Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 21, 2014

That could serve as a pretty complete summary of the state of the art for B2B marketing today, especially if you consider “content marketing” as implicitly included. Equally helpful to me personally, it reinforced my intention to write about Bizo and DemandBase, both of which have recently briefed me on their latest product extensions.

DemandBase 120

DemandBase Advertising Agencies Marketing Automation Services Paid Search Agency 120

Customer Experience Matrix

NOVEMBER 21, 2014

The corporate home page says “Sailthru makes it easy to personalize every channel for every customer,” which is accurate enough. But plenty of other companies also help with omni-channel personalization. On the other hand, resolving that sort of ambiguity is what keeps me in business. Sailthru is a good example. data sources.

Lead Ranking 120

Lead Ranking Ideal Customer Profiles Personalization Classified Ads 120

Customer Experience Matrix

SEPTEMBER 16, 2017

But for me personally, it’s been endlessly intriguing to trace the paths that vendors have followed to become CDPs and learn where they plan to go next. That grew into a successful business with more than 200 employees, 400 clients in 40 countries, and $30 million in funding. Users can't currently apply machine learning to other tasks.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Enterprise Management Personalization Work Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 14, 2011

Now that I’m more or less finished launching the B2B Marketing Automation Vendor Selection Tool (VEST) , I can start catching up on the other topics. ClickDimensions does pretty much the standard marketing automation activities: email, landing pages, Web visitor tracking, drip marketing campaigns, and lead scoring.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation CRM Work Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JULY 30, 2013

Raab Associates officially released the new edition of our B2B Marketing Automation Vendor Selection Tool (VEST) yesterday. This is our flagship report on the industry, with nearly 200 data points on 23 vendors and separate ratings for micro-business, small to mid-size companies, and enterprise marketing departments.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Enterprise Management Marketing Management Acquisitions 120

Customer Experience Matrix

APRIL 27, 2017

Infusionsoft has always presented combined methodical management of its own business with evangelical cheerleading for its small business clients. For Infusionsoft managers, the big news was a new product called Propel, which delivers prepackaged programs for business owners who don’t want to get involved in the details of marketing.

Marketing Automation Services 0

Marketing Automation Services Marketing AI Work Management Marketing Management 0

Customer Experience Matrix

JANUARY 29, 2011

Thanks to the heroic efforts of my friends at OfficeAutoPilot , the new B2B Marketing Automation Vendor Selection Tool (VEST) is finally available for online sales. This gets to the heart of the marketing automation deployment challenge, which is helping marketers get real value from their systems from the start.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Automation Marketing Report 120

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. In a young industry like B2B marketing automation, the primary focus is growth, and I published some figures on that yesterday (repeated below). And the stock did rise 12% on the first day.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Vendors Comparison Marketing Automation 120

Customer Experience Matrix

DECEMBER 14, 2016

market only since March 2016, although many U.S. marketers will recall its previous incarnation as SmartFocus.* The company offers what it calls an omnichannel marketing platform that builds a unified customer database, manages marketing campaigns, and generates personalized Web and email messages.

Marketing Management 120

Marketing Management Bundling Marketing Automation Services Personalization 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JUNE 30, 2010

Summary: LoopFuse has launched a free entry-level version of its marketing automation system. LoopFuse today promised to “transform” the marketing automation industry by offering a free version of its system. Personally, I’d argue that the really significant news out of LoopFuse is their newly tiered pricing structure.

Loopfuse 120

Loopfuse Marketing Automation Services Enterprise Management Marketing Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

APRIL 12, 2011

Choosing a marketing automation system is a major decision. Be sure to include processes beyond what you do already: one of the reasons you’re looking at marketing automation is to expand what your department can accomplish. A disciplined selection process is essential to make a sound selection. The first three are below.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation 120

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. Let’s start with the basics.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Enterprise Management Work Management Marketing Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

DECEMBER 6, 2011

I wrote yesterday about our new workbook for marketing automation cost estimates. In terms of what you need, vendors offer three types of services: deployment: help with setting up your system support: help in operating your system after it’s deployed account service: help in growing your business.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management Vendors 120

Customer Experience Matrix

APRIL 26, 2011

Summary: MakesBridge offers a full set of marketing automation features with some special strengths that will appeal especially to small companies. I’ve written quite a bit recently about marketing systems for very small businesses – a category I’ve tentatively labeled “micro-business” and pegged at under $5 million revenue.

Small Business Marketing 120

Small Business Marketing Work Management Features Marketing Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JANUARY 26, 2011

The good news is, my new B2B Marketing Automation report (more formally: the Vendor Selection Tool, or VEST) is now available. The sets represent fitness for small, mid-size and large businesses, and each set contains a product fit score and vendor fit score. 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 6, 2016

I spent part of last week at ICON16, Infusionsoft ’s annual combination of customer conference, revival meeting, and group therapy session for small business owners. This all makes perfect sense and is wholly consistent with Infusionsoft’s historical focus on helping small business grow. Whether it’s realistic is another question.

Small Business Marketing 120

Small Business Marketing Work Management Marketing Management Planning 120

Customer Experience Matrix

AUGUST 6, 2009

Summary: Infusionsoft knows exactly how to sell marketing automation to small business: promise more revenue, less work, strong support and a low price. The system is designed for entrepreneurs, not full-time marketers. Those companies have no dedicated marketing staff and often no specialized sales person.

Small Business Marketing 120

Small Business Marketing Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JULY 30, 2009

Small businesses willing to invest some effort should be pleased with the results. Yesterday’s post described one strategy to sell marketing automation to small businesses: provide a specific, turnkey service that requires virtually no skill or effort from the user. Hubspot has accepted this challenge.

Small Business Marketing 120

Small Business Marketing Bundling Work Management Paid Search Agency 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JANUARY 31, 2010

Summary: Aprimo Marketing Studio offers powerful features in an on-demand system for sophisticated business and consumer marketers. When I wrote about Aprimo Marketing Studio in a post last August , I was impressed by the scope of the product but reserved judgment because it hadn’t yet been launched. You know who you are.

Paid Search Agency 120

Paid Search Agency Work Management Marketing Management Resource Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JANUARY 27, 2021

It’s easy (and correct) to see these deals as efforts to assemble comprehensive marketing suites. These deals all involve CDPs with marketing automation functions (that is, segmentation, message selection, campaigns, personalization, and cross-channel orchestration).

Marketing Automation Services 270

Marketing Automation Services Enterprise Management Marketing Management Lead Ranking 270

Customer Experience Matrix

MARCH 4, 2014

My post last month on DemandBase and Bizo ’s products to target Web display ads at individual businesses resulted in a call from Vendemore , a Stockholm, Sweden-based firm that has been providing similar services for seven and a half years. I still do expect to see marketing automation systems move up-funnel towards acquisition.

Top of Funnel 120

Top of Funnel Advertising Funnels Paid Search Agency Display 120

Customer Experience Matrix

DECEMBER 16, 2018

At the same time, other people – often marketers who had found through personal experience that unified customer data was rarely available – started by build database-only CDPs, based on the same insight that the value was in the database. But the nature of software products is to expand their functions.

Enterprise Management 278

Enterprise Management Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services 278

Customer Experience Matrix

AUGUST 6, 2014

Suffice it to say that Raab Associates'' B2B Marketing Automation Vendor Selection Tool (VEST) is written by a professional analyst (me) who has assembled 200 rigorously defined points of comparison on 25 marketing automation systems, allowing buyers to quickly find vendors who meet their needs.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Software Product Paid Search Agency 120

Customer Experience Matrix

DECEMBER 3, 2008

While last week’s post found that Marketbright aims at more sophisticated clients, Pardot explicitly targets small and midsize businesses (or SMBs as we fondly acronymize them [yes, that’s a word, at least according to [link] ]). So I was quite curious to see what they had to offer. What I found was intriguing.

Demand Generation 120

Demand Generation Enterprise Management Small Business Marketing Pricing 120

Customer Experience Matrix

MAY 25, 2016

I’ve been writing about Demandbase since 2009, when they had already begun their climb from compiling company profiles to enhancing Web site visitor records to personalizing Web content to targeting Web display ads. Now you know better…and hopefully won’t make the same assumption about other marketing automation systems.

Account Based Marketing 0

Account Based Marketing DemandBase Eloqua Buy 0

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 10, 2017

The company is in the business of assembling B2B marketing lists – an industry dating back centuries to city directories and beyond. Lead Genius has a basic email campaign capability, including segment definition, email templates with personalization variables, and email sequences. Lead Genius is a good example. Analyze results.

Marketing AI 120

Marketing AI Account Based Marketing Lead Scoring Lead Ranking 120

Customer Experience Matrix

DECEMBER 13, 2012

The system then tracks the content consumed by each individual and compares their behavior to “profile cards” of personas such as frequent site visitors with high interest in business. Each person is assigned to the profile card they match most closely; people can be switched to a different card if their behaviors change.

Enterprise Management 120

Enterprise Management Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JUNE 14, 2013

Doing it yourself takes multiple tools to gather different kinds of information, and then patching the result together into personal profiles. Most tools do little more than keyword searches, which only capture a fraction of the potential information and only cover keywords that marketers know in advance are important.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Lead Ranking Social Marketing Ideal Customer Profiles 120

Customer Experience Matrix

APRIL 1, 2013

Even though Raab Associates itself is a small business and runs in part on an Infusionsoft-like system ( OfficeAutoPilot ), I’m a professional manager by training and most of my clients are mid-size and big businesses. Small businesses can see changes in revenue or free time immediately. Reducing costs is a lower priority.

Small Business Marketing 120

Small Business Marketing Marketing Automation Services Conference Marketing Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JUNE 13, 2016

It gives Microsoft access to a rich trove of personal and company information, something it didn’t have before (although Microsoft probably collected more personal and company data than most of us realize). If nothing else, this confirms the foundational role of data and data management in marketing and sales technologies.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Management Vendors Linkedin 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JANUARY 24, 2015

I’m revving up for the next edition of our B2B Marketing Automation Vendor Selection Tool (VEST) report, which will include six first-time entries. GreenRope workflow GreenRope is all-in-one software sold primarily to very small businesses such as lawyers, real estate agents, consultant, coaches and membership organizations.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Small Business Marketing Paid Search Agency Marketing Report 120

Customer Experience Matrix

MARCH 23, 2011

Summary : Infusionsoft is making it easier to build campaigns and taken a new approach to helping clients plan their marketing programs. Both are needed for marketing automation to reach to a wider audience. But there's an extra passion at Infusionsoft that I think comes from serving small business people.

Work Management 120

Work Management Marketing Automation Services Marketing Management Marketing & Strategy 120

Customer Experience Matrix

MAY 20, 2013

I can''t say precisely why so many are emerging more or less simultaneously, but suspect a combination of business conditions and ever-more-urgent marketer needs. Neither build a company''s primary marketing database or shares data with external systems. Many CDPs have been quietly maturing for several years.

Enterprise Management 120

Enterprise Management Advertising Channels Marketing Automation Services Work Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

SEPTEMBER 26, 2013

Simply put, marketers need better databases. If you’re a working marketer, you almost surely know this from personal experience. CDPs are systems that help marketers build and update customer databases, and make those databases available to support marketing programs. From there, it''s up to you.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management Ideal Customer Profiles 120

Customer Experience Matrix

AUGUST 11, 2010

In particular, it’s also one of the main benefits offered by the landing page, Web form and microsite features of marketing automation systems. Still, as I’ve argued many times, it ultimately makes more sense for marketers to build their pages in the company’s core content management system than in separate marketing automation tools.

Digital Asset Management 120

Digital Asset Management Enterprise Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services 120

Customer Experience Matrix

SEPTEMBER 7, 2010

Summary: LeadPAC lets marketers pay for email responses as easily as they pay for search responses. I can’t recall a vendor with the same business model as LeadPAC from marketing automation vendor True Influence. I’ve seen marketing agencies and direct response media that work on a cost-per-lead basis.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Lead Ranking Work Management Adwords 120

Customer Experience Matrix

AUGUST 22, 2016

They may resell the data to marketers or use it themselves to support tasks such as account scoring or ad targeting. (To To put things in a broader context, “external data” can be contrasted with “internal data”, which comes from a company’s own systems for CRM, marketing automation, Web analytics, order processing, customer support, etc.

Enterprise Management 120

Enterprise Management Marketing Automation Services Marketing Management Vendors 120