

Eloqua Marketing Automation Services Enterprise Management Marketing Automation 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JANUARY 29, 2011

I'll qualify this a bit by pointing out that OfficeAutoPilot is one of the systems aimed at small businesses, which means it includes the CRM and e-commerce components you don't find in products aimed at larger organizations.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Automation Marketing Report 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JANUARY 26, 2011

The bad news is I can't actually sell it online, despite the best efforts of Web masters on two continents. The sets represent fitness for small, mid-size and large businesses, and each set contains a product fit score and vendor fit score. Email is info@raabguide.com. The final result was three sets of scores for each vendor.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Report Marketing Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

MARCH 23, 2011

But there's an extra passion at Infusionsoft that I think comes from serving small business people. The company and its clients prefer the term “entrepreneur”; I’ve been toying with “micro-business” as a label. Marketing automation for micro-businesses is fundamentally different from marketing automation for larger firms.

Work Management 120

Work Management Marketing Automation Services Marketing Management Marketing & Strategy 120

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 3, 2011

There are four versions: one each based on weights for small, mid-size and large businesses, plus a custom chart with the user’s own weights. Why It’s There: Now that buyers have tentatively identified their best candidates, they can look here to get a better sense of the products.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Management Vendors Automation 120

Customer Experience Matrix

MAY 25, 2010

Oracle tersely announced today that it had purchased the intellectual assets of demand generation vendor Market2Lead. This is an excellent fit for Oracle in that Market2Lead is a sophisticated product that is best suited to large, demanding marketing operations. Those are presumably the firms in Oracle's target market.

Market2Lead 120

Market2Lead Buy Marketing Automation Services Eloqua 120

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 1, 2011

Summary: Vendor scores from our new B2B Marketing Automation Vendor Selection Tool offer new proof of an old truth: there's no one best system for everyone. The one point I make every time I discuss software selection is that you have to find a vendor that matches your own business needs. Each category has its own row. -

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management Vendors 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JULY 3, 2008

Back in March, I wrote a fairly dismissive post about on-demand business intelligence systems. My basic objection was that the hardest part of building a business intelligence system is integrating the source data, and being on-demand doesn’t make that any easier. The key to this approach is (drum roll…) applications.

Work Management 120

Work Management Marketing Management Demand Market2Lead 120

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 8, 2010

In practice, the specialists in each field tend to be better than components of the larger surrounding suites: this is the essence of a “best of breed” strategy. Do you slice up Unica’s various components and reassign them to the Web operations, Web analytics and business intelligence units? So far so good.

Work Management 120

Work Management Marketing Automation Services Marketing Management Vendors 120

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 10, 2011

Different firms are best at serving small, mid-size and large marketing organizations, and for each of these buyer types, different vendors lead different categories. It’s like the awards ceremony at a progressive elementary school: everybody is best at something. You must look at the details to find the best match.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Enterprise Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation 120