Lead Generation: How Some Marketing SW Vendors Stretch the Truth

September 13, 2011 — Laura Ramos

Caveat emptor.  That applies to B2B marketing executives considering lead generation/demand management solutions. Here’s why:

A couple of weeks ago, I received an email wanting to show me “how 5000 customers increased leads by 420%.”  Reading further, the sender said an “independent MIT study” backed up the claim. Former Forrester analyst that I am, I had to think “This sounds too good to be true.”

So I downloaded and read the report. It’s actually quite good — far better than other research, whitepapers, and such I’ve seen.  But what bothered me was how the vendor-sponsor exaggerated the results to a degree that I felt was unnecessary. From my experience, I’d like to point out common faults in how the sponsor conveyed they findings. These faults and exaggerations can confuse readers and make the results appear suspect. Which is too bad, because the findings are relevant and speak to the power of lead management automation.

When you read similar reports, always ask the following to keep from falling into the (sometimes obvious) traps vendors can set:

1) What’s the base? Knowing how many people, companies, etc. represented in the research is crucial. You should also know whether the sample represents a demographic similar or different from you. This research hedges here. A lot.

The headline to the email says “5000 customers” — the report states “214 respondents” to the survey (page 24) and is unclear about how many participants made up the sample used for Web site analysis of visitors and leads. Upon further inspection, you find that 93% of the sample include companies with 200 employees or fewer, with almost 75% having 25 employees or fewer.  If you work at a big company like I do, then these results don’t apply as much as the results would if you were at a small start-up.

2) How do the overall findings hold up when you scrutinize the data? You need to compare the “headline” findings to the details to see if the research substantiates the claims.  Or to see if there is something unique about the data that influences the results.

In this research, small numbers have a big effect on percentages and multipliers. Basically, if your Web site starts out gaining two leads in the first month, using the vendor’s technology will help to generate 80+ leads about 1 year later (see Figure 5).  While not stated clearly in the report, the email author probably gets to the “4.2 times more leads” number using this calculation. As you can see, the claim leaves out important details.

Which is unfortunate because the survey results (page 12) show that 83% of 214 respondents said they saw an increase in leads since implementing the “inbound marketing software” and 32% of those said they saw their leads increase by 50%. Again, it would be good to know the demographics of those respondents and how long it took them to achieve those results. The report explores neither of those factors to my satisfaction.

3) How credible is the source/authors? Beyond looking at whether the methodology holds water, it’s important to understand who wrote the research, who sponsored it, and how the project might have come about in the first place.

While the email claims “independent MIT study” the reality is that two MBA graduate degree candidates probably did this work for a class project. I don’t mean any disrespect to Mr. Paisner and Ms. Derosiers. They appear to be excellent students judging by the clear, concise layout of the report. Both deserve an “A” grade from their respective professors at MIT and Babson. But linking the MIT brand to this report in this manner is a bit of a stretch.  

If I were to guess, I would say that the two have some personal connection to Hubspot – maybe working there as interns. The source of the project was likely more casual than a formal solicitation of research from MBA graduate programs by Hubspot. This is the type of skepticism you should apply when questioning the origin of research you read.

What’s the bottom line? I think the lead generation/automation market remains very competitive.  Too competitive for the growing opportunity it still represents. Wanting to catch the eye of busy marketing executives, the vendors find it very tempting to “highlight” customer results and show that their technology can substantially improve marketing’s impact on the business.  But don’t believe everything you read. Marketing automation success depends on hard work, getting your processes right, and on steady, effective content production. The technology choice is a distant fourth on the list.

I would be interested in hearing about your experience.  Feel free to post a comment here sharing examples of how you’ve seen vendors stretch the truth — a little or a lot.

(Full disclosure: While I was an analyst at Forrester, I reviewed Hubspot’s technology — among others — for my Lead Management Automation market overview. I also know Brian Halligan - he spoke at one of my B2B marketing seminars a few years ago. I think Hubspot has an excellent software product well-suited for the small business market. I also think their company performance continues to meet and exceed market expectations.)

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Increasing The Life Expectancy Of CMOs

August 16, 2010 — Laura Ramos

Early in my new adventure here at Xerox, I met Susan Kelly, VP of Enterprise Marketing Services and found a kindred spirit.  Susan is a forward-looking direct marketer and came to Xerox from K/P Corporation, a marketing services provider that develops integrated data-driven marketing solutions, where she was president and CEO. She’s also spent time as an executive at RR Donnelley and RRD Direct.

Today, she runs the services division within Xerox focused on helping marketers make the transition from analogue systems to digital marketing while automating relationship management. Like me, she wants to encourage marketers to embrace marketing automation as a means of gaining the transparency and control we need to better connect with customers, support sales activity, and deliver top-line growth. So naturally, I was thrilled when she invited me to contribute a few thoughts as a foreword to her new whitepaper.   Here’s what I wrote:

During the past four years, I had the privilege of studying and writing about business-to-business (B2B) marketing best practices at Forrester Research. I surveyed and spoke with thousands of B2B marketers about their processes and best practices. Through this work, it became clear to me that marketing’s influence is declining as business buyers go online to research purchase decisions using peer insights and independentexperts. Years of being the department with hard-to-quantify outcomes make it difficult for marketing to specifically and concisely demonstrate its true impact on the business. New campaigns, clever advertising, and delving into social media mask over problems and won’t spur the profound changes required to avoid what may seem like an inevitable slide toward obsolescence.

To remain viable, marketers must invest in technical capability that lets them work smarter and run leaner. Specifically, top marketers I know set up marketing-specific data management systems to improve insight, automate lead development and cultivation,integrate digital and traditional channels, embrace social media, and continuously measure and quantify the results.

However, technology investment without the proper skills, planning, change management and execution rarely succeeds. Most marketers must also rely on key marketing services partners to advise – and outsource – the needed process change. I hope, as you read the following white paper, you will come to share my view that marketing stands on the verge of a major transformation. But that needed change comes through rigorous, data-driven assessments, expertise in new process design, workflow optimization inside and outside the firm, modern marketing automation capabilities, marketing logistical management and customized tracking tools that validate marketing’s forward progress.

In this paper, Susan outlines some of the key challenges she sees CMOs face today and how marketing automation provides a clear way forward. Key among her insights are the “Four Cs” of marketing automation:

  • Collection: Cataloging, cleaning, and centralizing the management of customer data and digital assets is the first step. This work and investment, while difficult, wil pay off later as it provides a solid foundation for business intelligence that can benefit marketing, sales, and the entire enterprise.
  • Collaboration: Getting your assets and data in order makes it easier to collaborate with agencies, marketing automation vendors, database marketing services providers, and other internal marketing groups.
  • Convergence: Is really about the integration of traditional and online channels that allow marketers to target , connect, and dialogue with customers and prospects wherever they may be.
  • Connectivity: Combining creative development and demand management with shared access to data and digital assets, marketes can now integrate marketing on an enterprise-wide basis. This access lets you not only improve customer acquisition and lead management but also develop more effective customer retention and loyalty programs.

To read the full whitepaper, and learn more about Susan and her perspectives on the landscape, future, and opportunities for marketers, visit her Thought Leadership site.  And I would enjoy hearing your thoughts on the paper — feel free to post a comment to let us know what you think.

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Join The “Marketing Challenge!” At Business-to-Business Forum 2010

May 3, 2010 — Laura Ramos

I am attending the Business-to-Business Forum 2010 conference, sponsored by MarketingProfs, on Tuesday, May 4.  In the afternoon (starting at 3:30 pm Eastern) I am hosting a session titled, “Marketing Challenge! Lead Management Automation Systems” which will explore the factors that make marketing automation pay off in higher quality leads and better sales relationships.

Joining me are four executives from some of the top lead management automation providers:
Brian Kardon, Chief Marketing Officer, Eloqua
Jon Miller, Vice President, Marketing, Marketo
Kristin Hambelton, Sr. Director of Marketing, Neolane Inc.
Parker Trewin, Director of Marketing Communications, Genius.com

This discussion will not follow the typical panel discussion format. Instead, I will “challenge” my four colleagues to show how their customers address B2B marketing scenarios in innovative ways. In this format, I will pose common demand management situations to each panelist and invite him or her to describe how — using real-life examples — they see customers handle each challenge.

To be fair, I admit that we gave each panelist one scenario to ponder ahead of time.  For those attending, I thought it would be fun to preview the scenarios with you in this blog post.  Each panelist must answer one of the following, and, I think you will agree, some of these challenges are really challenging.  All are based, in part (and disguised to shield the innocent), on client interactions I experienced during my years at Forrester Research.  Here are the challenge situations I will present to each panelist — and they have only 5 minutes to answer! I won’t tell you who will answer which challenge; you’ll have to join me at the forum to find out the assignments:

Challenge 1: A large business services firm uses territory-based sales pursuit – supported by events, sponsorships, and hospitality — as its primary go-to-market strategy. This multibillion-dollar business generates almost half of revenues from several hundred of its many thousands of accounts. Contracts are multi-year, multi-million dollar and account-based marketing has been key to achieving past success. As offshore and conventional competition increases price pressure, what can your marketing automation solution offer the CMO of this firm to enable sales to increase cross-sell and upsell opportunities and to reinforce the value of maintaining an ongoing services relationship with this firm? In particular, how does your technology help the CMO identify opportunities within accounts that can include as many as a dozen decision makers?

Challenge 2: The wealth-management division of a large, national bank offers investment and equity management services through professional advisors and independent brokers. Historically, these advisors establish personal relationships with clients maintained through person-to-person contact. With the rise of electronic banking and trading, many advisors – especially independent ones — want more branding and demand generation support from the bank but worry that the bank’s electronic presence creates too much of an intermediary presence in these relationships. What can your marketing automation software offer the head of Wealth Management to empower these brokers to pursue new business more efficiently while keeping their personal relationship and brand relevant?

Challenge 3: The CMO of a high tech, 500+ person firm enjoys a collaborative working relationship with sales and strong demand for current product offerings. As a Salesforce.com user and enthusiast, he is satisfied with the firm’s current sales management tools – having made a recent investment in a custom sales portal, specialized reports, and integration with the firm’s separate telesupport system. As the economy turns around, he is feeling greater pressure to pump up the sales pipeline but is unconvinced that a marketing automation investment makes sense. What can you show this reluctant CMO to convince him that your marketing automation solution will deliver real returns on this investment, and will win converts among the sales organization?

Challenge 4: The VP of Marketing for the SMB division of a global high-tech company with offices in more than 20 countries has been using an email services provider (ESP) for many years to send out emails. The firm has extensive investment in sales automation, Web analytics, Web content management, and business analytics. They also have a multi-million record customer database stitched together through several acquisitions and legacy systems. What can your marketing automation system offer to help deliver more targeted messages to SMB prospects, develop the resulting demand, and right-channel qualified leads, all while reinforcing relationships with current business buyers to markedly reduce churn?

After answering thse four challenges, I’ll open the panel up to the audience and see if the attendees can stump the panelists further. This will be a fun, engaging, and lively session full of information to help B2B marketers understand what lead management systems can do for their business and which solution might best fit their needs.  Hope you can make it!

Please feel free to comment on this post with your ideas for other challenges — who knows, I may use the best on on Tuesday during the Q&A section!

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Continuing Our Conversation: Loopfuse CEO Chat, Part II

March 5, 2010 — Laura Ramos

Continuing my conversation with Sean Dwyer, CEO Loopfuse, here is part 2 of our Q&A dialog where Sean asked me to talk more about trends I see affecting B2B marketing today, the impact of lead management automation on these trends, and where I see B2B marketers heading in their shift from conventional to digital — and from outbound messaging to blending broadcasting and dialoguing. Here’s what we talked about:

Part II: Trends, Impacts, and Market Directions

Q4: What key trends drive adoption of Lead Management Automation (LMA) today?

Besides weathering the current economy and improving sales pipelines short term, I think B2b marketers need to invest in and use lead management automation to meet longer term needs. I would describe these as the need: 1) for greater accountability from marketing, 2) to produce not just more demand, but better-qualified demand, and 3) to scale the sales process more efficiently (in other words, to reduce the cost of customer acquisition).

Beyond this, there are other macro trends that will continue to drive widespread change in B2B marketing, and where I see automated demand management as a key response to these trends. For example, I expect marketers to adopt lead management automation to build customer dialogue and relationships much earlier in the purchase process and counteract issues like advertising avoidance, commoditization, and social computing (which creates unprecedented transparency and information sharing that is wonderful for buyers, but challenging for sellers).

Q5: What impact will a Lead Management Automation (LMA) system have on the typical marketing organization?

The impact of automation on a the marketing organization in a large firm can be quite different than the impact of adopting this technology in a small one. Both size firms experience different issues and challenges. Let me focus on the midmarket here and refer to back to the three trends I mentioned in the prior question to address you question about the impact of LMA:

1) Greater marketing accountability. Over the past 10 years, B2B marketers have witnessed an explosion in available marketing approaches, especially in the digital world. While this has made more channels available, many marketers struggle to execute tactics in an integrated fashion that engage B2B buyers during what is often a lengthy sales cycle. Racing from tactic to tactic, B2B marketers can fail to demonstrate marketing’s impact beyond campaign execution. Lead management automation helps marketers get a handle on the marketing mix and to learn which approaches work at which points in the buyer’s journey. LMA can also give marketers more flexibility to try new approaches and experiment with new techniques because the system lets them see, more directly, the impact between marketing activity and the volume and quality of leads that result.

2) Better qualified leads. Good sales organizations – and sales management — don’t really want more leads from marketing, but they do want better ones. Lead management automation helps marketing and sales get onto the same page and to answer the critical question “what makes a great lead?” Without automation to score leads across the purchase cycle, and the capability to nurture leads – start a conversation, educate, build dialogue, persuade – marketers will fail to put the best leads in front of sales and to help sales to convert pipeline into closed deals.

3) Scaling the sales process. Many executives think LMA helps marketing. In fact, it helps sales. And it helps the bottomline. Starting in the last decade, trends like software as a service, virtualization, and on-demand provisioning have changed how firms deliver high technology products. The services component of any solution has become more important. And IT buyers want to pay as they go. Long-term, on-premise, perpetual licenses will decline in favor of the on-demand model. This also means that long sales processes, backed by high-commission sales reps, must become less expensive. Companies can’t afford to spend time, money, and resources on customer acquisition like some did in the past.

Marketing will become key in this transition as buyers rely more on online channels – and communities of like-minded participants – to inform and validate purchase decisions. Lead management automation can help marketers connect with these buyers long before the first sales call and make selling more efficient as a result.

I think large, multinational firms can certainly achieve these results at the departmental level. However, the challenges associated with building a global brand, driving message consistency, and managing marketing interactions across geographies, regions, industries, and multiple product lines increases demand management complexity significantly.

Q6: Are you seeing a shift in focus from traditional outbound marketing activities to inbound marketing? If so, how can marketing leaders prepare themselves?

In 2009, we saw B2B marketers continue to shift from traditional to digital channels as marketing budgets got cut and as buyers became harder to engage. Social media popularity also kept the digital transformation going. However, much of what I see happening online in B2B – with social media in particular – I would characterize as “outbound marketing using new channels.” For example, firms put out a stream of press releases and marketing communications, and then tweet about them on Twitter. Little value is added and certainly not much happening there to make buyers want to strike up a conversation.

To truly move to inbound marketing, B2B marketers need to stop thinking about campaigns and start thinking about multi-step conversations. They need to efficiently reach buyers at a group or individual level. Mass marketing doesn’t work in B2B, relationship marketing does. This is where I can see LMA playing a key role because lets vertical industry, product management, or local marketers in the field have conversations with targeted groups of prospects – customer segments in the truest sense – using online tools and social media to fuel the dialogue. By tracking their behavior and interactions, marketers can then pass a rich set of “background” information – behavior, preferences, activity — to sales and help them close deals more efficiently. When this doesn’t work, because it doesn’t always, the LMA system can now give both marketing and sales quantitative, factual information about what they need to do differently.

 I know there are one, maybe two, more parts to this conversation, but let me know what questions you would ask about the Lead Management Automation market if you were Sean.  Feel free to submit your question via the comments function below.  I’m curious to see what you want to know about and will certainly answer the “best” ones.

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A Conversation With LoopFuse About The Marketing Automation Market

February 24, 2010 — Laura Ramos

Since publishing the market overview for the lead management automation space, I have been pleasantly surprised by the number of current and emerging vendors who got in touch wanting to talk further, learn more about my research, and (well, frankly) “influence” the analyst. (That’s why I’m here, after all.)  Since last fall, I’ve met 7Degrees, Leadforce1, Marketing Advocate, and SalesFUSION and talked more with eTrigue, Loopfuse, Manitcore, and Pardot. A common thread in these discussions is a desire to know more about what I think of this market and where I see it going in 2010.

Loopfuse CEO, Sean Dwyer, cornered me for a long conversation about this market when I was in Atlanta last month. He thought it would be fun to reprise our exchange in a Q&A format which Sean is publishing on the LoopFuse blog.  Here is Part I of our conversation with a little commentary and annotation on my part:

Part 1: Defining the Lead Management Automation Market

Q1. The term Marketing Automation is thrown around internally at companies and in the marketing media, how do you define Marketing Automation?

As part of Forrester’s research team that serves the marketing professional, I agree that the term Marketing Automation is bandied about ambiguously. To help marketers use technology to improve marketing effectiveness and efficiency, Forrester talks about the Marketing Technology Backbone. It’s a term we have used since 2004, defined as, “A technology infrastructure that supports an integrated approach to marketing strategy, development, delivery, and measurement across the marketing mix.” This definition helps to keep marketers focused on the entire discipline of marketing and not just on technology for executing tactics and campaigns. It also includes two important words, integrated and measurement, because I see B2B marketers worry too much about running campaigns and not enough time knitting marketing programs together and connecting the dots between marketing activity and bottomline business results.

Looking at the marketing technology landscape, Forrester sees marketing automation focus on six core applications: 1) campaign management; 2) customer analytics; 3) interaction management; 4) marketing resource management (MRM); 5) marketing asset management (MAM); and 6) lead management (see figure). Lead management plays a key role in the marketing automation space and in our view of what marketers need to put an effective marketing technology backbone in place.

Six Applications Dominate Today's Enterprise Marketing Platform

Q2. From a B2B perspective, when a direct salesforce is involved, what is the difference between Marketing Automation and Lead Management Automation?

In my research, I study and write about lead management automation specifically. My colleague, Suresh Vittal, writes about marketing automation generally. In B2B marketing, where a direct salesforce or channel partners sit in the driver’s seat for winning new deals and retaining existing customers, technology that manages demand is an essential part of the marketing technology backbone. Wikipedia has a solid definition of lead management that I used to develop a working definition in my research. In short, lead management is the tooling and processes that help firms generate new business opportunities, manage volumes of business inquiries, improve potential buyers’ propensity to purchase, and increase alignment between marketing activity and sales results. Increasingly this process is becoming tech-centric, and lead management automation is the technology that helps marketers to manage this process. I would also point out, however, that technology alone is not sufficient and that automating ineffective, immature processes – especially those that lack a tight alignment between marketing and sales measured in the creation of more qualified opportunities and closed sales — will likely cause more problems than it solves.

Q3. Is Lead Management Automation (LMA) a term that is catching on in mainstream business?

I would like to see it catch on more than it has. The 2009 recession, which appears to be experiencing a slow recovery in 2010, forced many firms to concentrate on demand generation as business investment was deferred, delayed, or shrank. The down economy benefited lead management solution providers as marketers invested in LMA technology to get sales pipelines pumping again. Despite this trend, lead management automation is still an emerging industry category. Today, LMA has yet to emerge as a separate, distinct category from Marketing Automation. Based on our estimates, I see market penetration growing from 5% to 10% over the next 18 to 24 months – but there are many marketers out there who have yet to explore the value that lead management automation can bring to their organizations. This can be both a blessing and a burden to firms like Loopfuse who look to grow their share in this emerging space.

Stay tuned for Part II and further editions to this series.

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Sales Enablement Tools: All The Rage In 2009

December 11, 2009 — Laura Ramos

While attending Dreamforce last month, I took a walk around the show floor to see which firms were exhibiting. It wasn’t surprising to see a raft of new companies talking about sales-support additions to the AppExchange family with lead generation and pipeline health hot issues in this economy. I caught up with eTrigue, whom had briefed me October as they ramped up for the announcement of eTrigue SalesPro, still another sales enablement tool.  I have covered eTrigue in the Lead Management Automation market for a couple of years now.  In my market overview, I highlighted how they have a robust, continuous lead scoring and segmentation/list building capability, presented in an easy-to-use interface with a relatively low price. 

eTrigue SalesPro Lead Alert Provides Clean UI and Quick Overview

SalesPro takes this ability and translates it into a sales enablement tool that, unlike some of the competition, presents a fairly detailed view of potential leads that can result when prospects take multiple actions that increase their lead score and qualify them for a sales touch.

Rather than simply capturing Web site visitors, performing a reverse-IP look up, and passing this information onto sales, eTrigue SalesPro puts marketing at the head of this process. Sales and marketing agree on lead qualification and scoring criteria which SalesPro reflects in which alert messages sales reps receive through email. 

The key here: reps don’t get an email everytime a lead visits your Web site, but only when those leads meet a minimum threshold that you determine.  SalesPro presents the scores –  and the reasons behind the scores — along with account and buyer activity in an easy-to-read but information-rich format (see the Figure to check it out). 

Sales reps can quickly scan the information and, if they choose to pursue the lead, click into eTrigue to continue the conversation using email templates that nurture and track the activity. It’s a compact package that, for firms not yet ready to take the full lead management automation plunge, can create more alignment between marketing and sales efforts. 

The sales alerts provide a concise summary of lead potential that can help sales determine which opportunities to pursue while keeping marketing in the loop — an activity, in my mind, that requires some form of automation to achieve successfully, but for which automation alone is never  a complete solution. For firms without sophisticated lead management processes, eTrigue SalesPro can help you get started maturing those processes with an investment that can slide in under the CFO’s radar.

Take a look for yourself and let me know if you’ve used eTrigue, if you find it a low-effort, easy-entry to lead management automation, and how you would compare it to other sales enablement tools.  Feel free to let me know what you think, what I missed, and whether you see things similarly.

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Sharing Lead Management Market Insights with the DemandGen Report

October 16, 2009 — Laura Ramos

Last week, the DemandGen Report published an article that highlighted my Lead Management Automation market overview report. As part of their recap, assistant editor, Amanda Ferrante, asked me a few questions that honed in on aspects of the market that I did not make central to my two main themes, namely: 1) that the market is far from mature and subject to change that represent some risk to B2B marketers and 2) therefore, B2B marketers should pick partners that can help mature their processes, as well as come up with innovation and easy-to-use features.

The interview questions and my answers look at:

1) My projections for future growth, and the shape of the growth curve, in this market.
2) Whether I think lead management automation will achieve popularity/penetration similar to the saleforce automation (SFA) market.
3) When I see consolidation occuring, and what is the likely form that will take.
4) Why lead scoring and profiling features are critical and to what degree these capabilities should influence the solution a company chooses.
5) Best practices I recommend for those adopting lead managment automation.
6) What is the best way to achieve alignment between sales and marketing, and how can LMA help achieve this goal.
7) Factors to prioritize when selecting vendors.

Here is the transcript/text with DemandGen’s questions and my corrresponding answers.  Let me know what you think:

1.The report highlights low adoption rate for lead management solutions (2-5%), do you feel this number will take off in the coming years? What kind of growth curve would you project?

I think the growth curve will rise gradually over the next one or two years until the early adopters of this technology become an early majority, then growth will take off. B2B marketers adopt the technology, but there isn’t a wealth of best practices — for lead scoring, customer profiling, and lead nurturing programs – for them to draw upon, and this holds adoption back more than a lack of technical capability.

The real risk to growth is market consolidation. Right now it seems the vendors are more concerned with taking business away from each other than building a vibrant, social community of B2B lead management professionals who use their technology creatively to boost pipelines and raise marketing’s stature as a major part of the business.

2.Will marketing automation become as prevalent as SFA, where it is really a must have for BtoB firms?

I think lead management automation will become part of a broader marketing automation platform that includes campaign design and execution, budgeting/planning, analytics, demand management, and monitoring/reporting. B2B and B2C will require separate, specific features due to the fundamental differences in how business buyers and consumers purchase.

I don’t know that marketing automation will become as prevalent as SFA until marketing automation providers figure out a way to price their systems based on the value the systems deliver. SFA has the advantage of user-based pricing – the more salespeople you have, the more you pay per person. It’s easy to charge and discount on a user model. Marketing automation doesn’t deliver value on a per user basis, but on a programmatic one. But every marketing program is different – or uses different tactics/approaches – so how do you build repeatability into that kind of model?

3.The report also points to the fact that vendor consolidation in this space is likely as it is currently cluttered with so many different options? When do you see that consolidation starting and how will it ultimately shape the landsape?

I see it starting now. Look at Adobe’s recent acquisition of Ominiture.

I think it’s hard to predict how the landscape will shape up because Forrester’s research shows that marketers want a consolidated, enterprise marketing platform, but one has yet to emerge. Much of marketing automation gets overshadowed by the SFA and CRM/customer support markets. When taken as a whole – enterprise, consumer, field, international, demand generation, branding, product definition, sales support, etc. – marketing is a very broad discipline is very difficult to automate entirely.

4.One of the key areas the report focuses on is around Lead capture, profiling and scoring. Can you expand on why these features are so critical and also if they should influence the solution a company chooses?

You can’t manage demand if you don’t have a way of measuring the impact marketing has on leads and pipeline. Profiling automates your ability to observe changes in buyer behavior and the impact marketing activity has on demand long before sales forecasts these opportunities in the pipeline. Lead scoring adds more precision to decisions about which leads to pursue and which to nurture. Both help marketing understand whether their messaging and programs have the desired effect on the audiences they want to reach and whether this audience is getting engaged in the sales process.

Absolutely should influence the solution a company chooses: these are essential features of lead management automation.

5.The report talks about the importance of dialogue tools that nurture leads that are NOT ready to purchase. As BtoB companies adopt lead nurturing, what are some of the best practices you recommend and again should this consideration influence the solution they adopt?

Nurturing is the most underdeveloped part of lead management. It can take on many forms from simple “stay in touch” campaigns to programs that accelerate buyers through the purchase process based offer response or event triggers.

Knowing your how your target buyers buy, what influences their purchase decisions, and how to build online dialog around the buyers journey are key best practices that few marketers have deep experience or track records of accomplishing successfully.

Again, absolutely should influence the solution a company chooses: these are essential features of lead management automation.

6.One of the ever-present challenges is how to get sales and marketing on the same page. What are some of the best ways to do achieve this alignment and how can some of the existing solutions help achieve this goal?

Start by working on the definition of a qualified lead. If marketing and sales can get on the same page on this subject, the battle is half over. Determining which criteria – and the relative importance of these criteria – are part of building a solid lead scoring model. But this model is very difficult to get correct the first time, so sales and marketing must work together to iterate on the model. This process creates better alignment between marketing and sales because it turns subjective arguments about lead quality into objective measures and factors that sales can critique, and marketing can adjust, without resorting to interdepartmental fighting.

7.Considering the crowded field of solution providers and the resulting confusion among buyers, what are some of the factors to consider when choosing a vendor?

Most B2B marketing buyers see vendors as tool providers only. They don’t see vendors invest in their future success, although I think this is happening as the market matures. Marketers who make it through their second year of lead management automation tell me that getting the right implementation and best practices support from their vendor is key to their success. Relatively speaking, few people know how to really make lead management work well, and getting your marketing team access to your vendor’s top experts should be a major consideration when selecting a technology provider.

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Lead Management Market Overview Published!

September 22, 2009 — Laura Ramos

Lead management automation requires a degree of process maturity many B2B firms don’t possess.  The result? In the market overview report about this market, published today, I found underachievement by vendors and users alike. While the benefits of adopting lead management automation are clear — successful implementations enjoy more predictable deal conversions, faster sales cycles, and real alignment between marketing activity and sales results — market penetration is low. We estimate that only 2% to 5% of B2B firms have invested in full LMA functionality to date. 

It’s not for a lack of capability.  In fact, the current recession makes technical solutions for pumping up the sales pipeline even more attractive. I see software and services vendors from various backgrounds elbowing their way into this space to snatch a share of the demand. As you can see in the figure, complementary technology offerings surround and dwarf the LMA space, and make it difficult for emergent competitors to grow beyond their foothold in departmental or SMB installations when many customers believe they already get LMA features from a current vendor.

Similar-sounding claims can confuse potential B2B buyers.

Similar-sounding claims can confuse potential B2B buyers.

To make lead management efforts succeed, look for capability that strikes a balance between ease of use and proven implementation. Keep these three steps in mind as well:

1) Assess your lead management maturity. Resist the temptation to buy technology first. Instead, map out current lead management processes and assess gaps. Assessing and documenting current lead management processes let marketers focus on the capabilities needed and avoid being overwhelmed by demo’ed features.

2) Create a marketing technology strategy. Lead management affects both marketing and sales. Create an automation blueprint that accounts for the business, process, organizational, and technology changes needed to deliver better-qualified demand to sales and close the loop between marketing campaigns and sales wins.

3) Prioritize expertise over usability and simplicity. While speedy implementation and attractive user interfaces are important, select automation technology that will evolve your best practices over time. Pick solutions backed by proven vendor expertise, a vibrant community of marketing peers, and demonstrated know-how. Expertise, not features, helps you to solve complex issues related to campaign execution, results diagnosis, and audience segmentation.

Stay tuned for more on this market overview in later blog posts…

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Lead Management Automation: Market Overview In The Works

September 11, 2009 — Laura Ramos

With economic recovery still distant, business marketers look to 2010 and wonder what’s in store. How do you do more with less resources is a common question I hear from CMOs, VPs of Marketing, and marketing directors with whom I speak daily. Modern marketing can not scale effectively without automation. And while it is not the cure-all to every problem, automation can help tune the marketing mix, scale online and social efforts, deliver better returns on campaign investment, put more qualified leads in front of sales, and create a direct, visible connection between marketing programs and business impact.

When it comes to marketing automation, B2B marketers need technology specifically geared around capturing demand and qualifying it for sales attention. However, picking the solution best positioned to deliver on lead management automation’s promise of stronger pipelines and more predictable marketing results frustrates B2B marketers at large and small firms alike. Frankly, the market is awash with competitors and claims. The 800-pound gorillas lack track records with current feature sets and many of the smaller players, with the exception of Eloqua, have yet to top the $25 million dollar mark in annual revenues.

To help B2B marketers sort out the space, I am soon publishing a report reviewing the B2B lead management automation market. While the report mentions almost 50 different companies, I lined up 18 of the most promising technology providers and compared capabilities. Included specifically in the report are Aprimo, Eloqua, eTrigue, Genius.com, HubSpot, LeadLife Solutions, Leads360, Loopfuse, Manticore Technology, Market2Lead, MarketBright, Marketo, Neolane, Pardot, salesforce.com, Silverpop, Sitecore, and Unica.  I also talk a lot about where the market is going and what holds it back.

During the next few weeks, I plan to use this blog to share some of the findings and ideas that hit the cutting room floor. And to open a dialog with you, the suppliers, and anyone else who wants to talk about how to make this technology work and how to keep the market thriving.  I know as soon as I publish this post, I know I’ll start to get comments about why this list and why were others left off. The answer is simple: this is a start.

The report looks at overall trends and issues in the evolving lead management automation space; it does not provide an in-depth comparison of all the possible providers. To rate inclusion in the “Harvey ball” comparison table, I required vendors to demonstrate market tenure and penetration.  We looked at firms with over 50 customer accounts by August 1, 2009, more than five competitive mentions (in a recent survey), products successfully sold for 12 months or longer, and product offerings that met the majority of our criteria, which includes a full complement of lead scoring/qualification, nurturing, routing/sales force enablement, and reporting capability. If a firm didn’t meet all these criteria, they were left out of what I am sure will become “infamous” Figure 5. All vendors reviewed received an advanced copy of the report and the opportunity to comment. Which some did.  Extensively.

As the publication date draws nearer (in the next couple of weeks or so) I’ll blog more about the results.  In the meantime, feel free to weigh in and let me know what you think of the list and the market. If you are considering a lead management automation investment, who would you include and why?  While the report is “in the can” so to speak, blog posts are easy to write and I’m happy to take on any questions (or vendors!) in the space.

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New Sales Tools Increase Alignment Between Sales and Marketing

June 15, 2009 — Laura Ramos

The lead management automation vendors have been busy. In March, Genius announced Genius Enterprise and broadened their scope from sales enablement to lead management. Late in May, Eloqua introduced Prospect Profiler, a graphical, one-stop interface that tracks a prospect’s digital footprints and summarizes buyer activity. Next, Silverpop’s EngageB2B team unveiled a new graphical campaign design and management tool to the market and, on June 9, Marketo launched Sales Insight, a 100% Force.com application that lets sales reps see and interact with the “hottest” leads in their queue, a product they made generally available at the end of May. It’s interesting, and not coincidental, that 3 of the 4 announcements target sales reps as the primary user and demonstrate growing demand for technology helps marketers align with sales activity.

At first, I thought tools that let sales see information about prospect activity – like tracking when potential buyers visit a Web site and what they look at – amounted to no more than fancy cold-calling tools. Just because someone opens an email or visits a Web page doesn’t mean they want to get phone call from a sales person minutes later. It feels a bit intrusive and creepy. But the Eloqua and Marketo announcements are changing my mind by showing that access to prospect information, done right, helps sales understand how buyers buy and makes the sales process more efficient.

Sales Insight Helps Sales Zero In on Hot Leads

Sales Insight Helps Sales Zero In on Hot Leads

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What I like most about the Eloqua and Marketo offerings is both put marketing’s lead generation hard work in front of sales in a succinct and digestible manner. Both make it easier for sales to decide how to pursue leads and how to pick up the conversation marketing starts. Of course, the devil is in the details when it comes to determining which tool will best fit your firm’s specific demand management needs. Here are the pros and cons of these sales enablement tools that jump out at me:

1) Integrating with the SFA system. Like it or not, reps prefer the phone or in-person meetings. When online, they spend time almost exclusively in email and the SFA system using either through an iPhone or Blackberry interface. Getting them to open another tool, can be like pulling teeth without an anesthetic. Kudos goes to Marketo for seamlessly integrating with Salesforce. While sales can open Prospect Profiler inside of Salesforce, the action looks like opening another app and Eloqua will have to work to convince reps to take that extra step. Of course, the nod goes to Eloqua if you are not a Salesforce user because their tool can run standalone like the Genius Tracker. But the task of getting reps to open it still remains.

2) Delivering information versus data. Reps want to know “Who should I call first? Who should I call now?” While the Eloqua tool does a great job of summarizing a broader range of customer activity by category – how many emails have prospects opened, what have they searched on, etc. – it doesn’t highlight which leads are “hot” or “qualified” with the simplicity that the Marketo tool does. However, getting reps to agree on marketing’s definition of hot and qualified is the challenge Marketo faces – because if sales disagrees with the label Sales Insight applies, they won’t trust the tool’s suggestions in the future. To counter this, Marketo’s tool lets reps, with one click, send feedback to marketing and close the scoring loop. How quickly marketing responds to this feedback and zeros in on regional or territorial differences will determine how effective the stars and flames become.

3) Investigating anonymous visitors: Integrating with reverse IP lookup tools is a hot topic today. From a pure marketing perspective, this feature is not one I would put at the top of my list. Letting reps check out anonymous Web traffic seems like shortcutting the lead development process. Sales management says “have an account plan and execute against it.” Marketing says, “here are well-qualified leads you should pursue, and here’s why.” I just don’t see how chasing anonymous Web traffic helps reps take care of these two mandates.

Yes, I know reps are expected to develop their territories and that looking for clues about buyer intent in Web traffic is less expensive, and (today) more productive, than cold calling or buying lists. But I also believe that marketing is the best way to develop new business and that sales should focus more on mining existing accounts, where relatively more expensive sales prospecting activity can be put to use building relationships. I find Marketo’s featured integration with Jigsaw, Demandbase, and LinkedIn a nice-to-have. To keep it from becoming an annoyance, I recommend using it in a telesales or lead development function as one tool in a kit used to qualify and build dialogue before turning prospects over to direct sales. (Happy to hear if you see it differently.)

4) Notifying versus overloading. I like Marketo’s Interesting Moments feature because it keeps sales and marketing focused on “moments of truth” – events that influence prospects’ propensity to buy. The language here is simple and understandable. And marketing can adjust it to make the descriptions even more relevant. However both firms need to avoid crossing the line between providing useful information and causing information overload. Optionally sending email notifications and Web visit alerts to reps is the right approach. The next step should be to automatically create a report that summarizes how many reps use these features and how many have turned them off and send it to marketing.

5) Understanding the Buyer’s Journey better. As any rep can tell marketing, not two deals close the same. Learning how buyers buy is a huge challenge in B2B made more complex by the myriad of digital channels that buyers now use. That’s why I like Eloqua’s profile feature that summarizes inbound and outbound activity over time. This helps marketing see to which communication a customer best responds and sales see if the prospects digital body language is showing an increase in interest over time or just the random activity of someone not fully engaged.

To determine whether one of these tools is right for you, look at which one will do a better job of answering the “so what?” question from your sales team’s perspective. And, let’s face it, that’s a key question to answer because sales always want to know “what have you done for me lately?”

So what do you think? I’m happy to hear your thoughts on which product you’d pick and whether these features are essential when investing in automation for B2B marketing.

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