Customer Experience Matrix

DECEMBER 4, 2012

One easily predictable trend in B2B marketing automation is that vendors will tailor their systems to specific industries. The reason may be that B2B marketing automation products have a narrower scope than B2C systems, meaning there’s less advantage in creating vertical editions.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Paid Search Agency Marketing Automation Advertising Agencies 120

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 5, 2015

I just finished the latest release of the B2B Marketing Automation Vendor Selection Tool , a.k.a. All six of the vendors new to this report sell primarily to small businesses, and most are “all-in-one” systems that combine marketing automation with integrated CRM. VEST Report. Here’s what struck me. social data.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Demand Generation Agencies Marketing Report Marketing Automation 120

Customer Experience Matrix

MAY 12, 2015

I briefly mentioned MDC Dot in an earlier blog post about giving sales people access to marketing automation capabilities. The redirection works best when the corporate Web site and the salespeople’s microsites are all on a subdomain hosted by MDC Dot.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Microsite Automation 120

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 12, 2013

Let me start by saying that the 50% revenue increase I’m projecting for B2B marketing automation in 2013 is a very healthy one. So if you’re working in the industry, don’t circulate that resume just yet. We’ve recently been seeing surveys that suggest something close to 50% adoption of marketing automation.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Enterprise Management Work Management Marketing Automation 120

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 13, 2014

The Interwebs have delivered an unusually rich trove of data about the marketing automation industry in the past few weeks. Taken together, these provide a clearer picture than usual of the state of marketing automation. Here’s how I see things. They are vastly more likely than average to have a system in place.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation 120

Customer Experience Matrix

SEPTEMBER 27, 2012

I wrote last August that it’s still possible for new B2B marketing automation vendors to challenge the industry leaders. The answer may not matter to marketers who don’t themselves work for a marketing automation vendor. make it radically easier for marketers to use existing functions.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Automation Adwords 120

Customer Experience Matrix

NOVEMBER 19, 2011

It’s time to wrap up this series of posts on marketing automation vendor selection, which were based on my November 10 Webinar with Neolane (replay available here ). Marketers have been doing such a bad job of selecting systems that they should forget their old approach and start from scratch. Forget the Past.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Vendors Marketing Automation Automation 120

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 22, 2013

Last week’s post on marketing automation and its discontents prompted several questions about whether the level of dissatisfaction is any higher with marketing automation than other systems. According to the G2 figures, marketing automation users are in fact more enthusiastic about their choices than almost anyone else.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Enterprise Management Marketing Automation Lead Scoring 120

Customer Experience Matrix

DECEMBER 20, 2012

Oracle announced today that it has agreed to purchase B2B marketing automation leader Eloqua for $23.50 The deal makes obvious sense, in that it gives Oracle a much stronger position in the fast-growing B2B marketing automation industry*. What if you're an enterprise marketer? recently, so $23.50

Eloqua 120

Eloqua Marketing Automation Services Enterprise Management Marketing Automation 120

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 21, 2014

Marketing automation, Web analytics, and Web content management systems can all access this data via API calls for analytics and as inputs to their own selection and treatment rules. This is a major extension beyond traditional marketing automation, which works mostly through email to known prospects.

DemandBase 120

DemandBase Advertising Agencies Marketing Automation Services Paid Search Agency 120

Customer Experience Matrix

AUGUST 16, 2011

I’ve long believed that B2B marketing automation is just a passing phase: that, ultimately, B2B marketing automation systems will be absorbed into CRM systems instead of operating independently. The main technical issue here is whether marketing and CRM systems need different database structures.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Enterprise Management Work Management Marketing Automation 120

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 17, 2012

MarketingPilot is best described as integrated marketing management for mid-tier companies. It has a pretty low profile in the B2B marketing automation world, partly because it serves a mix of B2C and B2B clients but mostly because it started as a marketing operations management system.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management Vendors 120

Customer Experience Matrix

DECEMBER 5, 2011

One is about estimating the cost of a marketing automation system and the other is about evaluating vendor services. After much thought, I came up with four cost categories: direct system costs : the actual price paid for the marketing automation software itself. These are the other 75% of the typical marketing budget.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management Cost 120

Customer Experience Matrix

NOVEMBER 17, 2011

Marketers can do a better job of picking their marketing automation vendors if they roll up their sleeves and work at it. Past innovations: a history of advanced thinking shows the vendor understands marketers’ needs and suggests they'll adapt well to the future.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management Vendors 120

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 26, 2012

One of first marketing automation systems I ever saw – this would be during the Reagan Presidency – was a custom-built dial-up network to distribute collateral to farm equipment dealers. Some of these channel marketing systems focus on lead distribution, some on locally-customizable promotion materials, and some on campaign management.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Enterprise Management Advertising Agencies Work Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 9, 2012

New-ish marketing automation vendor NurtureHQ showed me its product recently. Clean interface, easy to use, all the standard marketing automation features. Definitely take a look if you’re in that market for that sort of product. Howard Sewell of Spear Marketing Group made a similar point on his own blog.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation 120

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 18, 2011

As you might have guessed from my recent list of B2C marketing automation systems , I’ve recently been spending some time helping consumer marketers to select vendors. This is more a return than a departure: although I’ve written mostly about B2B systems for the past few years, my earlier work was largely in consumer marketing.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Automation Marketing Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JANUARY 7, 2012

Research firm Gleanster released its free “Gleansight” report on marketing automation late last month. These asked why people implement marketing automation, what challenges they face, and what contributes to success. By contrast, marketing efficiency ranked fourth among top performers and much lower among all others.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Automation Work Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

NOVEMBER 7, 2011

I’ll be giving a Webinar this Thursday on evaluating marketing automation software, sponsored by Neolane. Part of the content will be a list of Seven Deadly Sins of Marketing System Selection. It’s frightening how often I ask someone how they expect to use their new marketing automation system and am told they don’t know.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Automation Vendors 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JANUARY 5, 2011

Summary: Here are my estimates for the size of the B2B marketing automation industry, broken down by customer segments. I've been working madly on my new report on B2B marketing automation vendors. Many are very small companies with just one or two marketing automation users.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Enterprise Management Work Management Marketing Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

MARCH 4, 2011

Summary: Is stressing the need for process change making marketing automation too complicated, or a recognition of what it really takes for success? I’m not sure that whoever speaks for “conventional wisdom” would agree that marketing automation solutions must be expensive and complex. Eat your spinach.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Automation Loopfuse 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JULY 10, 2013

sales enablement: systems to share marketing information with sales ( Genius , SalesFusion , LeadFormix , RightOn Interactive , Optify) distributed marketing: systems shared between central marketing organizations and local branches, dealers, distributors, sales agents, etc. Distributed marketing also has its own pricing.

Demand Generation Agencies 120

Demand Generation Agencies Marketing Automation Services Paid Search Agency Small Business Marketing 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JULY 3, 2013

It is clearly “all-in-one” sales and marketing software for very small business, combining marketing automation, CRM, and ecommerce along the lines of Infusionsoft and Ontraport (formerly OfficeAutoPilot). You can be certain that this is the first time “Boy Scout troops” has come up as a category of marketing automation users.

Small Business Marketing 120

Small Business Marketing Marketing Automation Services Communities Lead Ranking 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JANUARY 22, 2013

The investment can be read as validation of Infusionsoft’s strategy of offering unified marketing automation, CRM, and ecommerce exclusively for very small businesses. That third theory – let’s call it the “ease of use” school – has been the dominant approach of the B2B marketing automation industry for the past few years. .*

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Small Business Marketing Work Management Marketing Automation 120

Customer Experience Matrix

DECEMBER 8, 2011

Social media is arguably overhyped as a marketing trend: it gets well under 10% of marketing budgets (different surveys have figures from 3% to 8%) and results are questionable (it was rated the least effective content marketing tactic in a recent MarketingProfs study ). Results are summarized in the table below. .

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management Social Media 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JUNE 16, 2010

Summary: here are some checklists to help select a marketing automation system. On June 29, I'll be giving a Webinar on “Matching a Marketing Automation System to Your Needs”, part of a day-long set of all-star lead management presentations organized by the Focus online business community.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Work Management Marketing 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

SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

When I first wrote about ClickDimensions in a February, 2011 post , the concept was intriguing – a marketing automation add-on to Microsoft Dynamics CRM – but the product itself had been available for less than six months and claimed barely 50 clients. This is comparable to standard marketing automation products.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Automation Marketing Management 120

Customer Experience Matrix

NOVEMBER 30, 2011

CRM integration is a fundamental feature of marketing automation. Sadly, most marketers pay little attention to these nuances until they've already selected a product. In fact, I may have exceeded the bounds of good taste: the topic allows a surprising number of double-entendres if you work at it.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation CRM Features 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JULY 22, 2010

As I wrote in my June 30 post on consolidation among marketing automation vendors , I expect the number of competitors to shrink fairly quickly as new buyers concentrate their purchases among a handful of leading vendors. Will weaker marketing automation vendors merge with each other to establish a larger market presence?

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Enterprise Management Work Management Marketing Management 120

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

APRIL 27, 2017

Vendors have addressed this either by reducing the required effort through easier-to-use interfaces, content templates, and prebuilt campaigns, or by providing services that do the work on business owners’ behalf. That would be the ultimate in work reduction.

Marketing Automation Services 0

Marketing Automation Services Marketing AI Work Management Marketing Management 0

Customer Experience Matrix

JANUARY 5, 2012

The immediate subject of my attentions is next Tuesday’s Webinar “ Marketing Automation: One Step at a Time ”, sponsored by Act-On Software. Training: The wall is high but marketers can learn to jump higher. Ease of use: Let’s lower the wall so marketing automation is easier.

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Work Management Automation 120

Customer Experience Matrix

AUGUST 2, 2012

In a young industry like B2B marketing automation, the primary focus is growth, and I published some figures on that yesterday (repeated below). For companies like Eloqua and its competitors, there are really two big financial questions: how fast can they grow, and how can they become profitable?

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Vendors Comparison Marketing Automation 120

Customer Experience Matrix

JULY 1, 2012

The practical use of lead scoring is to decide which leads to pass from marketing automation to sales, or, even more pragmatically, to predict which leads will be accepted by sales.* One reason the topic was on my mind is I’m also thinking a lot these days about lead scoring.

Lead Ranking 120

Lead Ranking Lead Scoring Sales Qualified Leads Budget Programs 120

Customer Experience Matrix

DECEMBER 22, 2010

Summary: Teradata's acquisition of Aprimo takes the largest remaining independent marketing automation vendor off the market. The market will probably split between enterprise-wide suites and more limited marketing automation systems. Many would no doubt be delighted to sell at such prices.

Resource Management 120

Resource Management Marketing Automation Services Enterprise Management Work Management 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. What else were vendors working on last year?

Marketing Automation Services 120

Marketing Automation Services Enterprise Management Work Management Marketing Management 120