Customer Experience Matrix

NOVEMBER 18, 2009

One of the audience members at the B2B Marketing University in Boston asked about demand generation systems for small businesses, and how to distinguish among the vendors in general. My brief answer was that the biggest difference was less functionality than the target markets the different vendors pursue.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Management Demand Generation Agencies Demand Generation 120

Customer Experience Matrix

MAY 5, 2016

The new boss is Account Based Everything. Of course, Miller is a master marketer, so we could just chalk up his claim to skill at attracting attention. Like Engagio’s earlier analytics products, PlayMaker starts by pulling data from Salesforce.com CRM and attaching leads to accounts. But I digress.

Account Based Marketing 120

Account Based Marketing Marketing Automation Services Service Paid Search Agency 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JULY 17, 2009

Last Wednesday’s revised ranking of demand generation vendors by Web traffic reminded me that I never published notes from a conversation I had several months ago with Right On Interactive , developer of the 5Buckets marketing automation software. Of course, the labels matter less than what the system does.

Multi-Channel 120

Multi-Channel Marketing Automation Services Demand Generation Agencies Advertising Channels 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JUNE 30, 2010

LoopFuse knows that, of course. 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. Salesforce.com easily dominates despite the presence of surprisingly capable free products like ZohoCRM and FreeCRM.

Loopfuse 120

Loopfuse Marketing Automation Services Enterprise Management Marketing Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

AUGUST 12, 2010

On Monday, Genius.com announced “the first free, instant-on demand generation solution”, a description carefully crafted to distinguish their offering from the free version announced by LoopFuse in June. LoopFuse also provides automated Salesforce.com integration, but doesn’t have Genius’s Web tracking technology.

Work Management 120

Work Management Marketing Automation Services Marketing Management Loopfuse 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

JULY 30, 2009

Of course, these multi-function systems must still be suited to users with little time and expertise. The current version also hosts landing pages and Web sites, manages a lead database with profiles and Web activity history, generates lead scores, sends alerts to sales people, and synchronizes data with Salesforce.com.

Small Business Marketing 120

Small Business Marketing Bundling Work Management Paid Search Agency 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. Marketo today officially launched “Sales Insight”, an application that makes prospect activity history directly available to sales people from within Salesforce.com.

Marketo 120

Marketo Work Management Marketing Automation Services Eloqua 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JULY 21, 2009

The latest stop on my little tour of not-really-demand-generation systems is Jesubi. The flash show when you enter the company’s Web site could easily be mistaken for a demand generation product – it lists campaign workflow, list segmentation, email templates, Salesforce.com integration and dynamic reporting.

Efficiency 120

Efficiency Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JANUARY 31, 2010

For more on vendor classifications, see my list of demand generation vendors from last November.) In other words, Marketing Studio competes with high-end demand generation systems like Eloqua , Market2Lead and Neolane. Of course, the bells and whistles wouldn’t matter if the core features were poor.

Paid Search Agency 120

Paid Search Agency Work Management Marketing Management Resource Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

AUGUST 28, 2014

Of course, there are more important things about 6Sense than whether I consider it a CDP. Starting at the beginning, the system imports a list of each client’s customers and sales opportunities from CRM and marketing automation systems. Standard integrations are available for Salesforce.com , Oracle Eloqua and Marketo.

Lead Ranking 120

Lead Ranking Activities Lead Scoring Marketing Automation Services 120

Customer Experience Matrix

AUGUST 14, 2014

Of course, there are plenty of important differences which impact which might make sense for you. 6Sense finds new prospects using behavioral data gathered from a network of "several thousand" Web publishers rather scanning public sources like others in this list. So it doesn’t quite belong here, but it’s interesting nevertheless.

Lead Ranking 120

Lead Ranking Work Management Marketing Management Lead Scoring 120

Customer Experience Matrix

DECEMBER 20, 2012

So that’s all fine, but what industry observers really want to know is how Salesforce.com will react. Of course, a platform that serves all customer life stages also by definition contains all information about each customer. Okay, now we can talk about Salesforce.com. Wouldn’t that be nice? We’ll see how they handle it.

Eloqua 120

Eloqua Marketing Automation Services Enterprise Management Marketing Automation 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JANUARY 20, 2009

Note that none of listed categories included behavioral information such as email clickthroughs or Web page visits, which demand generation vendors make so much of. The categories don’t make much sense to me because they overlap: products like Salesforce.com are both CRM systems and SaaS.

Work Management 120

Work Management Marketing Management Demand Generation Agencies Lead Scoring 120

Customer Experience Matrix

AUGUST 21, 2009

. - Consumer-oriented systems generally limit themselves to outbound email and multi-step campaigns, and sometimes provide real-time recommendations to call centers and Web sites. Of course, I’m generalizing about sets of vendors so there will be individual exceptions. The demand generation vendors have been much more dynamic.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Digital Asset Management Marketing Management Paid Search Agency 120

Customer Experience Matrix

DECEMBER 2, 2010

The company began with search engine optimization to attract traffic, and added landing pages, blogging, Web hosting, lead scoring, and Salesforce.com integration. Since my July 2009 review , HubSpot has further extended the system to include social media monitoring and sharing, limited list segmentation and simple drip marketing campaigns.

Small Business Marketing 120

Small Business Marketing Marketing Automation Services Hubspot Demand Generation Agencies 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JULY 22, 2010

Although the world has certainly changed since the late 1990’s, I see no reason to expect a different pattern among demand generation vendors. Of course, Oracle has already made its move by purchasing Market2Lead's intellectual assets. A few might survive as independents serving the most sophisticated clients.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Enterprise Management Work Management Marketing Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

AUGUST 16, 2011

Of course, the jackpot here is Salesforce.com. Lead Follow-Up would probably suffice for small organizations, although it’s targeted more at individual salespeople than marketing departments. I wrote in February about ClickDimensions , which adds advanced email campaigns and Web tracking to Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Enterprise Management Work Management Marketing Automation 120

Customer Experience Matrix

MARCH 9, 2011

The actual functions provided by Act-On are generally competitive with low-to-mid tier marketing automation products. Of course, every system has its own mix of strengths and weaknesses. This lets users manage the database as if it were a set of separate lists. (In The same lead can belong to multiple lists.)

Act-On 120

Act-On Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 9, 2012

Of course, marketers will still have to create content and design programs. I can't think of any products that recommend the right marketing programs, but proper analytics can identify patterns that reveal opportunities, and it’s perfectly conceivable that a rule-based system could check for known issues and make recommendations.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation 120

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 14, 2011

Of course, another way to look at this is that the CRM vendors already do marketing automation – certainly Oracle/Siebel does, and plenty of folks would argue that Salesforce.com has adequate marketing automation capabilities for most purposes, although most experts (and I) would disagree.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation CRM Work Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 13, 2009

Back in early January I posted a discussion on treatment of Company-Level Data in Demand Generation Systems. At that time, I posed a set of specific questions to the demand generation vendors in the Raab Guide. Of course, doing more work now isn't easy, since you probably don't have a lot of free time.

Demand Generation 120

Demand Generation Work Management Market2Lead Marketing Automation Services 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JUNE 18, 2008

Market2Lead offers the usual list of demand generation functions: outbound email, Web forms and landing pages, automated lead nurturing, integration with sales, and campaign return on investment analysis. Sales force contacts are, of course, captured through two-way integration Salesforce.com and other sales automation systems.

Market2Lead 120

Market2Lead Enterprise Management Demand Generation Agencies Demand Generation 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JULY 1, 2016

It too builds an account-oriented database, provides ABM analytics, and selects messages to be delivered by other systems. Of course, every system is unique. Marketers set up YesPath programs by uploading a list of target accounts and then defining the selection criteria for individuals to enter the program.

Account Based Marketing 120

Account Based Marketing ABM Work Management Marketing Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

DECEMBER 13, 2008

To provide a meaningful and consistent comparison of usability across demand generation vendors, you could: 1. Develop a specific package for each scenario, with both a task list and standard materials such as a list of users to set up, data elements to capture, email contents to produce, campaign logic, etc. per year?

Demand Generation 120

Demand Generation Work Management Demand Marketing Management 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

MAY 6, 2010

Summary: Genoo provides a simple Web site, demand generation and social marketing for $199 per month. I’m somewhat grandly labeling it a “Web marketing system” rather than “demand generation” because its microsite could replace a small company’s primary Web site. Of course, users can ignore these features if they wish.

Small Business Marketing 120

Small Business Marketing Marketing Management Planning Paid Search Agency 120

Customer Experience Matrix

AUGUST 18, 2010

Of course, if you’re a vendor offering a cool new technology, the stakes are higher. The company’s product touches the standard marketing automation bases: outbound email, landing pages and forms, lead nurturing, scoring and integration with Salesforce.com. Of course, you do have to wonder about the accuracy of the information.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Automation Jigsaw 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JULY 3, 2008

I still think that’s the case, but did revisit the topic recently in a conversation with Ken Rudin, CEO of on-demand business analytics vendor Lucid Era. These are supported by standard connectors to Salesforce.com, NetSuite (where Rudin was an advisory board member) and Oracle Order Management. Problem(s) solved, eh?

Work Management 120

Work Management Marketing Management Demand Market2Lead 120

Customer Experience Matrix

MARCH 16, 2011

Of course, nothing is truly unique. That's a richer feature set than most marketing automation systems targeted towards the small and mid-size business. That's a richer feature set than most marketing automation systems targeted towards the small and mid-size business. This includes implementation and training.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Automation Features 120

Customer Experience Matrix

SEPTEMBER 13, 2011

Pardot also has connectors for SugarCRM , NetSuite , and Microsoft CRM as well as Salesforce.com – not unique, but a broader range than most. Of course, other vendors disagree. In-site search is a powerful indicator of intent and not one I recall seeing in other marketing automation systems.

Ideal Customer Profiles 120

Ideal Customer Profiles Marketing Automation Services Eloqua Paid Search Agency 120

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 17, 2011

(Other entry points: accounting software like Intuit Quickbooks, email clients like Microsoft Outlook, personal productivity suites like Microsoft Office, Web hosting companies like GoDaddy , and of course CRM like Salesforce.com.)

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Management Contact Marketing Vendors 120

Customer Experience Matrix

APRIL 14, 2009

I have my little checklist of features to define whether a demand generation system is suited for simple or complex marketing programs. You'll find most of the list in our report on Vendor Usability Scores on the Raab Guide site.) Of course, Joe the Marketer won't care about my classification scheme. Consider LeadLife.

Enterprise Management 120

Enterprise Management Features Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services 120