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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Making Your B2B Marketing Work — Better!

September 1, 2009 — Laura Ramos

A worldwide recession and social media have swept up B2B marketers in a perfect storm, tossed between tighter budgets and the demand to do more online without guideposts or established benefits. Opportunities and challenges abound for marketers targeting other businesses through a direct sales force or channel partners. Before 2010 planning — and the push to pump up the pipeline to make year-end revenue goals — hit full stride, now is an excellent time to step outside your daily routine, tune up B2B marketing strategy, and learn new best practices.

Sound intriguing? If so, have I got a deal for you!  (Oh, c’mon, you suspected a pitch was coming, now didn’t you?)

On September 17, 2009 (Thursday) I am leading a full-day workshop in Cambridge, MA on “Making B2B Marketing Work”. This workshop brings B2B marketing peers together to explore and discuss how marketing has changed in light of the digital/social media shift and the pressures imposed by the current economy. It will help you think through a number of issues — how to stretch budget dollars by better integrating digital and physical tactics, tap into social media, drive healthier pipelines, target and qualify your best customers, and create a marketing technology infrastructure that increases efficiency through automation – just to name a few of the top takeaways. You will also gain hands-on experience assessing your integrated marketing accumen and lead management maturity while hearing “tricks of the trade” from our expert panel (who join us at the end of the day.)

You may want to check out Forrester’s site for further workshop details if you need answers to the following questions:

  • How do I optimize my marketing mix in 2010?
  • What are the best practices for generating, and managing, demand?
  • How do I better integrate digital and social media into my campaigns?
  • How do I improve marketing’s working relationship with sales?
  • How do I make my Web site generate better leads?
  • What are the best social media tactics to use?
  • What technology investments should I make in 2010?

In my rather “un-humble” opinion, I’ve found participants feel that the two best features of this workshop are:

1) Networking and interpersonal interaction. The workshop is intimate (typically between 7 adn 15 participants) which gives you the opportunity to spend time with peers (and the analyst, of course!) talking about what matters to you and how you have been making B2B marketing work. Participants from Tech and non-Tech industries share experiences and learn from each others’ successes and mistakes.

2) Talking with the panel of experts.  Plan to stick around to enjoy the wine/cheese reception for further networking and to meet with our expert panel. I’m gathering the invitees now, but past participants included experts in search marketing, community development, demand generation, and marketing automation. The discussion is lively and really gets to the heart of “what should you do in practice to make B2B marketing work?”

Will you join me?  Hope to see you there!

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Change Management: The Key to Successful Marketing Process

August 27, 2009 — Laura Ramos

Digital marketing is a double-edged sword for B2B marketers making it a bigger part of their marketing mix. On the one side, digital is more targetable, addressable, and measurable than traditional channels like advertising, promotions, and tradeshows. Online, marketing now has more data to help them “know” more about prospects and buyers. On the other hand, the options available in the marketing mix have exploded and executives want to hold marketing more accountable for program results and campaign spend. Given these turbulent times, marketing challenges increase exponentially and marketing automation moves from a “nice to have” to “essential” investment. But technology implemented without a clear understanding of process typically gets many marketers into hot water. Face it, many of us have tremendous experience running campaigns and programs, but little experience with the change management needed to move process from ad hoc to repeatable and disciplined.

The August quarterly MOCCA meeting looked a little closer at the marketing operations community experience implementing process. Brenda Kring, Director of Demand Generation for CyberSource (who hosted the meeting) and Membership and Content Chair for the MOCCA steering committee, presented the results from the July association survey on marketing process. The audience then listened to a panel share their stories on how change management impacts processes, automation, applications and people and talk about the specific challenges each experienced rolling out automation. The conversation and questions reinforced for me how minor a role technology selection plays in operationalizing marketing and how automating poor process only results in long term problems.

Here are a few of the findings from the survey that stood out:

1) Process is important, but not approached in a systematic way. Of the 36 members who responded, 2/3 said they only apply process rigorously in a few key areas. Just 6% said they had a “very process-oriented culture” where they worked. Of those who implemented process, 2/3 said they did not use a formal methodology or defined their own as they went along.

2) Top management must push change. 44% of respondents said the key factor that led to a successful implementation top executives drive change from the top. 30% said getting stakeholder buy-in was essential. This underlines how people is the essential ingredient in change management, and marketing is no exception to this rule.

3) Marketing operations wants more accountability in process change. Almost 80% of respondents said their experience with process change was neutral or unsuccessful. Integrating accountability – making sure folks adhere to the new process or changed state – was the change 29% of respondents said they would make in retrospect. (This would also relieve executive management from spending times getting the troops lined up and marching in the right direction.)

(A few statistics about this group of respondents:  72% hail from the tech industry, 61% are in firms over 1000 employees, and 53% work at companies that earned $1 billion or more in revenue — so a very interesting sampling, especially to my research.)

If you’d like to see more information about the survey, check out the MOCCA and look up the Q3 meeting. I’d be interested to hear what you think are the top issues that keep marketers from implementing process successfully. What do you think achieves – or holds back – success in marketing process automation and change management?

(Disclosure: I back-dated this post to correspond closer to the timing of the meeting.  Sorry folks, just so much to do!)

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Eloqua Removes Start Up Barriers In Race To Capture Customers

May 12, 2009 — Laura Ramos

Yesterday, Eloqua announced a free implementation service. Clicking on the link to their services, however, may create a bit of confusion. The page describes four offerings: QuickStart, SmartStart, Advanced Implementations, and Global Solutions, but it doesn’t mention this “free” service.  So I called up Eloqua and asked “what gives?”  After chatting with Paul Teshima, Eloqua’s Senior Vice President of Customer Strategy and Success, the clouds parted.  Here are two details that may help clear things up for you as well:

1) Instead of “Eloqua Launches a Free Implementation Service,” the press release should have said, “Eloqua announces that our QuickStart services package is now free to new customers.”  My wording is not as newsworthy or eye-catching, but it gets the point across.

2) The services Web page should mention that QuickStart is now free.  The page should also say whether it is “free” for a limited time or forever. But something on the page should have changed to indicate QuickStart comes along with the subscription.

The main difference between QuickStart and SmartStart is that service partners perform QuickStart remotely and quickly, while they conduct SmartStart onsite and deliver more assessment, strategy, and planning for the money. If you need any of the following capabilities, you should pay for the SmartStart implementation instead of going with just the free offering:

  1. Email marketing customization. QuickStart provides a basic template and configuration, but if you want custom branding, formatting, and help setting up email assets, folder management, and segmentation, upgrade to SmartStart.
  2. Integration of an existing online Web form with Eloqua.
  3. Anything beyond basic integration of up to 30 fields with a supported SFA/CRM system.
  4. Any sort of in-depth training, strategy setting, or implementation of Lead Scoring or Lead Nurturing. This is key, by the way, for maximizing value from the investment.
  5. An assessment of your marketing practices with an eye toward how the lead management automation will help you to streamline and optimize campaign execution and closing the loop with sales.

Eloqua is making it easier and less costly to set up their product. This will help them overcome objections from buyers who look at competitors like Marketo and say, “they offered me a free set up service if I buy from them.”

But here’s the bigger picture: the press release looks defensive amid the land-grab happening in the Lead Management Automation space. With new competitors showing up daily – Genius Enterprise being one of the latest offerings to enter the ring – incumbents like Eloqua look for ways to lure new marketers into trying their service and balance on the thin like between demonstrating value and giving it away for free.

With a vast number of companies offering high-consideration products through a direct sales force, one would think the opportunity to sell automation to marketers in those firms would be limitless. Yet vendors fight it out on a daily basis, rather than work to expand the boundaries of the opportunity.

I’m going to look further into the dynamics of this market in research to be published this summer. If you have thoughts on the following questions, feel free to comment on this post:

  • Why is the lead management automation market so slow to take off?  Or why is the competition so fierce when the opportunity seems large?
  • What holds marketers back from investing in lead management automation? What’s soft about the value proposition here?
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B2B Email Worst Practices: Assuming Opt-In or Requiring Opt-Out

March 17, 2009 — Laura Ramos

Last fall I met Rebekah “Red” Donaldson, founder of Business Communications Group, LLC, a Sacramento-based marketing consulting firm specializing in B2B. Red’s a seasoned marketing practitioner so I invited her to join me on a Forrester teleconference last October where we talked about the factors threatening B2B marketing with obsolescence and the steps marketers should take to avoid this fate. More recently, we were chatting about email practices when Red pointed me to a recent post that generated a lot of commentary sparked by an email from lead management automation vendor, Marketo, that presumed opt-in on Red’s part.

Given the current economy, I see how marketers feel extra pressure to create new sales pipeline and may aggressively pursue email as a lead generation option. Email is the channel of choice among lead management automators who regularly promote nurturing programs to engage prospects and turn “warm” respondents into “hot” leads.  Two things bothered me about the Marketo email:  it sounded like it came from sales (not marketing) and it did very little to engender trust or build relationship.

I asked resident email guru, analyst Julie Katz, about best practices and she replied emphatically, “Use opt-in”. She told me many B2B marketers she interviews and surveys lean on opt-out. Yet marketers get a stronger list of prospects who are truly interested in receiving more information when you use opt-in.  In Julie’s research, “Break Free From Bad Email“, she advises marketers to take a longer term perspective and adopt a more intentional approach to email, that Julie defines as “A holistic email marketing strategy aimed at increasing the long-term return from email subscribers.”  She offers sage advice that I paraphrase for B2B marketers to follow:

1) Make customer value your primary email metric. When balancing user needs with business goals, email programs can increase customer value by deepening subscriber engagement. However, most marketers obsess over opens and clicks instead of building relationships. Instead, use traditional database marketing to mine customer data and build lifetime value (LTV) models to better understand the impact email has on building trust and relationships. 

2) Integrate email with other channels. Coordinating email with traditional and digital channels is worth the headache. Merge email, Web analytics, and sales pipeline data to increase conversion. Jump-start integration efforts by setting up data feeds between system marketing/sales databases  and your email system that contain only the modest number of data points needed to build basic email conversations.

3) Map out a long-term customer contact strategy. Instead of using email to wheedle out a standalone purchase, B2B marketers should take a long-term view toward how email marketing can nurture a customer. This starts with replacing ad hoc email campaigns with conversations — series of messages that work collectively to graduate a customer through different stages of the purchase process from awareness to consideration.  Email conversations should be forward-looking and deepen a customer’s relationship over time, not just try to get them to buy this quarter.

I believe inbound marketing is an essential discipline today that many marketers should improve. Email is the best way to continue conversations with those prospects who come looking for you. If you’d like more information about email best practices, check out Julie’s research or consider attending Forrester’s email best practices workshop coming up in May.

I would also welcome pointers from you about email best practices you use or links to email advice you’ve found particularly helpful.

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Working On A Webinar With DemandBase

February 1, 2009 — Laura Ramos

At the end of this month, Demandbase CEO, Chris Golec, invited me to join him on a Webinar to talk about best practices in creating and managing demand. Marketing and sales professionals are typically asked to do more with less, and the current economy makes matters worse. With budgets shrinking and expectations growing, it is important to hone demand management practices to keep potential prospects engaged in marketing-driven conversations.  Yep, there’s that lead management theme again.  Get used it; you’ll read about it a lot in this blog.

I find what Demandbase offers intriguing. I’ve talked about them before:

Demandbase: A New Twist In the Lead Management Automation Market — 8/26/08

In a recent survey of over 2100 IT professionals who buy or recommend telecom and networking solutions, we found buyers turn to peers and colleagues first, followed by vendor, industry trade, or professional Web sites, to inform their purchase decisions. In fact, 88% said Web sites were important in helping them decide what to buy. However, many tech buyers visit vendor Web sites many times to learn about and compare products, yet few register or leave evidence of their activity.

B2B marketers looking for ways to turn their Web sites into demand generation tools have some new solutions to consider.  Yesterday, Demandbase announced a new software suite to help marketers harvest passive traffic visiting Web sites. As part of a broader lead generation, on-demand platform, Demandbase offers a free, downloadable Web application built on Adobe AIR (one of 3 investors in an $8M round they also announced.) Demand Stream™ includes a Web widget that shows sales and marketing the names of companies visiting the Web site in near real-time.  Users can query this widget to find out more about these visitors and decide if they want to purchase full business contact information. I think the idea of an iTunes™ -like interface — and pay-as-you-go pricing structure — for viewing, sorting, and selecting B2B contacts is intriguing.  I worry that this tool only ends up helping sales pick out cold calls to make, and is not used by marketers enough to segment, collect, and improve their prospecting databases. The technology appears useful at both ends of this spectrum.

The lead management automation market, about which I blogged previously, continues to attract new players at a rapid rate. The main problems targeted are keeping the pipeline full of marketing-qualified leads and automating the process of nurturing demand not yet ready to buy.  One side of the supply helps firms generate demand — acquire leads in a sales-led “push” model, one that feels more focused on outbound communication. I would put Demandbase here along with firms like Active Conversion, Hubspot, iHance, Leadlander, Sales Genius, and Zoominfo. (I’m sure I forgot a few. Feel free to chime in if I did. Or disagree with the list…) 

On the other side, I see solutions more oriented toward marketing and enabling a “pull” model, one focused on letting prospects engage at their own pace.  I would put the lead management automation crop here: Eloqua, Loopfuse, Manticore Technologies, Market2Lead, Marketo, and Vtrenz.  I would also put another group — one more focused on helping marketing align with, support, and enable sales: firms like BrightMarket, einsof, Longwood Software, and Salesforce.com with their Saleforce Content offering, to name a few. 

When evaluating any technology to help manage demand, the short list of features should look something like:

1) Prospect data acquisition — helps with targeting, list building, list management, and data quality. Starting to see providers team up with data aggregators (Jigsaw’s name comes up here) to provide new sources of business contacts. Reverse IP look up appears to be the new thing here.

2) Online lead generation — provides or connects with email delivery, online advertising, search marketing adword tools, landing pages, registration/information capture, and offer testing. Among other stuff.

3) Online activity analytics — rather than examine overall site traffic and usage patterns like Omniture and WebTrends, these tools focus more on tracking what one individual or opportunity is doing.  Analytics include Web site visits, return visits, email opens, and click-throughs with an emphasis on letting marketing, insides sales, or account managers know when these activities happen.

4) Lead scoring — in a prior post, I make the case for quantitative scoring. And for including explicit (words) and implicit (deeds) information in the algorithm. I believe this is a key capability.

5) Routing/reporting — automation to help close the loop with sales and give marketing visibility into the sales pipeline. Must include some sort of dashboard for everyone to access internally.

6) SFA integration — ditto the above. Synchronizing prospect and opportunity databases is key. The data has to flow back and forth and not dirty up the pipeline with raw leads.

7) Lead nurturing —  automates follow up communication, is drip or event-triggered, and allows marketing to educate, persuade, and accelerate buyers as they move through the purchase process to the point where they become “sales ready.”

For those needing more capabilities to help with sales enablement or account-based communication, I would add:

8 ) Sales/marketing portal or workspace — includes account spaces/threaded discussions, sales call/activity prep, libraries for marketing content, task lists.

9) Collaboration — capabilities like wikis, sales-contributed content, voting and tagging.  Just makes it easier to manage all the stuff. Social networking stuff fits here too.

10) eLearning — checklists, directed sales tools, self-serve courses, quizzes, certifications, etc.  Stuff to help sales management get the new guys/gals up to speed.

Ok, that’s enough for now. I’m sure this post will generate its fair share of comments, outrage, and controversy. All thoughts are welcome!  I’m gearing up to write a market overview about this space, so hearing from you early in the process will help to shape that research.

———–

The Webinar called “Best Practices in B2B Marketing : Creating and Managing Demand will be held on February 25 at 9 am Pacific, noon Eastern.

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