tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19079848294839305252024-03-12T21:43:18.529-07:00Marketing Technology ReportOriginal Research and Aggregation of Content about Marketing Automation and other Marketing Cloud ProductsDan Freemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13699328254476579134noreply@blogger.comBlogger34125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907984829483930525.post-30924856972009688162017-09-26T07:16:00.003-07:002020-07-23T10:08:27.994-07:00Revenue Marketing: Transitioning from Cost Center to Revenue Driver<span style="font-size: small;">by <b>Dan Freeman </b></span><br /><font size="1"><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/danfreeman/" target="_blank">Follow me on LinkedIn</a></font><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Modern marketing is no longer an intangible, creative endeavor; it produces tangible and measurable results. Today, revenue can be traced back to marketing activities and touch points; not with exactitude, but with enough precision to steer an organization’s strategy towards its most profitable marketing activities and to avoid those without much payoff. Because the revenue impact of marketing is now intelligible, companies are less willing to put money into marketing’s black box and hope sales happen. Increasingly, the marketing department is expected to perform as a revenue generator, not a cost center.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">But making the transition from cost center to revenue engine is not easy. It’s a gradual process, one that can take two to three years to accomplish, and requires ongoing investment in marketing technologies as well as in the data, content, and business processes that enable these technologies.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">The good news is that at each stage, you will see a significant and measurable impact on your marketing results. Learn the four stages of transformation from basic, cost-centric marketing to revenue driven marketing and discover the key differentiators of each stage.</span><br />
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<h3>
Basic Marketing</h3>
At this stage, a marketing department follows a checklist of activities, but none of these activities are effectively monitored for results. Sure, there are “must do” activities—the website, email marketing, a social media presence, and trade shows, for example—but these are mostly dictated by historical precedent and there is only a hazy idea which of these activities produces results. Instead of hard data that provides real insight into the effectiveness of marketing actions, the focus here is on activity itself. Marketers speak in terms of spending and outlay rather than expected response rates and revenue impact. At this basic stage, marketing is a cost center where anecdotes, theory, and history—not hard data—support the decision on the marketing spend.<br />
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Lead Generation</h3>
As the marketing department realizes that activity alone is not enough, attention shifts to strategies that generate leads for the sales team. At the lead generation stage, budgets shift from activities whose results are purely theoretical to those producing tangible results—leads. The nascent awareness of which marketing channels and techniques produce tangible leads is a significant leap beyond basic marketing. At this stage, companies concentrate on developing content, attracting visitors through search engine optimization, and using email marketing to get their content in front of prospects with the hope of generating clicks. Emphasis may be put on development of white papers or other downloadable content.<br />
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The quality of the lead, however, is still not considered. Leads delivered to sales are neither scored nor prioritized. Here marketing can influence revenue but it’s still largely considered a cost center. While it’s a major step up, a business that focuses on lead generation rather than lead scoring, nurturing, and development is still far from maximizing its marketing potential as a revenue generator.<br />
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Quantitative Marketing</h3>
When the marketing team moves from amassing leads to scoring, prioritizing, and sorting those leads, it reaches the third stage: quantitative marketing. This stage is marked by a shift to repeatable and quantifiable processes. Here, a marketing automation platform is required. Two new dimensions characterize the quantitative stage. First, lead scoring enables marketers to deliver higher quality leads. Whereas in the lead generation stage, a white paper download alone may constitute a lead, in the quantitative stage, marketing takes a richer view of the prospect, taking into account firmographic, profile and behavioral information before sending it to sales. Second, nurture campaigns allow marketers to deliver customized streams of contents based on prospect profiles and behavior. By combing scoring with nurture workflows, the quantitative stage represents a major leap from the lead gen stage.<br />
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Revenue Marketing</h3>
At the apex of modern marketing is the revenue marketing stage Here, not only are leads quantified by their profiles and behavior; each opportunity can be tied back to a set of marketing activities. The impact of every marketing activity is now associated with revenue results. This is accomplished through integration of marketing automation and CRM systems like Salescorce.com. Leads flow into CRM where they are converted into sales opportunities and revenues.<br />
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This integration between sales and marketing enables marketers to use advanced nurture flows to influence and accelerate the sales cycle. Each lead is qualified and moves through a customized nurture program. Every marketing activity serves a purpose and is a part of the greater whole. The cost of every campaign can be assessed in terms of expected returns on the company’s investment.<br />
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At the revenue marketing stage, revenue generated and attributed to marketing is now repeatable, predictable and scalable. The revenue marketing stage requires advanced use of marketing automation software but the payoff is huge; marketing has now fully transitioned from a cost center to a revenue driver.<br />
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© Marketing Tech Report 2015 All Rights Reserved.Dan Freemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13699328254476579134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907984829483930525.post-36007385747937462912016-06-05T09:31:00.000-07:002020-07-23T10:13:34.796-07:00Guiding the Buyers’ Journeys with Marketing Automation<span style="font-size: small;">by <b>Dan Freeman </b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/danfreeman/">Follow me on LinkedIn</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Few great journeys take place alone. Columbus had a crew, Jason had his Argonauts, Frodo had the Fellowship of the Ring – and your audience has you. You may not literally be present for every marketing decision, but with a properly designed marketing workflow that guides your buyers at pivotal points throughout their journey, you have an active role in the process. You’re steering the course of events without constantly telling your buyers what to do and where to go.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">How do you guide decisions intelligently when you aren’t present in the boardroom while they’re being made? You tailor your marketing message to your audience and stay sensitive to your potential buyers’ behaviors, adjusting the type of content and the rate of information flow to match their needs. When you use personalized, responsive marketing, you’re able to anticipate how your prospect will handle those twists and turns in the road ahead and can prepare accordingly.</span><br />
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Segmentation</h3>
Giving your prospective buyers what they need to make key decisions along their marketing journey depends on knowing as much as possible about who they are. Accessible, actionable marketing segments let you address each individual within your global audience as personally as if you were having a face-to-face conversation.<br />
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If you were with them in the boardroom, you wouldn’t try to give clients in vastly different industries the same pitch; you’d do your research and shape your presentation to their needs. Marketing automation software can help you segment your customers and prospects by grouping those with common traits together. These segments can have any degree of granularity you choose, dividing current customers from prospective buyers, large firms from small businesses, and members of one industry from those in another.<br />
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A marketing automation system then lets you address each of these audience segments with personalized messages. You aren’t a random voice in the crowd telling an anonymous buyer to act now; you’re a knowledgeable guide who understands each potential buyer’s unique challenges. Just as important, marketing automation lets you offer custom-fit solutions that address those concerns precisely.<br />
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Responsive Marketing</h3>
Automation takes formerly static elements of your marketing campaigns and makes them dynamic. Instead of having a single image and the same lines of copy in every email you send, you’re able to deliver custom graphics and content that are more relevant. By capturing and synthesizing information from your web forms, preference pages and on-site behavior, you gain a clearer and more comprehensive picture of each prospect – a picture that’s essential to building a responsive marketing campaign around that individual buyer.<br />
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To illustrate how this rich data can be used to guide a prospect through the buyers’ journey, let’s look at what happens with two customers in the same industry but different budgets. For the first buyer, a software purchasing agent with a large firm, money isn’t an issue; she wants a product that offers plug-and-play utility with outstanding tech support. Your marketing team knows this because of her demographic, firmographic and behavioral data, and it adjusts your marketing campaign to her needs to focus on her concerns. Her journey takes her not through pricing gateways but through service-oriented ones.<br />
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Your second customer is just as keenly interested in your product line, but he’s an independent business owner with a limited budget. For the past few years, he’s worn many hats and is happy to wear another by upgrading on his own; add-ons and future capabilities are big selling points to him. He wants a product that can grow with him, but his primary concern is the initial expenditure. To respond to his needs and guide him along his buying journey, your marketing automation system delivers information about your product’s flexibility.<br />
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On-Site Targeting</h3>
Guiding your audience members on their individual buying journeys via email, a marketing channel you control completely, is one thing; but how do you continue to guide them online?<br />
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With a marketing automation feature known as real-time personalization, you can unmask, engage, and convert your anonymous visitors the moment they arrive on your site by delivering personalized content to each individual based on their behaviors, geography, referrer site, referrer terms, entry page or static attributes such their job title, industry, company size, and more.<br />
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Let’s go back to our service-conscious customer and our cost-conscious buyer for a moment. Marketing automation not only supplies tailor-made content in email marketing messages, but it also directs these buyers to custom landing pages. Your service-sensitive buyer sees a landing page that describes your 24/7 tech support and access to training courses, while your price-sensitive prospect finds copy directed at economy and future growth<br />
possibilities.<br />
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Want to get more out of your marketing automation software or thinking about a purchase? <a href="http://www.marketingtechreport.com/p/contact-us.html" target="_blank">Contact Us</a>.<br />
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© Marketing Tech Report 2016 All Rights Reserved.<br />
<br />Dan Freemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13699328254476579134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907984829483930525.post-47767734675378967722016-05-18T09:52:00.000-07:002020-07-23T10:12:32.514-07:00Driving Lead Generation with Marketing Automation<span style="font-size: small;">by <b>Dan Freeman </b></span><br /><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/danfreeman/" style="font-size: x-small;">Follow me on LinkedIn</a><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Generating high-quality leads is one of the key marketing challenges for most B2B companies. Without a regular and adequate flow of qualified leads, the opportunity spigot dries up and revenues fall off quickly. Marketing automation offers a host of benefits, but how does it fit into your marketing strategy specifically as a lead generation tool? Here’s a look at how automation help drive new leads and nurture existing leads from initial contact through sales conversion.</span><br />
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Personalization and Customization</h3>
How do you interact with those you want to impress in a face to face meeting?<br />
For one thing, you address them properly. When shaking hands you probably don’t say “Hello Friend”. It’s probably more like, “Hi Jason”. Automation allows you address prospects & customers individually or as member of a group that has some relevance to them. For example, “Dear Customer” or “Attention IT Managers”.<br />
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If you want to have an engaging face to face conversation with a prospect, you don’t just spew talking points; you respond to other’s comments, questions, and thoughts. Automation lets marketers respond with content based on your prospect’s past digital conversations. If they have demonstrated interest in product X, you can respond with some benefits that product X provides. As with a face to face conversation, the more relevant your message is, the more engaging it will be. By delivering customized content, you increase your response rates dramatically – sometimes by over 500 percent.<br />
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Timely Testing</h3>
Marketers have used A/B split testing to find the most effective ways to reach their audiences for decades, but modern marketing automation technology makes testing more valuable by shortening the gap between tests and live releases from days to minutes. Think of how the nearly instantaneous communication possibilities of email revolutionized how we talk to one another, and you’ll have an idea of how much of a difference timely test results can make in your lead generation strategy. Automation lets your marketing team find the best email, landing page, banner ad, or promotional message and blast it to audience segments almost in real time, ensuring that every campaign uses optimal content.<br />
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Drip Campaigns</h3>
Not all your leads start off ready to buy. That’s where drip campaigns can help, feeding small amounts of information to a prospect at a measured pace to nurture that contact over time. You don’t have the bandwidth to run drip email campaigns by hand, especially as your marketing operation expands, but marketing automation gives your team the power to optimize every part of the campaign. Channeling the flow of leads through a drip campaign keeps every potential customer moving forward in your marketing pipeline.<br />
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Marketing to Sales Hand-Offs</h3>
Your sellers work most efficiently when they don’t have to sort through an undifferentiated pile of leads to find the ones who are sales-ready. With marketing automation software, you can score and rank leads, and set sales alerts when those leads reach a sufficient score. Because all the marketing work has been done, sales people can focus on the high value work of selling. Instead of tossing leads over the fence to sales, your marketing team hand-delivers them complete with useful analytics as gift wrapping.<br />
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Lead generation is where your content and prospects intersect, and that’s where a marketing automation system truly shines. To learn more about how marketing automation drives lead gen, <a href="http://www.marketingtechreport.com/p/contact-us.html" target="_blank">contact us</a>.<br />
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© Marketing Tech Report 2015 All Rights Reserved.Dan Freemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13699328254476579134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907984829483930525.post-81483768178948491762016-01-26T16:29:00.000-08:002020-07-23T10:14:15.165-07:00What's Automated About Marketing Automation?<span style="font-size: small;">by <b>Dan Freeman </b></span><br /><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/danfreeman/" style="font-size: x-small;">Follow me on LinkedIn</a><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Note, this blog post was originally published at </i></span><i style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.reachmarketing.com/marketing_automation_automated/" target="_blank">Reach Marketing</a>.</i><br />
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You’ve all heard of marketing automation.<br />
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It’s what we call that class of software that helps marketers nurture and quantify leads.<br />
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But the term marketing automation does not do justice to the software it’s named for.<br />
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Tracking visitors, sending emails, scoring leads, creating workflows, generating sales alerts…all of these automation features are critically important. But the real value behind marketing automation software lies in its ability to reach and engage with more prospects and to covert these prospects into leads, sales opportunities and customers. These benefits extend well beyond automation.<br />
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Here’s a synopsis of how marketing automation software can help your business.<br />
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Discover</h4>
First and foremost, marketing automation software helps you discover more about who your prospects and customers are. You can track and expand your prospects’ profile data, including demographic and firmographic info that you can use to better segment and target the marketplace. Profile data can even include attitudinal info obtained from surveys or form questions that can provide powerful insights into prospects’ intentions and/or authority.<br />
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By tracking what was previously invisible—the interactions your prospects have with your content—you gain a much richer view of your audience and how your content meets their needs.<br />
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Reach</h4>
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qAH1DTJkqVc/VMbbMZ4AU8I/AAAAAAAABLc/2bJ_PW3gpM0/s1600/machart.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-qAH1DTJkqVc/VMbbMZ4AU8I/AAAAAAAABLc/2bJ_PW3gpM0/s1600/machart.png" /></a>Armed with a greater understanding of your prospects, you are in a position to expand your market <br />
reach. With automated outbound messages, whether in the form of newsletters, messages triggered by site registrations, or intricate automated nurture campaigns, you can exponentially increase touch points with prospects and expand your marketplace presence.<br />
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<h4>
Engage</h4>
More touch points mean more interactions and a deeper knowledge of your prospects—who they are and what content they consume—and you have now primed them for engagement. Engagement starts with understanding the buyer’s journey, the process that a buyer goes through from awareness to research to a purchase decision. You can now create content to better meet your prospects’ information needs at every stage of their journey, and track their level of engagement.<br />
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Convert</h4>
As marketers, your ultimate goal is to convert visitors to leads, and leads to sales opportunities and profitable customers. Marketing automation software enables you to convert anonymous visitors into qualified prospects using features such as reverse IP look-up and real-time website personalization. You can then track and score these leads and convert into sales opportunities based on agreed upon lead scores and activities that reflect their level of engagement.<br />
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So, the next time you hear the term marketing automation, think about these benefits.<br />
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Dan Freemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13699328254476579134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907984829483930525.post-28544584914780942582014-10-12T14:49:00.001-07:002020-07-23T10:14:52.130-07:00What’s Behind Hubspot’s IPO and Infusionsoft's $55 Million Financing?<span style="font-size: small;">by <b>Dan Freeman </b></span><br /><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/danfreeman/" style="font-size: x-small;">Follow me on LinkedIn</a><br />
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Two huge events shook the world of marketing technology last week and demonstrated the continued determination to harness marketing data to improve marketing and sales processes.<br />
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On Monday, October 6th, Infusionsoft―makers of marketing automation software serving the small business sector―announced a new $55 million round of funding headed by Bain Capital and Goldman Sachs.<br />
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Then on Thursday October 9th, Hubspot went public, raising $125 million in its flotation and becoming the 3rd marketing automation IPO. Eloqua went public in August 2012, raising $92 million, before it was promptly purchased by Oracle in December of that year for $811 million. Then in May of 2013, Marketo went public, raising nearly $80 million.<br />
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Infusionsoft's fourth round of financing caps a record year for VC funding in the marketing automation sector.<br />
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Below is a chart of selected VC financings for marketing automation related ventures.<br />
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In addition to IPOs and venture funding, there’s also been a rash of acquisitions.<br />
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Between venture funding, IPOs and acquisitions, no one can argue that marketing automation is not hot.<br />
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<b>But what’s behind this level of activity?</b><br />
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Advertising, and more generally marketing, has been in the throes of transformation for decades, or what the economist Joseph Schumpeter called ‘creative destruction’. To understand the transformation taking place, try to image marketing before Social Media, before Google, even before email and the Internet. Content was largely created by a few big ad agencies (think Don Draper) and pushed to consumers. Of course we still have ad agencies doing big TV campaigns but that’s far from the full story. The Internet browser—Mosaic was the first—made content available to the masses and also spurred a content revolution.<br />
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With content vastly more accessible, a virtuous cycle of content creation and sharing was born. And it’s the exponential growth in content that is at the heart of the rise of marketing. Google (and its predecessors) have transformed marketing from what was largely a top down, indiscriminate, push of content from a few large agencies, to a much more efficient, bottom up, pull from hundreds of millions of consumers via Internet search. That’s how Google has gone from start-up in 1998 to a $400 billion company in a mere 16 years. Of course we still push content, but at a fraction of the cost through Internet advertising and email marketing, and it’s aimed at intricate demographic and behavioral segments, and individuals that are far more likely to purchase.<br />
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The vast bulk of content today is created bottom-up, through websites, blogs, and, of course, social platforms. Add to the proliferation of content, the exponential growth in digital interactions, and now marketing has become more data intensive than Wall Street—hence the acquisition of marketing software firms by tech giants like IBM, Oracle, Microsoft and Adobe.<br />
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The transformation of marketing is represented both by meteoric rise in content and the ability of marketers to interact with that content. The primary challenge of marketing today—and the focus of many of today’s marketing technology firms—is managing the proliferation of content and interactions, and harnessing this data to put relevant content in the hands of customers and prospects so that products can sell themselves, or, in the case of B2B, at least do the bulk of the selling work before a hand-off to sales is made.<br />
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<b>Software-as-a-Service (Saas), aka Cloud Computing</b><br />
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There’s another important factor at play in the rise of marketing; the coming of age of Software-as-a-Service (Saas) or cloud computing. SaaS made it far less costly to start new software ventures, and much cheaper (and less risky) for business users to purchase software. The IT department used to hold enormous sway over software investment dollars. Not so with cloud computing. The combination of vastly increased supply of software products and the release of purchasing power from IT to the marketing department resulted in rapid innovation and a burgeoning marketing for marketing technologies.<br />
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At the nexus of data, content, and technology is the sector known as Marketing Automation and it’s gone from red to white hot. Marketing Automation deals with functionality such as streamlining content creation, distributing across multiple channels, attracting web surfers, capturing leads, segmenting prospects, quantifying and responding to digital interactions, etc. To the extent that marketing technology firms can help marketers in this gargantuan effort, they will continue to thrive.<br />
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<br />Dan Freemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13699328254476579134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907984829483930525.post-80541739171538178012014-09-22T12:45:00.001-07:002020-07-23T10:15:45.336-07:00All-In-One Sales and Marketing Platforms Attract Small Business<span style="font-size: small;">by <b>Dan Freeman </b></span><br /><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/danfreeman/" style="font-size: x-small;">Follow me on LinkedIn</a><div><br />
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When Stacy Isemann and her husband Todd realized their company’s revenues were flat while costs were rising, they knew he had to do something. With a marketing staff of just one (that would be Stacy), they knew they had to be very selective in what they chose to do.<br />
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The couple started <b>STL Rent A Box</b> in 2012, a company that rents out reusable storage boxes for homeowners and companies moving locations.<br />
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They had tried their hand at email marketing previously—they’d used MailChimp but found that the purely self-help aspect of the service was not for them. After spending a good amount of time importing data, they sent out about three emails campaigns, then dropped off after lack of activity.<br />
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Stacy met Jonathan Herrick, Head of Sales & Marketing at <a href="http://www.hatchbuck.com/" target="_blank">Hatchbuck</a>, at a local networking meeting in St. Louis—home to both companies. After discussing their marketing issues, Stacy decided to try Hatchbuck’s marketing automation software—something she hadn’t heard of before.<br />
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Hatchbuck is one of a new breed of marketing automation vendors geared to the small business market. Most marketing automation platforms were designed for the Enterprise market, where CRM systems are dominant and ingrained in the organization. These marketing automation systems must integrate with CRM, multiplying the complexity of implementation, and of day-to-day usage.<br />
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Hatchbuck, <a href="http://www.marketingtechreport.com/p/2014-marketing-automation-industry.html" target="_blank">like Infusionsoft, Ontraport, and others</a> incorporates CRM functionality into the marketing platform, so there’s no need to integrate. The all-in-one sales and marketing platform is an appealing and intuitive concept for a small business owner. As much as vendors claim to have seamless integration between systems, anyone who’s had to push and pull data between systems knows that integration is not simple.<br />
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<i>Rent A Box</i> didn’t even have a CRM system—they kept their contacts in Gmail.<br />
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Enterprise marketing automation systems also have extensive marketing bells and whistles which are simply not used by small businesses. But more than that, these features can clutter and complicate the user experience.<br />
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After some initial hand holding, Stacy was up and running with Hatchbuck in about two weeks and now considers herself proficient. She <i>Skypes </i>with Hatchbuck support whenever she has a question or needs help.<br />
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Rent A Box has a list size of about 6,000, the majority of which are real estate companies. They do a monthly email campaign and make frequent use of the system’s segmentation capabilities.<br />
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Stacy also gets much usage out of the CRM feature in Hatchbuck. After each client is done with their move, Stacey sends a thank you, and also asks for testimonials. <br />
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Business is going really well for Rent A Box. In fact, customers are doubling almost every month and they recently had to invest in new inventory.<br />
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As for Hatchbuck, they are growing nicely as well, tapping into the small business market that’s looking for simple yet powerful solutions to help facilitate both the marketing and sales activities. According to Herrick, “The number of small business opportunities we bring into our sales funnel each month has increased by 250% and our customer base has grown 130% since the beginning of the year as small businesses realize the need for an all in one sales and marketing automation platform.”<br />
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For more information about marketing automation including profiles of 12 vendors, <a href="http://www.marketingtechreport.com/p/2014-marketing-automation-industry.html" target="_blank">see this marketing automation industry overview</a>.</div>Dan Freemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13699328254476579134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907984829483930525.post-91407266536367873752014-09-11T12:06:00.001-07:002020-07-23T10:16:07.060-07:00Who’s Winning and Losing in Marketing Automation? Fall 2014 Round-up<span style="font-size: small;">by <b>Dan Freeman </b></span><br /><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/danfreeman/" style="font-size: x-small;">Follow me on LinkedIn</a><br />
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One of the most important metrics in evaluating the ultimate value of any cloud software product is the customer retention rate, a number that encapsulates the value obtained versus client expectations. Retention rate takes into account usability, support, expectations set, and impact on marketing and/or revenue goals. Companies that receive value in excess of expectations generally renew; those that don’t opt out.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #999999;">Download a Just Revised <a href="http://www.marketingtechreport.com/p/2014-marketing-automation-industry.html" target="_blank">Marketing Automation Industry Report</a> Covering Marketo, Eloqua, Pardot Act-On, Infusionsoft, Salesfusion and many others</span><span style="color: #cc0000;">.</span><br />
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Though a valuable indicator for customers considering an investment in marketing automation, don’t expect marketing automation vendors to divulge much about retention. They sometimes publish the number and growth rate of their customer base but not a single one lets on to retention rate, or its inverse—churn.<br />
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Not to worry. Another class of marketing technology companies can shed light on the magic retention metric.<br />
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Software tracking company <a href="https://www.datanyze.com/" target="_blank">Datanyze</a> scans over 18 million of the world’s most-trafficked websites, hunting for JavaScript embeds and web tags that indicate the presence of hosted software—in this case a marketing automation platform. The chart below shows the total number of websites using selected marketing automation platforms as of 9/1/14.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EjM6oaw894o/VBHvHR1ONHI/AAAAAAAABAM/omCIKP-uY7E/s1600/Top%2B32%2BMarketing%2BAutomation%2BVendors%2B-%2BWebsite%2BCount.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="464" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EjM6oaw894o/VBHvHR1ONHI/AAAAAAAABAM/omCIKP-uY7E/s1600/Top%2B32%2BMarketing%2BAutomation%2BVendors%2B-%2BWebsite%2BCount.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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Note that websites do not equate with customers as a single customer may use marketing automation software on dozens or even hundreds of websites. Nevertheless, website count is a good indicator of success.<br />
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But not so fast...<br />
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It’s not just absolute website count but rather the changes—the additions and loses over time—that are the strongest indication of platform success in the marketplace.<br />
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I analyzed the top 20 firms for which we have data—and which fall roughly into the marketing automation space—and calculated the percent change in websites using their software since January 1, 2014.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oW1Ka5NHNxQ/VBH8jZtVr1I/AAAAAAAABAo/yxj1QBfltw8/s1600/Top%2B20%2BMA%2BVendors%2B-%2BWebsite%2BCount%2Bwith%2B%25%2BChanges.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="464" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oW1Ka5NHNxQ/VBH8jZtVr1I/AAAAAAAABAo/yxj1QBfltw8/s1600/Top%2B20%2BMA%2BVendors%2B-%2BWebsite%2BCount%2Bwith%2B%25%2BChanges.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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Change happens quickly in dynamic markets. Demand for marketing automation software is growing overall but aggregates mask marketplace turbulence. According to the data, only two of the 20 firms—Pardot and Act-On—have increased their website count by more than ten percent since the beginning of 2014. Seven of the 20 platforms have actually <i>lost </i>websites, a few by over 20 percent.<br />
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The data also implies that churn is higher than many would believe. For the 20 marketing automation platforms, the aggregate ratio of websites adds to drops for the first eight months of 2014 was 1.08, meaning that for every 100 websites that added a marketing automation platform, 92 websites dropped one.<br />
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Note that the Datanyze metrics are an <i>indication </i>only only and are by no means a definitive measure of software presence. <a href="http://www.marketingtechreport.com/2014/07/market-share-and-retention-marketing-automation.html" target="_blank">A few caveats of this data are in order and can be found here</a>.<br />
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Great marketing can generate a steady stream of new customers in a growing market, but only positive customer experiences will result in high retention rates. Caveats aside, one thing is clear; rapid change is ahead in the marketing automation sector.<br />
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**** **** **** ****</div>
<a href="http://marketinggs.com/" target="_blank">Marketing Growth Strategies LLC</a> has been engaged in research, analysis, lead generation, and client implementation in the Marketing Automation sector since 2009 and has recently revised its highly successful 2014 Marketing Automation eBook.<br />
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Considering implementing marketing automation? <a href="http://marketinggs.com/marketing-automation-ebook-download-2.html" target="_blank">Download the 2014 Marketing Automation eBook</a><br />
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<br />Dan Freemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13699328254476579134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907984829483930525.post-39085486565923227582014-09-08T14:31:00.000-07:002014-09-16T14:38:27.664-07:00Hatchbuck 2 Minute Overview Video<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/UHs0fZ2cBNI" width="640"></iframe>
<br />
Take a <a href="http://www.hatchbuck.com/demo-2/" target="_blank">live demo</a> of Hatchbuck.Dan Freemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13699328254476579134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907984829483930525.post-14765705988345441852014-08-28T15:26:00.000-07:002014-09-11T12:17:56.050-07:00Caveats to Market Share and Retention Data<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I've used Datanyze as an <i>indicator</i> of market share and customer retention among software <br />
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companies in the marketing automation sector. However, before readers draw too many conclusions, a few caveats are about the data are in order.<br />
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First, Datanyze tracks over 15 million sites, which seems like a big enough number. But keep in mind, there are over<a href="http://news.netcraft.com/archives/category/web-server-survey/" target="_blank"> 900 million websites</a>. So even the Datanyze Universe represents just small fraction of total active sites. Nonetheless, I believe the 15 million covers an overwhelming portion of total commercial websites that would have the budget to invest in marketing automation.<br />
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<i><span style="color: #990000;">Want to get the Datanyze figures for another marketing automation vendor? Call me now at 201 266-6919. </span></i></blockquote>
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Next, the data tracks websites—not customers—so <a href="http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/04/hubspot-marketo-eloqua-new-data-shows-marketing-automation-market-share-in-unprecedented-detail/" target="_blank">market share headlines</a> should be viewed with some skepticism. A company that installs marketing automation tracking code may put it on single site, or on dozens or even hundreds. That said, as a sanity check, I compared the marketing automation websites tracked by Datanyze with the actual number of customers for several vendors and found the ratio to be within a range of 2.5 - 3.5 to 1. </div>
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Example: Datanyze shows about 33,000 websites using Hubspot. The company said it had 10,195 customers at or near year-end 2013. That’s a ratio is 3:1 websites per customer—a reasonable and believable number. </blockquote>
<b>There’s also a degree of fuzziness in the data. </b></div>
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The most significant source of fuzziness in the data may be the use of trials. Since trials frequently don’t convert to sales, vendors that offer free trials (Marketo, for example) may tend to show more adds and drops than those who don’t (Pardot, for example). This can skew the numbers.<br />
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Another consideration is that some vendors offer a variety of versions, not all of which should be considered as marketing automation tools. For example, Hubspot has a 'basic' package the includes email marketing and website tracking but not the more salient features of marketing automation such as<i> lead scoring</i> and <i>automated lead nurturing</i>. Nonetheless, these packages will be counted by Datanyze as part of Hubspot's totals.<br />
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The last caveat is that in order to identify software packages used, Datanyze analyzes the underlying software code, but there is certainly no foolproof way to find this code and to associate it with a particular vendor. Nonetheless, the company believes they catch the overwhelming majority of instances. </div>
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<span style="color: red;">Caveats and fuzziness aside, the changes in tracked websites over the course of several months or quarters provide valuable insights into which vendors are winning and losing in the marketplace. </span><br />
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Dan Freemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13699328254476579134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907984829483930525.post-22937886649908002182014-07-02T15:33:00.004-07:002014-07-03T08:02:27.088-07:00Who's winning in marketing automation? Round-up for 1st half of 2014<span style="font-size: small;">by <b>Dan Freeman </b></span><br />
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One of the most important metrics in evaluating the ultimate value of any cloud software product is its customer retention rate, a number that encapsulates the value obtained versus client expectations. Retention rate takes into account usability, support, expectations set, and impact on marketing and/or revenue goals. Companies that receive value in excess of expectations will generally renew; those that don’t will opt out.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="color: #990000;"><a href="http://insight.venturebeat.com/report/what-every-marketer-vendor-and-investor-needs-know-about-marketing-automation" target="_blank">Purchase Full VentureBeat Insights Marketing Automation Industry Report Here</a></span></i><i style="color: #990000;">. </i></blockquote>
Though supremely valuable, customer retention is a number that marketing automation vendors are loath to release. Vendors’ sometimes publish data on the number and growth rate of their customer base but not a single one lets on to retention rate, or its inverse—churn.<br />
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Not to worry. Another class of marketing technology companies to the rescue.<br />
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Software tracking company Datanyze scans over 15 million of the world’s most-trafficked websites, hunting for Javascript embeds and web tags that indicate the presence of hosted software—in this case a marketing automation platform. Website additions/losses over time are an indication of platform success in the marketplace.<br />
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The chart below shows the total number of websites using selected marketing automation platforms as of 6/30/14. Note that websites do not equate with customers as a single customer may use marketing automation software on dozens or even hundreds of websites.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-92s46EdG8PU/U7R-Q8MOV3I/AAAAAAAAA7Q/fuIs_IeKaG8/s1600/Datanyze+MA+Websites+6-30-14+Unadjusted+w+698.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-92s46EdG8PU/U7R-Q8MOV3I/AAAAAAAAA7Q/fuIs_IeKaG8/s1600/Datanyze+MA+Websites+6-30-14+Unadjusted+w+698.png" height="464" width="640" /></a></div>
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But wait.<br />
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Further analysis shows that the leader, Hubspot, offers a variety of product packages, including a <i>Basic</i> package that includes many inbound features as well as email marketing, but does not include the most salient marketing automation features such as lead scoring and automated workflows.<br />
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I estimate that at least 60% of Hubspot’s customers are <i>Basic</i> and if we reduce their numbers by 60% the chart looks like this.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xibs9c08W8g/U7R_BQFkCNI/AAAAAAAAA7Y/ojrHi_-G_jI/s1600/Datanyze+MA+Websites+6-30-14+W698.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xibs9c08W8g/U7R_BQFkCNI/AAAAAAAAA7Y/ojrHi_-G_jI/s1600/Datanyze+MA+Websites+6-30-14+W698.png" height="464" width="640" /></a></div>
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Using the Datanyze data, I also looked at websites that added and dropped marketing automation software during the first six months of 2014. The chart below shows the website additions (blue), drops (orange), and net changes (grey) among six of the most active marketing automation vendors.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bdZ9KU8eASk/U7RzhZm6GLI/AAAAAAAAA7A/wMAGCmv7WhI/s1600/MA+Add+Drop+Net+-+6+months+2014+Top+Six.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bdZ9KU8eASk/U7RzhZm6GLI/AAAAAAAAA7A/wMAGCmv7WhI/s1600/MA+Add+Drop+Net+-+6+months+2014+Top+Six.png" height="464" width="640" /></a></div>
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According to the data, Eloqua led the industry with 3,417 net additional websites using its platform.<br />
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The data also implies that churn is higher than many would believe. For the top 11 marketing automation platforms, the ratio of websites adds to drops for the first half of 2014 was 1.8, meaning that for every 9 websites that added a marketing automation platform, 5 websites dropped one.<br />
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Pardot had the highest add-to-drop ratio (4.8 versus the industry average of 1.8). Great marketing can generate a steady stream of new customers in a rapidly growing market, but only positive customer experiences will result in high retention rates.<br />
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<i><a href="http://insight.venturebeat.com/report/what-every-marketer-vendor-and-investor-needs-know-about-marketing-automation" target="_blank"><span style="color: #990000;">Purchase My VentureBeat Insights Marketing Automation Industry Report Here</span></a></i></blockquote>
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Note that these metrics are an indication only and not a definitive measure of software presence. <a href="http://www.marketingtechreport.com/2014/07/market-share-and-retention-marketing-automation.html" target="_blank">A few caveats of this data are in order and can be found here</a>.<br />
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**** **** **** ****</div>
<a href="http://marketinggs.com/" target="_blank">Marketing Growth Strategies LLC</a> has been engaged in research, analysis, lead generation, and client implementation in the Marketing Automation sector since 2009 and has recently revised its highly successful 2014 Marketing Automation eBook.<br />
<br />
Are you a marketing automation vendor? <a href="http://marketinggs.com/revised-marketing-automation-ebook.html" target="_blank">Learn about the capturing up to 500 fresh Marketing Automation leads</a>.<br />
<br />
Considering implementing marketing automation? <a href="http://marketinggs.com/marketing-automation-ebook-download-2.html" target="_blank">Download the 2014 Marketing Automation eBook</a><br />
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<br />Dan Freemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13699328254476579134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907984829483930525.post-67755755014177460712014-07-02T14:18:00.001-07:002020-07-23T10:18:23.604-07:00Marketing Automation Customer Retention Q2 2014<span style="font-size: small;">by <b>Dan Freeman </b></span><br /><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/danfreeman/" style="font-size: x-small;">Follow me on LinkedIn</a><br />
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New numbers are out for changes in marketing automation platform usage, and in dynamic markets, things change quickly. Demand for marketing automation software is growing at a healthy clip, but aggregates can mask marketplace turbulence. Behind the <a href="http://www.marketingtechreport.com/2014/04/marketing-automation-industry-to-reach.html" target="_blank">40 plus percent growth rate</a> lies a multitude of customer experiences that determine the ultimate winners and losers.<br />
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As businesses struggle to get a handle on the new world of digital marketing, they experiment with new marketing platforms. Marketers try to master this software—to leverage its promise to generate <i>more </i>and <i>better </i>leads, and to streamline marketing processes. In highly competitive markets like marketing automation software, nuances in product features and ease-of-use can make all the difference. The way a new customer is on-boarded, the support or self-help tools provided, and even the reality of the customer experience versus the expectations set by vendors can have a major impact on retention.<br />
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<span style="color: #990000;"><i><a href="mailto:dan@marketinggs.com" target="_blank">Contact me now</a> to create thought leadership--white papers, eBooks, webinars, newsletters--and a marketing strategy--to reach and engage with your best prospects</i><i>. </i></span></blockquote>
And in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business model, retention is key. Vendors often lose money on new customers during the first year. It’s not until an annual renewal, or at least a period of several months, that customers become profitable. The most profitable customers are usually those with the longest tenure; they've ramped up usage and generally require less support.<br />
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Vendors tout their success with press releases about new customers and sometime even publish customer counts and growth rates. What’s not revealed are the dropped customers—the churn.<br />
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<b>Until now, that is.</b><br />
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Working with the tech data sleuth firm, Datanyze, I looked at websites that added and dropped marketing automation software during the first six months of 2014. The results indicate that churn is higher than many would believe. For the top 11 marketing automation platforms, the ratio of websites adds to drops was 1.8, meaning that for every 9 websites that added a marketing automation platform, 5 website dropped one.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bdZ9KU8eASk/U7RzhZm6GLI/AAAAAAAAA7A/wMAGCmv7WhI/s1600/MA+Add+Drop+Net+-+6+months+2014+Top+Six.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="464" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bdZ9KU8eASk/U7RzhZm6GLI/AAAAAAAAA7A/wMAGCmv7WhI/s1600/MA+Add+Drop+Net+-+6+months+2014+Top+Six.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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According to the Datanyze data, Eloqua led the industry with 3,417 net additional websites using its platform. Pardot had the highest add to drop ratio (4.8 versus the industry average of 1.8. Great marketing can generate a steady stream of new customers in a rapidly growing market, but only positive customer experiences will result in high retention rates.<br />
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<span style="color: #666666;"><i>We will be publishing more marketplace data over the coming weeks, so stay tuned.</i></span></blockquote>
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<b>Before you draw too many conclusions, a few caveats are about the data are in order.</b><br />
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First, Datanyze tracks about 15 million sites, which seems
like a big enough number. But keep in mind, there are over<a href="http://news.netcraft.com/archives/category/web-server-survey/" target="_blank"> 900 million websites</a>.
So even the Datanyze Universe represents just small fraction of total active
sites. Nonetheless, I believe the 15 million covers an overwhelming portion of total commercial websites that would have the budget to invest in marketing
automation.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="color: #990000;">Want to get the Datanyze Q2 2014 figures for another marketing automation vendor? Call me now at 201 266-6919. </span></i></blockquote>
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Next, the data tracks websites—not customers—so <a href="http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/04/hubspot-marketo-eloqua-new-data-shows-marketing-automation-market-share-in-unprecedented-detail/" target="_blank">market share headlines</a> should be viewed with some skepticism. A company that installs marketing
automation tracking code may put it on single site, or on dozens or even hundreds. That
said, as a sanity check, I compared the marketing automation websites tracked by Datanyze with the actual number of customers for several vendors and found the
ratio to be within a range of 2.5 - 3.5 to 1. </div>
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Example: Datanyze shows about 32,000 websites using Hubspot. The
company said it had 10,195 customers at or near year-end 2013. That’s a ratio
is 3:1 websites per customer—a reasonable and believable number. </blockquote>
<b>There’s also a degree of fuzziness in the data. </b></div>
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The most significant source of fuzziness in the data may be
the use of trials. Since trials frequently don’t convert to sales, vendors that
offer free trials (Marketo, for example) may tend to show more adds and drops
than those who don’t (Pardot, for example). This can skew the numbers.<br />
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Another consideration is that some vendors offer a variety of versions, not all of which should be considered as marketing automation tools. For example, Hubspot has a 'basic' package the includes email marketing and website tracking but not the more salient features of marketing automation such as<i> lead scoring</i> and <i>automated lead nurturing</i>. Nonetheless, these packages will be counted by Datanyze as part of Hubspot's totals.<br />
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The last caveat is that in order to identify software packages used, Datanyze analyzes the underlying source code. There is certainly no foolproof way to find this code and to associate it with a particular vendor, but the company believes they catch the overwhelming majority of instances. </div>
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Caveats and fuzziness aside, the changes over the course of the
first half of 2014 give an indication of which vendors are succeeding in retaining customers.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
**** **** **** ****</div>
<a href="http://marketinggs.com/" target="_blank">Marketing Growth Strategies LLC</a> has been engaged in research, analysis, lead generation, and client implementation in the Marketing Automation sector since 2009 and has recently revised its highly successful 2014 Marketing Automation eBook.<br />
<br />
Are you a marketing automation vendor? <a href="http://marketinggs.com/revised-marketing-automation-ebook.html" target="_blank">Learn about the capturing up to 500 fresh Marketing Automation leads</a>.<br />
<br />
Considering implementing marketing automation? <a href="http://marketinggs.com/marketing-automation-ebook-download-2.html" target="_blank">Download the 2014 Marketing Automation eBook</a><br />
<br />
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<br />Dan Freemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13699328254476579134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907984829483930525.post-49804619376193261512014-07-01T12:20:00.002-07:002014-07-01T12:47:11.641-07:00Price vs. Features: First Time Marketing Automation Buyers and Experienced Users Care About Very Different Things<span style="font-size: small;">by <b>Dan Freeman </b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://twitter.com/TheeDanFreeman" target="_blank">Follow on Twitter</a></span><br />
<br />
I wanted to share this recent <a href="http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/24/price-vs-features-marketing-automation-buyers-and-owners-care-about-very-different-things/" target="_blank">VentureBeat article</a> in which I was interviewed....<br />
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If you own a marketing automation system, chances are you care most about features. But if you’re looking to buy a marketing automation system, chances are you care most about price. That’s just one of insights in a new report from VB Insight on the expanding field of marketing automation. (VB Insight is VentureBeat’s research platform.)<br />
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“That makes perfect sense,” report author Dan Freeman, the president of marketing consultancy Marketing Growth Strategies, said. “First-time implementers are just trying to do the nuts-and-bolts, simple stuff like landing pages or knowing who is visiting their website, while those who have been doing marketing automation for six months or a year are looking at the next stage … full nurture programs, automated workflows, and more.”<br />
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Current owners who are either adding to their system or switching to another rank features and ease of use as the most important parts of a system. New buyers who don’t currently use any marketing automation system, however, rank both total cost of service and monthly price above ease of use and price.<br />
The two groups are looking for different functionality, and have different ideas about what to expect from their software, Freeman told VentureBeat.<br />
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“First-time buyers don’t know much about implementation … they kind of have in mind that the cost of the marketing automation effort equates to the cost of the software,” Freeman said. “But owners understand there’s more to it … both in costs and in returns.”<br />
<a href="http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/24/price-vs-features-marketing-automation-buyers-and-owners-care-about-very-different-things/" target="_blank">Read the full VentureBeat article...</a><br />
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<span style="color: #990000;"><i><a href="http://insight.venturebeat.com/report/buyers-and-users-marketing-automation-survey-results-analysis-and-key-findings" target="_blank">Purchase the Buyers and Users Marketing Automation Survey Here</a></i></span></div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: center;">
**** **** **** ****</div>
<a href="http://marketinggs.com/" target="_blank">Marketing Growth Strategies LLC</a> has been engaged in research, analysis, lead generation, and client implementation in the Marketing Automation sector since 2009 and has recently revised its highly successful 2014 Marketing Automation eBook.<br />
<br />
Are you a marketing automation vendor? <a href="http://marketinggs.com/revised-marketing-automation-ebook.html" target="_blank">Learn about the capturing up to 500 fresh Marketing Automation leads</a>.<br />
<br />
Considering implementing marketing automation? <a href="http://www.marketingtechreport.com/p/2014-marketing-automation-industry.html" target="_blank">Download the 2014 Marketing Automation Industry Report</a><br />
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Dan Freemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13699328254476579134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907984829483930525.post-12252472810000315032014-06-17T08:32:00.001-07:002020-07-23T10:29:27.875-07:0070+ Players, Sub 5% Penetration: Marketing Automation Still ‘Crossing the Chasm’<span style="font-size: small;">by <b>Dan Freeman </b></span><br /><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/danfreeman/" style="font-size: x-small;">Follow me on LinkedIn</a><br />
<br />
This is from a recent <a href="http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/16/70-players-sub-5-penetration-marketing-automation-just-beginning-to-cross-the-chasm/" target="_blank">interview</a> I did with VentureBeat Magazine....<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-J-vZtiOh4aM/U6Bdv9VMsoI/AAAAAAAAA6Q/Yzjf9nrcdIY/s1600/crossing-the-chasm.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="280" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-J-vZtiOh4aM/U6Bdv9VMsoI/AAAAAAAAA6Q/Yzjf9nrcdIY/s1600/crossing-the-chasm.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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After several years of 50-plus-percent growth, marketing automation is still the new kid on the block.<br />
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Even with 70+ vendors in the space.<br />
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“If you’re in the business, it seems like everyone’s doing it,” analyst and consultant Dan Freeman told me yesterday. “But if you take a different perspective, it’s really early.”<br />
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In the tech business-to-business sector, most companies have now adopted some form of marketing automation, Freeman says. But that’s only a small slice of the overall market, so even though marketing automation gets a lot of hype and virtual ink — particularly via major acquisitions such as those by Adobe and IBM — it’s still very early days.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iD78Dyp8Lvo/U0A2b_xivXI/AAAAAAAAAdU/zGrAhUOkemQ/s1600/danfreemansmall.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iD78Dyp8Lvo/U0A2b_xivXI/AAAAAAAAAdU/zGrAhUOkemQ/s1600/danfreemansmall.jpg" /></a>According to Freeman, that puts marketing automation squarely in the “crossing the chasm” phase, meaning that the sector is just now spreading from the early adopters and innovators to the early majority.<br />
<br />
Read the full <a href="http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/16/70-players-sub-5-penetration-marketing-automation-just-beginning-to-cross-the-chasm/" target="_blank">VentureBeat article</a>...<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i style="color: #990000;">Position your products within the marketing ecosystem. Drive new revenue. Reach high value alliance partners. T</i><i style="color: #990000;">hought leadership--white papers, eBooks, webinars, etc. </i><i style="color: #990000;"><a href="mailto:dan@marketinggs.com" target="_blank">Contact me now.</a> </i></blockquote>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
**** **** **** ****</div>
<a href="http://marketinggs.com/" target="_blank">Marketing Growth Strategies LLC</a> has been engaged in research, analysis, lead generation, and client implementation in the Marketing Automation sector since 2009 and has recently revised its highly successful 2014 Marketing Automation eBook.<br />
<br />
Are you a marketing automation vendor? <a href="http://marketinggs.com/revised-marketing-automation-ebook.html" target="_blank">Learn about the capturing up to 500 fresh Marketing Automation leads</a>.<br />
<br />
Considering implementing marketing automation? <a href="http://www.marketingtechreport.com/p/2014-marketing-automation-industry.html" target="_blank">Download the 2014 Marketing Automation Industry Report</a><br />
<br />
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<br />Dan Freemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13699328254476579134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907984829483930525.post-82445181430368019462014-05-28T12:14:00.000-07:002014-06-01T08:29:12.266-07:00Venture Capital Investment in Marketing Automation On Pace For Record Year<span style="font-size: small;">by <b>Dan Freeman </b></span><br />
<a href="https://twitter.com/TheeDanFreeman" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Follow on Twitter</span></a><br />
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Two financings last week signaled a record pace this year for venture capital investment in the red-hot marketing automation sector. Autopilot—“Marketing Automation for Agile Marketers”—announced that it raised a $10 million Series B funding round led by Rembrandt Venture Partners. Also last week, Captora, a company led by former Marketo and SuccessFactors executive Paul Albright, announced that it raised $22 million in Series B funding.<br />
<br />
Whereas Autopilot features traditional marketing automation functionality such as lead capture and nurturing, email marketing, and lead scoring (<a href="http://www.marketingtechreport.com/2014/05/autopilot-platform-video-marketing-automation.html" target="_blank">see an Autopilot overview</a>), Captora is focused on the top of the funnel—securing more inbound leads by automatically generating custom landing pages that match keywords used in searches (<a href="http://www.marketingtechreport.com/2014/05/captora-in-2-minutes.html" target="_blank">see a Captora overview</a>). These two financings add to an already robust year for venture capital investment in marketing automation technology.<br />
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<b><i>Selected VC Financings for Marketing Automation in 2014</i></b></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i style="color: #990000;">Position your products within the marketing ecosystem. Drive new revenue. Reach high value alliance partners. T</i><i style="color: #990000;">hought leadership--white papers, eBooks, webinars, etc. </i><i style="color: #990000;"><a href="mailto:dan@marketinggs.com" target="_blank">Contact me now.</a> </i></blockquote>
Over that past 10 years, nearly $700 million in venture capital has gone into the marketing automation sector, including $126 million so far in 2014.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rXCVCq-mCWk/U4tGheUpNrI/AAAAAAAAA50/U0UP0VDOv3k/s1600/VC+$+for+MA+10+Year+Span+Update.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rXCVCq-mCWk/U4tGheUpNrI/AAAAAAAAA50/U0UP0VDOv3k/s1600/VC+$+for+MA+10+Year+Span+Update.png" /></a></div>
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<br />
<b>Mergers and Acquisitions in Marketing Automation Continues Strong As Well</b><br />
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Since 2010, there have been nearly $7.5 billion of marketing automation acquisitions; $750 million in 2014 including <a href="http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/10/ibm-stocks-up-on-marketing-automation-buys-silverpop-for-about-300m/" target="_blank">IBM's $300 million acquisition</a> in April of this year.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #990000;"><i>Maximize your company value</i></span><i style="color: #990000;">--let us help you </i><i style="color: #990000;">position your products within the complex marketing ecosystem, drive new revenue, and reach high value alliance partners. </i><i style="color: #990000;">Create thought leadership--white papers, eBooks, webinars, Newsletters.</i><i style="color: #990000;"> </i><i style="color: #990000;"><a href="mailto:dan@marketinggs.com" target="_blank">Contact me now.</a> </i></blockquote>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iI0CMffIkS0/U4YSrZtwxXI/AAAAAAAAA5I/LzX2aDmywHM/s1600/Selected+MA+Acquisitions+2010-2014.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iI0CMffIkS0/U4YSrZtwxXI/AAAAAAAAA5I/LzX2aDmywHM/s1600/Selected+MA+Acquisitions+2010-2014.png" /></a></div>
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**** **** **** ****</div>
<a href="http://marketinggs.com/" target="_blank">Marketing Growth Strategies LLC</a> has been engaged in research, analysis, lead generation, and client implementation in the Marketing Automation sector since 2009 and has recently revised its highly successful 2014 Marketing Automation eBook.<br />
<br />
Are you a marketing automation vendor? <a href="http://marketinggs.com/revised-marketing-automation-ebook.html" target="_blank">Learn about the capturing up to 500 fresh Marketing Automation leads</a>.<br />
<br />
Considering implementing marketing automation? <a href="http://marketinggs.com/marketing-automation-ebook-download-2.html" target="_blank">Download the 2014 Marketing Automation Industry Report</a><br />
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<br />Dan Freemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13699328254476579134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907984829483930525.post-57059653075878678552014-05-06T08:29:00.000-07:002014-05-06T11:11:12.345-07:00Who's Winning and Losing In Marketing Automation?<span style="font-size: small;">by <b>Dan Freeman </b></span><br />
<a href="https://twitter.com/TheeDanFreeman" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Follow on Twitter</span></a><br />
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Change happens quickly in dynamic markets. Demand for marketing automation software is growing at a healthy clip, but aggregates can mask marketplace turbulence. Behind the <a href="http://www.marketingtechreport.com/2014/04/marketing-automation-industry-to-reach.html" target="_blank">40 plus percent growth rate</a> lies a multitude of customer experiences that determine the ultimate winners and losers.<br />
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As businesses struggle to get a handle on the new world of digital marketing, they experiment with new marketing platforms. Marketers try to master this software—to leverage its promise to generate <i>more </i>and <i>better </i>leads, and to streamline marketing processes. For highly competitive products like marketing automation, nuances in product features, and how customers manage to utilize these features can make all the difference. The way a new customer is on-boarded, the support or self-help tools provided, and even the reality of the implementation experience versus the expectations set by vendors can have a major impact on customer retention. <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #990000;"><i><a href="mailto:dan@marketinggs.com" target="_blank">Contact me now</a> to create thought leadership--white papers, eBooks, webinars, newsletters--and a marketing strategy--to reach and engage with your best prospects</i><i>. </i></span></blockquote>
And in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business model, retention is key. Vendors often lose money on new customers during the first year. It’s not until an annual renewal, or at least a period of several months, that customers become profitable. Vendors tout their success with press releases about new customers and sometime even publish customer counts and growth rates. What’s not revealed are the dropped customers—the churn.<br />
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<b>Until now, that is.</b><br />
<br />
Working with the tech data sleuth firm, Datanyze, I looked at websites that added and dropped marketing automation software from January through April of 2014. The results may surprise you. Salesforce's own marketing automation platform—Pardot—dominated the field with a net gain of 2,020 websites.<br />
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What's particularly impressive about Pardot is its 6:1 ratio of add to drops— more than triple the industry average. Great marketing can generate a steady stream of new customers in a rapidly growing market, but only positive customer experiences will result in high retention rates.<br />
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<span style="color: #666666;"><i>We will be publishing more marketplace data over the coming weeks, so stay tuned.</i></span></blockquote>
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<b>Before you draw too many conclusions, a few caveats are about the data are in order.</b><br />
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First, Datanyze tracks about 15 million sites, which seems
like a big enough number. But keep in mind, there are over<a href="http://news.netcraft.com/archives/category/web-server-survey/" target="_blank"> 900 million websites</a>.
So even the Datanyze Universe represents just small fraction of total active
sites. Nonetheless, I believe the 15 million covers an overwhelming portion of total commercial websites that would have the budget to invest in marketing
automation.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="color: #990000;">Want to get the Datanyze Q1 2014 figures for another marketing automation vendor? Call me now at 201 266-6919. </span></i></blockquote>
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Next, the data tracks websites—not customers—so <a href="http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/04/hubspot-marketo-eloqua-new-data-shows-marketing-automation-market-share-in-unprecedented-detail/" target="_blank">market share headlines</a> should be viewed with some skepticism. A company that installs marketing
automation tracking code may put it on single site, or on a dozen or more. That
said, as a sanity check, I compared the marketing automation websites tracked by Datanyze with the actual number of customers for several vendors and found the
ratio to be within a range of 2.5 - 3.5 to 1. </div>
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Example: Datanyze shows 31,925 websites using Hubspot. The
company said it had 10,195 customers at or near year-end 2013. That’s a ratio
is 3:1 websites per customer—a reasonable and believable number. </blockquote>
<b>There’s also a degree of fuzziness in the data. </b></div>
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The most significant source of fuzziness in the data may be
the use of trials. Since trials frequently don’t convert to sales, vendors that
offer free trials (Marketo, for example) may tend to show more adds and drops
than those who don’t (Pardot, for example). This can skew the numbers.<br />
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Another consideration is that some vendors offer a variety of versions, not all of which should be considered as marketing automation tools. For example, Hubspot has a 'basic' package the includes email marketing and website tracking but not the more salient features of marketing automation such as<i> lead scoring</i> and <i>automated lead nurturing</i>. Nonetheless, these packages will be counted by Datanyze as part of Hubspot's totals.<br />
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The last caveat is that in order to identify software packages used, Datanyze analyzes the underlying source code. There is certainly no foolproof way to find this code and to associate it with a particular vendor, but the company believes they catch the overwhelming majority of instances. </div>
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Caveats and fuzziness aside, the changes over the course of the
first four months of 2014 seems to illuminate one important trend. <b>Salesforce's Pardot platform is quietly on a tear.</b><br />
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**** **** **** ****</div>
<a href="http://marketinggs.com/" target="_blank">Marketing Growth Strategies LLC</a> has been engaged in research, analysis, lead generation, and client implementation in the Marketing Automation sector since 2009 and has recently revised its highly successful 2014 Marketing Automation eBook.<br />
<br />
Are you a marketing automation vendor? <a href="http://marketinggs.com/revised-marketing-automation-ebook.html" target="_blank">Learn about the capturing up to 500 fresh Marketing Automation leads</a>.<br />
<br />
Considering implementing marketing automation? <a href="http://marketinggs.com/marketing-automation-ebook-download-2.html" target="_blank">Download the 2014 Marketing Automation eBook</a><br />
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<br />Dan Freemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13699328254476579134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907984829483930525.post-11529087869275390622014-04-10T17:34:00.000-07:002014-04-11T12:01:53.125-07:00Marketing Automation Buyers Survey<span style="font-size: small;">by <b>Dan Freeman </b></span><br />
<a href="https://twitter.com/TheeDanFreeman" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Follow on Twitter</span></a><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Over half of companies considering purchasing marketing automation systems are worried they don’t have the in-house skills to make it work. </span><span style="font-size: large;">Another half aren't sure they have the budget and are concerned that marketing automation won’t deliver on its many promises. </span><span style="font-size: large;">These are some of the the preliminary results of a marketing automation buyer and user <a href="http://intel.venturebeat.com/surveys/MA-buyersurvey-DF.html" target="_blank">survey</a> </span><span style="font-size: large;">we are conducting with VentureBeat. </span><span style="font-size: large;">Here are some more highlights…</span><br />
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<b>What motivates businesses to invest in marketing automation? It's about LEADS, SALES, and MARKETING PROCESSES. </b><br />
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<i>Marketers’ top considerations when determining whether or not to invest in Marketing Automation Software are ranked as follows</i><br />
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<li>Need to generate better quality leads </li>
<li>Need to track/score leads</li>
<li>Need to automate marketing processes </li>
<li>Need to improve sales effectiveness </li>
<li>Need to generate more leads </li>
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<span style="color: red;"><b>Well be be publishing more results in the coming weeks, so stay tuned. </b> </span></blockquote>
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<b>SKILLS, RESULTS, COSTS: The top 3 reasons marketing automation scares companies</b><br />
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<i>Top concerns about implementing marketing automation software</i><br />
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<li>Whether we have the in-house skills to effectively implement 58%</li>
<li>Budget; not sure we can afford it 54%</li>
<li>Concern over software’s ability to produce real results 51%</li>
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<b>COST AND EASE OF USE top selection criteria.</b><br />
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<i>Three considerations stood out among buyer when selecting a marketing automation platform</i><br />
<ol>
<li>Total cost of service </li>
<li>Ease of Use </li>
<li>Monthly Price </li>
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These beat out considerations such as <b>Features</b>, <b>Integration with CRM</b>, <b>Start-up Time</b>, and others. Of note: Recommendations from experts like Gartner, Forrester, came in last!<br />
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Of those respondents who do not use marketing automation currently, 46% use an email marketing service (MailChimp the most mentioned) and 60% use a CRM (Salesforce the most mentioned).<br />
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**** **** **** ****</div>
<a href="http://marketinggs.com/" target="_blank">Marketing Growth Strategies LLC</a> has been engaged in research, analysis, lead generation, and client implementation in the Marketing Automation sector since 2009 and has recently revised its highly successful 2014 Marketing Automation eBook.<br />
<br />
Are you a marketing automation vendor? <a href="http://marketinggs.com/revised-marketing-automation-ebook.html" target="_blank">Learn about the capturing up to 500 fresh Marketing Automation leads</a>.<br />
<br />
Considering implementing marketing automation? <a href="http://marketinggs.com/marketing-automation-ebook-download-2.html" target="_blank">Download the 2014 Marketing Automation eBook</a><br />
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<br />Dan Freemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13699328254476579134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907984829483930525.post-82465860615609120162014-04-10T14:03:00.002-07:002014-04-10T14:33:18.183-07:00Marketing Automation Industry to Reach $1.2 Billion<span style="font-size: small;">by <b>Dan Freeman </b></span><br />
<a href="https://twitter.com/TheeDanFreeman" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Follow on Twitter</span></a><br />
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We’ve updated our <a href="http://www.marketingtechreport.com/p/2014-marketing-automation-industry.html" target="_blank">2014 Marketing Automation eBook</a> with a revised industry revenue estimate of $850 million for 2013 and a revised forecast of $1.2 billion for 2014. To arrive at these figures, we track over 30 marketing automation vendors, comparing user and revenue growth rates. We also profiled two additional marketing automation vendors. The new eBook explores all of the industry trends and profiles the leading vendors, including Marketo, Act-On, Pardot/Salesforce, Eloqua, InfusionSoft, eTrigue and many others.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
>> <a href="http://www.marketingtechreport.com/p/2014-marketing-automation-industry.html" target="_blank">Download the revised 2014 Marketing Automation eBook here</a>. >></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
**** **** **** ****</div>
<a href="http://marketinggs.com/" target="_blank">Marketing Growth Strategies LLC</a> has been engaged in research, analysis, lead generation, and client implementation in the Marketing Automation sector since 2009 and has recently revised its highly successful 2014 Marketing Automation eBook.<br />
<br />
Are you a marketing automation vendor? <a href="http://marketinggs.com/revised-marketing-automation-ebook.html" target="_blank">Learn about the capturing up to 500 fresh Marketing Automation leads</a>.<br />
<br />
Considering implementing marketing automation? <a href="http://marketinggs.com/marketing-automation-ebook-download-2.html" target="_blank">Download the 2014 Marketing Automation eBook</a><br />
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<br />Dan Freemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13699328254476579134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907984829483930525.post-54529528897814016092014-04-05T10:19:00.002-07:002014-04-07T06:36:50.363-07:00New Research on Top Marketing Automation Software Platforms<span style="font-size: small;">by <b>Dan Freeman </b></span><br />
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Here are the latest marketing automation market share numbers for the Top 1 Million websites compiled by tech data firm Datanze: Hubspot – 21.1%, Marketo – 14.6%, InfusionSoft – 11.9% Eloqua – 9.9%, and Pardot – 8.0%.<br />
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But that's far from the full story.<br />
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Datanyze has just expanded its coverage of the Marketing Automation sector to include about 11 million websites in what they call the <i>Datanyze Universe</i>. I spoke with Datanyze Marketing VP Jon Hearty to delve more deeply into their data. The company looks the world's most authoritative websites—based on Alexa ranking—and analyzes the underlying source code to reveal software packages used on these sites.<br />
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Although 11 million is certainly a lot of websites to analyze, users should be aware that there are over 900 million websites (astounding number but <a href="http://news.netcraft.com/archives/category/web-server-survey/" target="_blank">here is my source</a>). So even the Datanyze Universe represents just small fraction of total active sites.<br />
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<i>Participate in our <a href="http://www.marketingtechreport.com/p/2014-marketing-automation-industry.html" target="_blank">2014 Marketing Automation eBook</a> and reach thousands of new businesses looking for get a handle on digital marketing. </i></blockquote>
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Still, the data is revealing, as it tells us the actual number of found instances of each of the marketing automation software platforms among the universe of sites tracked. We all know that software companies have a way of, shall we say...<i>embellishing</i> their user base numbers. So this data represents a reality check on vendors' statements and marketing materials, and a touchstone for analysis.<br />
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We looked at the leaders in the marketing automation sector and how they changed as the list expanded from the Top 100K, to the Top Million, to the Datanyze Universe of 11 Million, and here is what we found.<br />
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<h3>
Marketing Automation Leaders Among Alexa Top 100K Websites</h3>
Among the very largest websites, just over 3 percent had detectable marketing automation code—a notably low number. Among this group, Marketo is the clear leader, followed by Eloqua and Hubspot. It’s also interesting to note that Infusionsoft—designed for the entrepreneur and the very small business market—has a strong presence among the top 100K with a fifth place ranking.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-blCGR9DX9iI/U0AwbTAeKrI/AAAAAAAAAcw/mS8_OMB8ztM/s1600/Top+100k+sites+-+MA.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Marketing Automation Software Ranking | MarketingTechReport" border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-blCGR9DX9iI/U0AwbTAeKrI/AAAAAAAAAcw/mS8_OMB8ztM/s1600/Top+100k+sites+-+MA.png" height="491" title="Marketing Automation Software Ranking | MarketingTechReport" width="640" /></a></div>
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<h3>
Marketing Automation Leaders Among Alexa Top Million Websites</h3>
Expanding the universe to the Alexa top 1 million sites, we see a different result. Although the top players remain almost unchanged (except VisiStat now joins the top 10, replacing VisualRevenue), Hubspot takes the lead, followed by Marketo and Infusionsoft.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rUwfSYcsow4/U0AyUPSxIUI/AAAAAAAAAdA/aELzhKn4G_k/s1600/Top+1MM+sites+-+MA.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rUwfSYcsow4/U0AyUPSxIUI/AAAAAAAAAdA/aELzhKn4G_k/s1600/Top+1MM+sites+-+MA.png" height="432" width="640" /></a></div>
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Marketing Automation Leaders Among Datanyse Universe (11 Million sites)</h3>
Now we turn to the Datanyse Universe, which represents close to 11 million websites. Readers should note that, unlike the Top 100K or Top 1 Million websites tracked by Datanyse, the Datanyse Universe only approximates the top Alexa sites and includes many other sites that Datanyse customers have requested tracking on. <br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Want custom 3rd party White Papers, eBooks and Webinars to engage your prospects? <a href="http://marketinggs.com/contact-us.html" target="_blank">Call or Email us now</a> to discuss. </i></blockquote>
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Most striking is the jump of VisiStat from ninth place to first. VisiStat is not directly comparable to most of the 37 marketing automation vendors included in this data. The company has been in business for nine years and has a large customer base in both B2B and B2C. It’s primary functionality is the ability to identify previously anonymous website visitors through reverse DNS lookup, and to import visitor data directly into its database.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-u-N9VYgxR3I/U0AyUDWnnrI/AAAAAAAAAc8/QrkdfWraNEE/s1600/Top+11MM+sites+-+MA+Datazyne+Universe.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-u-N9VYgxR3I/U0AyUDWnnrI/AAAAAAAAAc8/QrkdfWraNEE/s1600/Top+11MM+sites+-+MA+Datazyne+Universe.png" height="454" width="640" /></a><br />
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To play with the data yourselves, <a href="http://www.datanyze.com/market-share/" target="_blank">visit Datanyze</a>. </div>
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**** **** **** ****</div>
<a href="http://marketinggs.com/" target="_blank">Marketing Growth Strategies LLC</a> has been engaged in research, analysis, lead generation, and client implementation in the Marketing Automation sector since 2009 and has recently revised its highly successful 2014 Marketing Automation eBook.<br />
<br />
Are you a marketing automation vendor? <a href="http://marketinggs.com/revised-marketing-automation-ebook.html" target="_blank">Learn about the capturing up to 500 fresh Marketing Automation leads</a>.<br />
<br />
Considering implementing marketing automation? <a href="http://marketinggs.com/marketing-automation-ebook-download-2.html" target="_blank">Download the 2014 Marketing Automation eBook</a><br />
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<br />Dan Freemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13699328254476579134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907984829483930525.post-70473018760309236102014-03-18T15:20:00.002-07:002020-07-23T10:19:00.765-07:00The Rise of Marketing (Technology)<span style="font-size: small;">by <b>Dan Freeman </b></span><br /><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/danfreeman/" style="font-size: x-small;">Follow me on LinkedIn</a><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-olGLc2g7-NQ/UyjFDr529zI/AAAAAAAAAac/sXt1KT7Qbk8/s1600/DigitalMarketingMan+250W.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Digital Marketing Man" border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-olGLc2g7-NQ/UyjFDr529zI/AAAAAAAAAac/sXt1KT7Qbk8/s1600/DigitalMarketingMan+250W.png" title="Digital Marketing Man" width="177" /></a>The abundance of marketing technology companies was described by Scott Brinker in last month’s illuminating post, <a href="http://chiefmartec.com/2014/02/1000-marketing-technology-vendors-new-normal/" target="_blank">What if 1,000+ marketing technology vendors were the new normal</a>? The post tackles the rise of marketing technology mostly from an IT perspective. It’s tough to summarize 4,000 words but, as I understood it, the thrust of the argument goes something like this: First, the rise in SaaS or cloud computing made it much cheaper to start new software ventures, and much cheaper (and less risky) for consumers to purchase. Second, unlike say, traditional manufacturing firms, where economies of scale rule the day, in software firms where success depends on rapid innovation, there are actually diseconomies of scale. Larger, entrenched customer bases, compounded by more management/organizational layers make change more difficult. Hence, we now have 1,000 plus firms broadly categories in the marketing technology sector.<br />
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I’d like to add to Scott’s analysis, but from a different perspective: the rise of <i>marketing </i>itself. After all, the notion of cloud computing and diseconomies of scale can be applied to any of the corporate functions—finance, HR, operations, etc.—yet it has been marketing alone that has sprouted this cornucopia of technology offerings. Advertising, and more generally marketing, has been in the throes of transformation for decades, or what the economist Joseph Schumpeter called ‘creative destruction’. To understand it, think of marketing way back…before Social Media, before Google, even before email and the World Wide Web. Content was largely created by a few big ad agencies (think Don Draper) and pushed to consumers. Of course we still have ad agencies doing big TV campaigns but that’s far from the full story. The Internet browser—Mosaic was the first—made content available to the masses and also spurred a content revolution. Wired magazine described the breakthrough in October 1994:<br />
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“With Mosaic, the online world appears to be a vast, interconnected universe of information. You can enter at any point and begin to wander; no internet addresses or keyboard commands are necessary. The complex methods of extracting information from the net are hidden from sight. Almost every person who uses it feels the impulse to add some content of his or her own. Since Mosaic first appeared, according to the NCSA, net traffic devoted to hypermedia browsing has increased ten-thousandfold.”</blockquote>
With content vastly more accessible, a virtuous cycle of content creation and sharing was born. And it’s the exponential growth in content that is at the heart of the rise of marketing. Google (and its predecessors) have transformed marketing from what was largely a top down, indiscriminate, <i>push </i>of content from a few large agencies, to a much more efficient, bottom up, <i>pull </i>from hundreds of millions of consumers via Internet search. That’s how Google has gone from start-up in 1998 to a $400 billion (last I checked) company 16 years later. Of course we still push content, but at a fraction of the cost through Internet advertising and email marketing, and it’s aimed at intricate demographic and behavioral segments, and individuals that are far more likely to purchase.<br />
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The vast bulk of content today is created bottom-up, through websites, blogs, and social platforms. Today (these figures will be outdated almost as fast as you read this) there are over <a href="http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2014/02/03/february-2014-web-server-survey.html" target="_blank">920 million websites</a>, 40 million WordPress blogs (just 1 of many blogging platforms), 150 billion emails sent per day (yes, that’s billion with a “b”) 500 million daily Tweets, and 4.5 billion Facebook Likes—the ‘Like’ being the ultimate in abbreviated content. And then, there’s mobile content…there are over a billion smart phones and over a million apps in the iPhone catalog. <br />
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Add to the proliferation of content, the exponential growth in digital interactions, and now marketing has become more data intensive than Wall Street—hence the acquisition of marketing software firms by tech giants like IBM, Oracle, Microsoft and Adobe.<br />
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The transformation of marketing is represented both by meteoric rise in content and the ability of marketers to interact with that content. The primary challenge of marketing today—and the focus of many of today’s marketing technology firms—is managing the proliferation of content and interactions, and harnessing this data to put relevant content in the hands of customers and prospects so that products can sell themselves, or, in the case of B2B, at least do the bulk of the selling work before a hand-off to sales is made.<br />
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To the extent that marketing technology firms can help marketers in this gargantuan effort—streamlining content creation, distributing across multiple channels, attracting web surfers, capturing leads, segmenting prospects, quantifying and responding to digital interactions, etc.—they will continue to proliferate.<br />
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**** **** **** ****</div>
<a href="http://marketinggs.com/" target="_blank">Marketing Growth Strategies LLC</a> has been engaged in research, analysis, lead generation, and client implementation in the Marketing Automation sector since 2009 and has recently revised its highly successful 2014 Marketing Automation eBook.<br />
<br />
Are you a marketing automation vendor? <a href="http://marketinggs.com/revised-marketing-automation-ebook.html" target="_blank">Learn about the capturing up to 500 fresh Marketing Automation leads</a>.<br />
<br />
Considering implementing marketing automation? <a href="http://marketinggs.com/marketing-automation-ebook-download-2.html" target="_blank">Download the 2014 Marketing Automation eBook</a><br />
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<br />Dan Freemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13699328254476579134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907984829483930525.post-62572278387705929442014-03-11T09:25:00.000-07:002014-05-25T11:08:53.692-07:00Autopilot Marketing Automation Platform VideoSee Autopilot's Marketing Automation Platform Overview Video<br />
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Dan Freemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13699328254476579134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907984829483930525.post-40829325160756645092014-03-11T07:08:00.000-07:002014-06-02T07:09:49.547-07:00Pardot 1 Minute Overview Video<iframe width="640" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/oxxjIhlFbUU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Dan Freemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13699328254476579134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907984829483930525.post-10009390489848746732014-03-11T06:53:00.000-07:002014-06-02T06:54:24.977-07:00Act-On 2 Minute Overview Video<iframe width="640" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/0NlX0Sqjy3E" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Dan Freemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13699328254476579134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907984829483930525.post-57235471698796685862014-03-10T14:47:00.000-07:002014-05-25T11:02:42.857-07:00Captora OverviewSee Overview of Captora in 2 minutes<br />
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<iframe width="640" height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/yHE1pwDnKrQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Dan Freemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13699328254476579134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907984829483930525.post-17511858221803472192014-03-10T13:00:00.000-07:002014-05-31T13:01:50.336-07:00Marketo 2 Minute Overview VideoMarketo in 2 Minutes<br />
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<iframe width="640" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/n-rcJB5hFog" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Dan Freemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13699328254476579134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1907984829483930525.post-6039589763509024182014-03-10T12:13:00.000-07:002014-06-01T12:15:12.847-07:00Eloqua Product Overview Video<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,47,0" height="358" id="flashObj" width="640"><param name="movie" value="http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1&isUI=1" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><param name="flashVars" value="videoId=2347333742001&playerID=1787102915001&playerKey=AQ~~,AAAAAFcSbzI~,OkyYKKfkn3xPOduPEsqhjskdCvDxqymz&domain=embed&dynamicStreaming=true" /><param name="base" value="http://admin.brightcove.com" /><param name="seamlesstabbing" value="false" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="swLiveConnect" value="true" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><embed src="http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1&isUI=1" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" flashVars="videoId=2347333742001&playerID=1787102915001&playerKey=AQ~~,AAAAAFcSbzI~,OkyYKKfkn3xPOduPEsqhjskdCvDxqymz&domain=embed&dynamicStreaming=true" base="http://admin.brightcove.com" name="flashObj" width="640" height="358" seamlesstabbing="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowFullScreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" swLiveConnect="true" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash"></embed></object><br />
2 minute overview of Eloqua Marketing Automation PlatformDan Freemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13699328254476579134noreply@blogger.com0