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

DECEMBER 3, 2008

My little tour of demand generation vendors landed at Pardot just before Thanksgiving. As you’ll recall from my post on Web activity statistics , Pardot is one of the higher-ranked vendors not already in the Raab Guide to Demand Generation Systems. This pricing is low even among SMB demand generation systems.

Demand Generation 120

Demand Generation Enterprise Management Small Business Marketing Pricing 120

Customer Experience Matrix

APRIL 5, 2009

Demand generation systems are in that second stage. CEO and co-founder Brian Giese had extensive experience in business sales and marketing and with existing demand generation systems when he began developing True Influence two years ago. These are not yet standard features on most demand generation products.

Demand Generation 120

Demand Generation Digital Asset Management Demand Marketing Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

MAY 4, 2010

Summary: Two low-cost demand generation systems, Genoo and Act-On Software, have added unusually advanced social marketing features. Genoo , which offers a solid demand generation system for a rock-bottom $199/month, has placed a particular focus on capturing contact information from social interactions.

Act-On 120

Act-On Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services Features 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 21, 2009

It shows how specialized software can be much better at one function than general purpose systems. The latest stop on my little tour of not-really-demand-generation systems is Jesubi. Building these links is difficult in most CRM software and virtually impossible in marketing automation systems.

Efficiency 120

Efficiency Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management 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. Now is a good time to remedy that. The system can also execute SQL queries.

Multi-Channel 120

Multi-Channel Marketing Automation Services Demand Generation Agencies Advertising Channels 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. Salesforce.com easily dominates despite the presence of surprisingly capable free products like ZohoCRM and FreeCRM. rather than marketing automation.

Loopfuse 120

Loopfuse Marketing Automation Services Enterprise Management Marketing Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Joe Moloney gave a more detailed answer about limits in Salesforce.com in particular, including lack of CAN-SPAM compliance and limits on mass emails. Is Salesforce.com a threat to vendors of marketing automation solutions? Technology may impede Software-as-a-Service sales automation vendors from adding marketing automation.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation 120

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 15, 2013

The great hope is that acquisitions by Oracle , Salesforce.com , Adobe , and other big software vendors finally push the industry across this classic Geoffrey Moore chasm from the beachhead niche to mainstream users, but that’s by no means certain to happen. Join me at next week’s Webinar for a roadmap to making this happen.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Automation BtoB 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 Ranking Lead Scoring Lead Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JULY 30, 2009

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. Leads can be captured on landing pages, imported from lists or added through Salesforce.com synchronization.

Small Business Marketing 120

Small Business Marketing Bundling Work Management Paid Search Agency 120

Customer Experience Matrix

MARCH 9, 2011

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 can also push or pull data to Salesforce.com on a list-by-list basis, which gives users more control than moving all records at once.

Act-On 120

Act-On Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JANUARY 31, 2010

Placing them all in the same product adds cost and complexity, which are not a software developer’s friends. For more on vendor classifications, see my list of demand generation vendors from last November.) Lead scoring supports multiple scores per person, which is typical in high-end demand generation systems.

Paid Search Agency 120

Paid Search Agency Work Management Marketing Management Resource Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 25, 2009

The product was soon extended to integrate with Salesforce.com and to let the proxy server add Genius-generated popups that display personalized messages or offer an online chat. Later, the company added MarketingGenius, which lets marketers send email on behalf of salespeople and can react to Salesforce.com workflow rules.

Enterprise Management 120

Enterprise Management Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services 120

Customer Experience Matrix

NOVEMBER 4, 2010

When I reviewed Right On Interactive in a July 2009 post , the company was selling its 5Buckets marketing software as a multi-channel output generation tool that complemented conventional marketing automation systems. CRM integration: Right On can synchronize data with Salesforce.com and Microsoft CRM on a regular basis.

Salesforce.com 120

Salesforce.com Lead Ranking Lead Scoring Marketing Automation Services 120

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 12, 2009

This is why it’s hard to imagine that low-priced software can deliver similar performance to mainstream products. 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.

Pricing 120

Pricing Price Impressions Marketing Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

APRIL 26, 2011

Canterris , NurtureHQ , and mKubed all provide email, Web visitor tracking, nurture campaigns, lead scoring, and CRM integration ((Salesforce.com for Canterris and NurtureHQ; its own CRM for mKubed) for under $500 per month. See my List of Demand Generation Vendors for other options. MakesBridge is another contender.

Small Business Marketing 120

Small Business Marketing Work Management Features Marketing Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 13, 2014

Other than Raab Associates’ own VEST report , we’ve seen surveys of active buyers from Software Advice , usage figures based on direct observation from Mintigo and Venture Beat (using Datanyze) , and another broad-based survey from Pepper Global and Holger Shulze. This is a pretty common question so the answers were not very surprising.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation 120

Customer Experience Matrix

AUGUST 21, 2009

Summary: Aprimo Marketing Studio includes traffic generation features missing from nearly all existing marketing automation products. Aprimo is in the early stages of launching Aprimo Marketing Studio , a new Software-as-a-Service marketing automation suite that is separate from the existing Aprimo product.*

Marketing Automation Services 120

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

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 24, 2009

Major themes were greater access to detailed information, more precise targeting, and tighter integration with Salesforce.com. Although I actually think that quite a few demand generation vendors share the Marketo philosophy, it’s still helpful to hear the distinction made clearly.

Marketo 120

Marketo Marketing Automation Services Marketing Management Vtrenz 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 Ranking 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JULY 22, 2010

Summary: consolidation isn't new among marketing software vendors. When campaign management systems consolidated in the late 1990's and early 2000's, most were bought by enterprise software companies. Decision Software has remained a small company while Aprimo is most successful in B2B marketing resource management.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Enterprise Management Work Management Marketing Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JANUARY 4, 2012

Callidus isn’t a sales automation system like Salesforce.com , but it does provide a range of other systems that help sales departments. It made at least five acquisitions last year, all software-as-a-service companies selling some type of sales enablement. This is why Callidus is a good buyer.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Management Marketing Automation Automation 120

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 22, 2009

But the system does offer a comprehensive solution for smaller firms and, at least on the CRM side, can integrate with more powerful solutions including Salesforce.com , Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Siebel CRM On Demand. Tags: multi-channel marketing demand generation marketing automation crm software.

Enterprise Management 120

Enterprise Management Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services 120

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 9, 2012

What they found “too hard” wasn’t the software, but the planning and content creation needed for serious marketing automation. That’s not a software problem. What does this mean for the software vendors themselves? If the real keys to success are marketers’ skills and processes, does it really matter what’s in the software?

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation 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

AUGUST 23, 2012

This doesn’t mean that every client actually connects them to CRM system. But it does mean that the standard data models match the CRM data models and, in many cases, that abilities to expand the data model with custom tables are limited.

Eloqua 120

Eloqua Marketing Automation Services Lead Ranking Enterprise Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

CoreMotives (purchased last March by Silverpop ) has a similar architecture within the Microsoft Dynamics world and Predictive Response (which I haven’t looked at in detail) is a similar add-on to Salesforce.com.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Automation 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 25, 2009

If you look at the Web site of Act-On Software , you’ll see a typical set of demand generation features: email marketing, demand generation (equated with landing pages and forms), lead nurturing, Website visitor tracking, channel (partner) marketing, and lead scoring. I’ll come back to the database later.

Act-On 120

Act-On Demand Generation Work Management Marketing 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. SFDC" stands for Salesforce.com.) Yesterday the final answer trickled in.

Demand Generation 120

Demand Generation Work Management Market2Lead Marketing Automation Services 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? for whether this will change.)

Demand Generation 120

Demand Generation Small Business Marketing Cost Demand 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JUNE 10, 2008

As I wrote last week , demand generation vendors have a hard time differentiating their systems from each other. Functionally, it covers all the demand generation bases: outbound email, landing pages, Web site monitoring, lead scoring, multi-step nurturing programs, prospect database, analytics, Salesforce.com integration.

Demand Generation Agencies 120

Demand Generation Agencies Demand Generation Marketo Marketing Automation Services 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

JUNE 17, 2009

Summary: Marqui started as a Web content management system and then added basic demand generation. Marqui is one of the oldest demand generation vendors, founded in 2000. It added demand generation features later in response to client requests. This poses a serious sales challenge.

Demand Generation 120

Demand Generation Marketing Management Demand 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