Summary: LoopFuse offers attractive but limited demand generation functions at an easy-to-swallow price.It’s been nearly a year since I took my first close look at the LoopFuse OneView demand generation system. I didn't write about them because the vendor was planning some major improvements and it made more sense to publish a review after these in place. We reconnected in December and the product is now ready for its close up.The resulting picture is much prettier than before because the main changes in LoopFuse have been improvements in the user...
Tuesday, 29 December 2009
Monday, 14 December 2009
Spredfast Offers Systematic Management for Social Media Campaigns
Posted on 17:05 by Unknown
Summary: Social Agency’s Spredfast helps marketers schedule social media campaigns the same way they schedule paid advertising. Cool.It seems like common courtesy to listen to an existing conversation before jumping in with a comment. If social media worked the same way, companies would first buy a monitoring system to track what’s being said, followed by tools to respond to comments made by others. Only later would they initiate conversations and, eventually, provide tools to help their friends spread the word.Silly me. I should have known...
Wednesday, 18 November 2009
My List of Demand Generation Vendors and Their Target Customers
Posted on 11:16 by Unknown
[Note: I update this post periodically to keep the information reasonably current.]Summary: Demand generation features often sound similar, but the different vendors do aim at different types of clients. If you're looking for a system, try to find a vendor who will match your company.One of the audience members at the B2B Marketing University in Boston asked about demand generation systems for small businesses, and how to distinguish among the vendors in general. My brief answer was that the biggest difference was less functionality than the target...
Sunday, 15 November 2009
Aberdeen Predicts Web Content Systems Will Add Marketing Automation: I Agree, But...
Posted on 19:17 by Unknown
Summary: a new Aberdeen Group report argues that Web content management systems should add customer management features and will ultimately compete with traditional marketing automation products. I agree with one reservation: I doubt large companies will use a single system to manage all customer touchpoints.I’ve been convinced for some time that Web content management systems (CMS) will become important platforms for marketing automation. The logic is that Web sites are increasingly the primary method of interaction between a company and its...
Friday, 6 November 2009
B2B Marketing University Part 2: Marketing Content Has to Work Harder
Posted on 08:42 by Unknown
Summary: As marketers add more content to meet needs throughout the purchase cycle, they must work harder to ensure prospects actually read it.One of the emergent themes at Tuesday’s session of the B2B Marketing University was the growing importance of marketing “content”. The general logic was that marketers increasingly interact with prospects throughout different stages of the sales cycle, and each stage needs different materials. The materials also need to be tailored to different types of buyers – or “personas” if you want to get fancy – so...
Thursday, 5 November 2009
B2B Marketing University: For Now, Marketing Automation and CRM Are Still Separate
Posted on 12:43 by Unknown
Summary: Marketing automation and CRM systems may eventually converge, but for now marketers need help explaining why they need a system of their own.I hugely enjoyed yesterday’s Boston session of the Silverpop-sponsored B2B Marketing University. (You can catch another session in Atlanta next week and in Seattle on December 1.) I won’t try to recap four hours of insights from Adam Needles from Silverpop, Carlos Hidalgo of Annuitas Group and Joe Moloney of Conselltants (no Web site, it seems), as well as Yours Truly. But there were a couple of topics...
Monday, 26 October 2009
Survey Suggests Marketers Are Moving from Paid to Social Media
Posted on 11:08 by Unknown
Summary: a new survey suggests that marketers are less focused on lead generation than on final sales, growing current customers and building online communities. I’m not sure I trust the data, but it’s a pretty picture nevertheless.I don’t know quite what to make of the 2009 Survey on Marketing, Media and Measurement released earlier this month by custom content company King Fish Media.- On one hand, it’s a rare opportunity to see data from business, rather than consumer, marketers. (Of the 230 respondents, 52% were pure B2B and another 36%...
Thursday, 22 October 2009
SalesFusion Combines Online and Offline Marketing with CRM
Posted on 09:42 by Unknown
Summary: SalesFusion combines all channels within marketing, and merges marketing automation with CRM as well. This one-stop-shopping will be most attractive to small and mid-size companies, although I expect that larger firms will eventually want it too.Look, I know online marketing is important. But let’s not forget that offline channels still account for nearly 90% of total advertising expenditures. Business marketers probably spend more online, but, once you add in the cost of salespeople, I’d guess that online spending still accounts for...
Monday, 12 October 2009
5 Steps to Marketing Measurement Maturity
Posted on 06:52 by Unknown
Summary: marketing performance measurement can start with simple response tracking, and grow in stages to show business impact, track the buying process, optimize results and demonstrate strategic alignment. Each stage adds new data, systems, measures and processes.I’ll be talking about marketing measurement this Tuesday at Silverpop’s B2B Marketing University seminar in Palo Alto, with a repeat performance in Boston on November 4. The core of my presentation will be a 5-step measurement maturity model for B2B marketers. This post will give...
Saturday, 10 October 2009
Beautiful BABI: SiSense PrismCubed Offers Business Intelligence for Business Analysts
Posted on 13:08 by Unknown
Summary: SiSense PrismCubed offers a reasonable option for a business-analyst business intelligence system. It’s probably a little harder to use than some competitors, but gives a bit more power and flexibility in return.SiSense PrismCubed, officially launched this past August, is another member of the growing set of business intelligence systems aimed at empowering business analysts to build their own applications. I’ve also written about QlikView and Lyza, and think there are others. What distinguishes these tools from other business intelligence...
Friday, 9 October 2009
Survey Looks for Hostility to Behavioral Targeting, and Finds It
Posted on 07:55 by Unknown
Summary: a new survey found that most Americans oppose behavior-based Web targeting. The authors clearly had an agenda, but the industry still needs to present its side of the story. A recent survey conducted by professors by UC/Berkeley and University of Pennsylvania concluded (to quote its full title) that “Contrary to what marketers say, Americans Reject Tailored Advertising and Three Activities That Enable It.” Is it just me, or do I detect a bit of hostility?The headlined finding of the survey was that 66% of respondents said they did not...
Tuesday, 29 September 2009
More Surveys Agree: Web and Non-Web Data Must Be Integrated
Posted on 15:26 by Unknown
It’s not that I’m obsessive, but just to gnaw a bit more on last week’s bone about the coming unification of Web and other marketing data...- a recent survey sponsored by enterprise marketing automation vendor Unica found that “integration with other marketing solutions” was the most commonly cited web analytics challenge (46%). This was followed by “verifying accuracy of data (inflation/deflation)” (41%) and “not comprehensive/missing types of data” (32%). It’s interesting that the question was about Web analytics in particular – even analyzing...
Wednesday, 23 September 2009
Web Analytics Is Dead. So Is Customer Centricity. I Need a Drink.
Posted on 20:13 by Unknown
Summary: Web analytics is merging into the broad world of marketing measurement across all media, which itself is shifting focus from tracking individuals to understanding group behavior. Although Web analytics and marketing automation vendors are currently wrestling over who will house customer data, both are likely to lose custody to enterprises who want to control their data for themselves.Even as analysts are still sorting through the implications of last week’s acquisition of Omniture by Adobe, the industry saw two additional important announcements...
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