Customer Experience Matrix

JULY 11, 2011

You know that red-hot B2B marketing automation industry? Don’t look now, but growth is already slowing. Our just-released update to the B2B Marketing Automation Vendor Selection Toolkit (VEST) shows that client counts grew just over 50% over the year ending in June, compared with nearly 100% growth for the year ending last December. That’s a marked decline, and the pattern is consistent across individual vendors: although some grew faster than others, each grew slower than during the previous pe

Marketing Automation Services 191

Marketing Automation Services Manticore Marketing Automation ActiveConversion 191

Customer Experience Matrix

JULY 12, 2011

As I mentioned yesterday, our new B2B Marketing Automation Vendor Selection Tool (VEST) asks vendors to estimate the number of clients in each of four size categories. This provides an interesting overview of the industry. The segments are defined based on revenue. Installation counts are: Looking at the raw percentages doesn’t make much sense since businesses in each group are quite different.

Marketing Automation Services 190

Marketing Automation Services Segmentation Marketing Automation Automation 190

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. I thought that was worth a blog post of its own. So here goes. 1. Ignoring Users. Selection teams often don’t take the the time to understand how future users of the system do their jobs today.

Marketing Automation Services 187

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Automation Vendors 187

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. Like any traveler, I’ve returned home with some new perspectives.

Marketing Automation Services 187

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Automation Marketing Management 187

Customer Experience Matrix

AUGUST 8, 2011

I caught an all-star panel on social CRM today at the CRMEvolution conference in New York. Up on the dais were Jim Berkowitz of CRM Mastery, Esteban Kolsky of ThinkJar, Brent Leary of CRM Essentials, Ray Want of Constellation Group, and Denis Pombriant of Beagle Research Group. You won’t find a more distinguished set of gurus, and moderator Berkowitz asked appropriately incisive questions.

CRM 187

CRM Conference Privacy Display 187

Customer Experience Matrix

JANUARY 11, 2011

Summary: Here's a closer look at revenue per employee and marketing automation revenue in general. I get the same answers as before but now have more detail to back it up. Some of the comments on last week’s post on the size of the B2B marketing automation industry led me to dig a bit more deeply into the question of revenue per employee. Looking through my files and asking a few questions, here are vendors for whom I have reasonably reliable information: This gives an average of $171,000 per em

Marketing Automation Services 187

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation Automation ActiveConversion 187

Customer Experience Matrix

NOVEMBER 16, 2011

Marketo this morning announced a new $50 million funding round, almost exactly one year to the day after raising $25 million in November 2010. In accompanying commentary, the company also revealed its 2010 revenue was $14 million, that it expects 140% revenue growth in 2011 (meaning about $34 million), and that it has about $70 million remaining of its total $107 million raised to date.

Marketo 186

Marketo Eloqua Comparison Acquisitions 186

Customer Experience Matrix

JUNE 29, 2011

You probably saw ExactTarget ’s June 13 announcement of its strategic partnership with Marketo and Eloqua ’s June 21 announcement of its new AppCloud marketplace for connectors with other systems. So did I. But it took a little while to connect with the vendors to get the details, so I’m only now ready to write about them. Both announcements shared a theme of integration between core marketing platforms and other marketing systems.

Eloqua 182

Eloqua Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services Lead Ranking 182

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. Enjoy. I've been working madly on my new report on B2B marketing automation vendors. One of the things this has forced me to do is come up with an estimate of industry size that I'm willing to defend in print. I based my figures on several approaches: revenues for the few vendors who release their figures; the number of vendor-reported clients multiplied by an estimated revenue

Marketing Automation Services 182

Marketing Automation Services Enterprise Management Work Management Marketing Management 182

Customer Experience Matrix

MARCH 8, 2011

Summary: HubSpot announced a $32 million investment yesterday by Sequoia Partners, Google and Salesforce.com. This could be a real game-changer in the small business marketing automation landscape. If you heard a loud thud late Tuesday afternoon, it was the sound of two shoes dropping. Salesforce.com and Google announced their long-anticipated entry into the marketing automation industry, in the baby-step form of investments in HubSpot.

Salesforce.com 180

Salesforce.com Enterprise Management Hubspot Marketing Automation Services 180

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. This group of marketers has different needs from even slightly larger companies.

Small Business Marketing 179

Small Business Marketing Work Management Features Marketing Management 179

Customer Experience Matrix

OCTOBER 4, 2011

I spent yesterday prowling the exhibit hall at the Direct Marketing Association annual conference in Boston. This uncovered several additional candidates for mid-tier business-to-consumer marketing automation. I’ll list them here and also add them to my previous list of mid-tier marketing automation systems so that future visitors will find the complete set in one place.

Marketing Automation Services 178

Marketing Automation Services Digital Asset Management Enterprise Management Marketing Automation 178

Customer Experience Matrix

DECEMBER 19, 2011

Marketers recognize the potential reach of social media, but are rightly frightened that they can’t control the message. Most social marketing applications sidestep the issue by focusing on creating communities ( Jive , Lithium ), monitoring conversations (Radian6 , Trackur ) and running promotions ( CrowdFactory , Nextbee ). Marketing automation vendors have mostly worked on making it easy to post and share messages and to capture social data.

Work Management 177

Work Management Peer-to-peer Marketing Management Planning 177

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 ). But social is clearly growing fast and has great potential. So marketing automation vendors are understandably eager to support it in their systems.

Marketing Automation Services 177

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management Social Media 177

Customer Experience Matrix

JUNE 22, 2011

Adobe on Monday announced a new “ Digital Enterprise Platform for Customer Experience Management ”. The platform fills the center of Adobe’s three-part corporate mission to “make, manage, and measure” digital content and experiences. The other two pieces were already in place: “make” is Adobe’s original content creation business, while “measure” is Omniture Web analytics.

Enterprise Management 177

Enterprise Management Digital Asset Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation Services 177

Customer Experience Matrix

SEPTEMBER 2, 2011

I spent most of this week at Salesforce.com ’s Dreamforce conference. With 45,000 registrants, the company says that Dreamforce is now the largest technology industry gathering. I don’t know whether that’s true (as someone pointed out, the Consumer Electronics Show is much bigger, for starters). But I did notice about two years ago that pretty much everyone in the B2B marketing automation space was more or less assuming I’d attend.

Enterprise Management 175

Enterprise Management Marketing Automation Services Salesforce.com Work Management 175

Customer Experience Matrix

JANUARY 17, 2011

I’ve been having way too much fun working on my new industry report. I decided to make it an interactive document that lets users (viewers? readers? The Chosen?) set their own weights for the different scoring categories and do detailed, side-by-side comparisons of vendors they select. This gives the document vastly more play value than a simple report.

Marketing Automation Services 173

Marketing Automation Services Sample Comparison Vendors 173

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 ). I’ve summarized them in three commandments. Forget the Past. Marketers have been doing such a bad job of selecting systems that they should forget their old approach and start from scratch.

Marketing Automation Services 172

Marketing Automation Services Vendors Marketing Automation Automation 172

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 bad news is I can't actually sell it online, despite the best efforts of Web masters on two continents. But the good news is I'm more than happy to take credit card orders directly if you send me an email or give me a call.

Marketing Automation Services 170

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Report Marketing Management 170

Customer Experience Matrix

NOVEMBER 16, 2011

My last two posts (not counting this morning’s detour into Marketo-land) described common errors marketers make when selecting marketing automation systems. How did we come to this? I see two reasons: Marketers are like everybody else. Remember all that yammering about how today’s buyers do their own research, don’t talk to sales until late in the process, and get their information from social media rather than experts?

Work Management 168

Work Management Marketing Automation Services Marketing Management Vendors 168

Customer Experience Matrix

APRIL 12, 2011

Choosing a marketing automation system is a major decision. A disciplined selection process is essential to make a sound selection. This series of posts presents the seven-step methodology we use at Raab Associates, along with related worksheets. The first three are below. For a complete list of the steps, worksheets, and background materials, visit the Raab Guide Website and download the Vendor Selection Workbook from the Resource Library (registration required). 1.

Marketing Automation Services 168

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management Marketing Automation 168

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. Infusionsoft this week staged the official coming out party for its latest release at its annual Infusioncon users conference. The big news was a one-step “web lead campaign” generator that automatically creates a Web landing page and three cross-linked email flows: a set of follow-up messag

Work Management 168

Work Management Marketing Automation Services Marketing Management Marketing & Strategy 168

Customer Experience Matrix

DECEMBER 6, 2011

I wrote yesterday about our new workbook for marketing automation cost estimates. Today I’ll describe the other one: evaluating vendor services. Both are available free at the Raab Guide Web site. The problem with services is simple: you won’t use them until you’ve already bought the product. So the trick to evaluating them is to ask lots of questions in advance to understand whether they’ll meet your needs.

Marketing Automation Services 166

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management Vendors 166

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. I wrote yesterday about building a requirements document to define the features you'll look for. But you also need a vendor who will support your long-term success. Here are some ways to identify a “future-safe” vendor. 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 166

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management Vendors 166

Customer Experience Matrix

MARCH 29, 2011

eBay ’s $2.4 billion offer for e-commerce services giant GSI Commerce has been described largely in terms of helping eBay to compete with Amazon in servicing retailers – or, as eBay President John Donahoe put it somewhat more diplomatically in the press release , “GSI will enhance our position as the leading strategic global commerce partner of choice for retailers and brands of all sizes.

Marketing Automation Services 166

Marketing Automation Services Paid Search Agency Marketing Automation Automation 166

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. Let’s start with ClickDimensions , a system I explored last September but never wrote about. ClickDimensions does pretty much the standard marketing automation activities: email, landing pages, Web visitor tracking, drip marketing campaigns, and lead scoring.

Marketing Automation Services 166

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation CRM Work Management 166

Customer Experience Matrix

FEBRUARY 3, 2011

Summary: Our new B2B Marketing Automation Vendor Selection Tool (VEST) has been carefully crafted to help marketers at every step of the selection process. I think it’s worth walking through the main components to explain why they’re there. Here's a screen-by-screen look at the components of the VEST. For more information or to order, please click here.

Marketing Automation Services 163

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Management Vendors Automation 163

Customer Experience Matrix

JANUARY 20, 2011

I suspect you may be getting tired of reading about the features in my new report comparing B2B marketing automation vendors, and want some actual information. Soon, I promise: the final data is all ready and only some light editing stands between you and a completed report. Well, that and the fact that the e-commerce features of the www.raabguide.com Website need some work.

Marketing Automation Services 163

Marketing Automation Services Sample Vendors Lead Scoring 163

Customer Experience Matrix

JULY 22, 2011

The folks at HubSpot have been busy this summer, announcing their acquisition of Performable in June and their HubSpot App Marketplace last week. Both events mark a continued expansion of their product. The company gave me a brief preview of the App Marketplace back in May, when the public beta had just launched. App markets are quite the fashion right now, and HubSpot’s joins the Eloqua AppCloud announced in June.

Hubspot 160

Hubspot Marketing Automation Services API Salesforce.com 160

Customer Experience Matrix

MARCH 24, 2011

I took a break from my usual obsessions yesterday to attend the New York edition of MediaPost’s OMMA Metrics and Measurement conference. It was a good chance to dive into this particular sector of the marketing analytics universe. (Another version of the program will be presented in San Francisco in July; the company also live streams a free Webcast.

Conference 160

Conference Paid Search Agency Ads Webcast 160

Customer Experience Matrix

DECEMBER 5, 2011

We released two more vendor selection workbooks last week, both sponsored by Eloqua and available for free on the RaabGuide Web site. One is about estimating the cost of a marketing automation system and the other is about evaluating vendor services. The cost workbook was a particular challenge because the subject is so complex. After much thought, I came up with four cost categories: direct system costs : the actual price paid for the marketing automation software itself.

Marketing Automation Services 156

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management Cost 156

Customer Experience Matrix

NOVEMBER 30, 2011

CRM integration is a fundamental feature of marketing automation. Pretty much every system can send leads to Salesforce.com , but capabilities vary significantly once you start looking for more. Sadly, most marketers pay little attention to these nuances until they've already selected a product. Then they learn they hard way what they should have asked.

Marketing Automation Services 156

Marketing Automation Services Marketing Automation CRM Features 156

Customer Experience Matrix

NOVEMBER 18, 2011

As I wrote yesterday, no one knows exactly what we’ll want from our marketing automation systems in the future. But it's still worth taking a guess at what looks likely. Here are some trends I expect will be important. Social Media. The first wave of marketing automation features for social media is now several years old. These included making it easier to share emails and Web pages, tracking shares through embedded URLs, and monitoring social media conversations.

Marketing Automation Services 156

Marketing Automation Services Work Management Marketing Management Paid Search Agency 156

Customer Experience Matrix

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

The world clearly has more B2B marketing automation vendors than it needs – my master list of demand generation products includes two dozen. By contrast, mid-tier consumer marketers often have a hard time finding good options. The major B2C marketing automation vendors -- IBM/Unica , Teradata/Aprimo , and SAS are more attuned to the enterprise market.

Marketing Automation Services 156

Marketing Automation Services Enterprise Management Resource Management Marketing Management 156

Customer Experience Matrix

AUGUST 29, 2011

Summary: Eloqua's registration statement offers new and interesting details about its business. My analysis is below. Hopefully it's accurate -- I think that SEC rules prevent them from commenting if it's not. Eloqua last week filed for an initial public offering of its stock. The registration statements accompanying these filings are like a striptease: often more interesting for what they hide than what they reveal.

Eloqua 156

Eloqua Marketing Automation Services Terms and Conditions Paid Search Agency 156

Customer Experience Matrix

JUNE 8, 2011

I stumbled over an Adexchanger interview yesterday with John Squire, the Chief Strategy Officer of IBM Coremetrics. It first caught my eye because the headline read “IBM’s Vision for the Marketer”, which is always a topic of interest. Then I noticed it was touting new reporting feature called Coremetrics Lifecycle, which the company describes as “the industry’s first application geared to enable online marketers to track and understand how customers progress through long-term conversion lifecycl

Analysis 156

Analysis Eloqua Eye-Tracking Segmentation 156

Customer Experience Matrix

APRIL 11, 2011

Continuing my adventures in online ad measurement, I attended [X+1] ’s NexTargeting Summit last week. This reinforced and refined my conclusions from last month’s OMMA Metrics conference , which identified the burning industry issues as: - better understanding of the interactions between online and offline events (both advertising and results), and - better scalability for successful online advertising programs.

Conference 156

Conference Advertising Channels Ad Frequency Ad Exchange 156