Raab Report: B2B Marketing Automation Revenues to Hit $525 Million in 2012

I’ve just released the latest edition of my B2B Marketing Automation Vendor Selection Tool (VEST), which contains detailed analysis of all 22 B2B marketing automation systems. Serious marketing of the new edition is yet to begin, but anyone considering purchase of a marketing automation system can buy the VEST now at the www.raabguide.com Web site.The new report contains a rich trove of industry information. The one item that people usually find...

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The Marketing Funnel Is Dead. Let's Have Dessert.

Last week’s post on lead scoring attracted more positive attention than I expected. This was doubly surprising because first, I didn’t think lead scoring was such a hot topic and second, I don’t really agree with the approaches I described.To clarify that second point, I’m not saying what I wrote was wrong or insincere. Rather, I consider it an accurate description of an approach I find problematic. The approach was using lead scoring as a way to define lead stages. My problem is the concept of lead stages themselves.This verges on heresy,...

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3 Ways to Use Lead Scoring Within Your Marketing Automation Programs

I wrote last week about the difficulty of linking marketing leads to sales results. One reason the topic was on my mind is I’m also thinking a lot these days about lead scoring. The practical use of lead scoring is to decide which leads to pass from marketing automation to sales, or, even more pragmatically, to predict which leads will be accepted by sales.* But the ultimate goal is to identify the leads most likely to generate revenue. Building an accurate scoring model therefore requires an accurate view of how leads and revenue are connected.For...

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