CRM integration is a fundamental feature of marketing automation. Pretty much every system can send leads to Salesforce.com, but capabilities vary significantly once you start looking for more. Sadly, most marketers pay little attention to these nuances until they've already selected a product. Then they learn they hard way what they should have asked.In hopes of avoiding these mistakes, Raab Associates has just published a workbook on assessing integration capabilities before you buy. The workbook lays out the types...
Wednesday, 30 November 2011
Saturday, 19 November 2011
It’s time to wrap up this series of posts on marketing automation vendor selection, which were based on my November 10 Webinar with Neolane (replay available here). I’ve summarized them in three commandments.Forget the Past. Marketers have been doing such a bad job of selecting systems that they should forget their old approach and start from scratch. I described the old methods in the first two posts of the series, The Seven Deadly...
Friday, 18 November 2011
As I wrote yesterday, no one knows exactly what we’ll want from our marketing automation systems in the future. But it's still worth taking a guess at what looks likely. Here are some trends I expect will be important.Social Media. The first wave of marketing automation features for social media is now several years old. These included making it easier to share emails and Web pages, tracking shares through embedded URLs, and monitoring...
Thursday, 17 November 2011
Marketers can do a better job of picking their marketing automation vendors if they roll up their sleeves and try. I wrote yesterday about building a requirements document to define the features you'll look for. But you also need a company that supports your long-term success. Here's how to identify a “future-safe” vendor.Past innovations: a history of advanced thinking shows the vendor understands marketers’ needs and suggests they'll...
Wednesday, 16 November 2011
My last two posts (not counting this morning’s detour into Marketo-land) described common errors marketers make when selecting marketing automation systems. How did we come to this?I see two reasons:Marketers are like everybody else. Remember all that yammering about how today’s buyers do their own research, don’t talk to sales until late in the process, and get their information from social media rather than experts? Today’s marketers buy that...
Marketo this morning announced a new $50 million funding round, almost exactly one year to the day after raising $25 million in November 2010. In accompanying commentary, the company also revealed its 2010 revenue was $14 million, that it expects 140% revenue growth in 2011 (meaning about $34 million), and that it has about $70 million remaining of its total $107 million raised to date.All this new information begs for an update of the analysis...
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
I presented my Seven Deadly Sins of Marketing Automation Software Selection during last week’s Webinar with Neolane. (To replay the Webinar, click here.) If you’re wondering how many companies actually commit those sins, the sad answer is: a lot. Here are some statistics. About half of buyers consider only one system, I’m told by various vendors. Some may have known exactly what they needed in advance, but most are just buying the first...
Monday, 7 November 2011
I’ll be giving a Webinar this Thursday on evaluating marketing automation software, sponsored by Neolane. Part of the content will be a list of Seven Deadly Sins of Marketing System Selection. I thought that was worth a blog post of its own. So here goes.1. Ignoring Users. Selection teams often don’t take the the time to understand how future users of the system do their jobs today. The justification may be that everything will change anyway,...
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