HubSpot's Latest Marketing Software Sends the Right Message

Poor targetingHubSpot yesterday launched a “completely re-envisioned and rebuilt” version of its marketing system at its Inbound 2012 user conference. The main thrust of the new release was dynamic customization of emails, landing pages, and forms based on each contact’s profile and behaviors. This is a major expansion beyond HubSpot’s original focus on “inbound marketing” to attract leads.Specific changes include:- a new contact database that...

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Raab Report: Act-On, Eloqua, Pardot, and Marketo Vie to Lead in Mid-Size B2B Marketing Automation Segment

Today I’ll present the third and (mercifully?) final installment in my series of posts on leaders in the different B2B marketing automation sectors, as determined by the ratings in our VEST report. I’ve saved the best for last, in the sense that the small to mid-size sector is the heart of the industry and its most complicated arena.We define small to mid-size business as companies with $5 million to $500 million revenue. This covers a broad range...

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Raab Report: Neolane, Aprimo, and Eloqua Rate Highest for Large Company B2B Marketing Automation

Tuesday’s post looked at the micro-business sector leaders according to our VEST report and gave a bit of background on how the ratings are created.  Today let's take a look at the same diagram for large businesses, which we define as companies with $500 million revenue or more. These companies have large marketing departments that may manage hundreds of campaigns for different products in different locations. Our scoring reflects their need...

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Raab Report: OfficeAutoPilot, Infusionsoft and HubSpot Rate Highest in Marketing Automation for Very Small Business

One of the most important features of our VEST report on B2B marketing automation systems is that it divides marketing automation users into distinct segments, each having a different set of needs. This matters because the systems all do roughly the same things, making it hard for inexperienced buyers to tell them apart. Many vendors – especially those who target the middle sector – also try to serve all types of companies, adding to the confusion....

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Raab Report: B2B Marketing Automation Vendors Are Making Incremental, Not Radical, Changes To Their Products

One of my favorite parts about putting out a new edition of the VEST report is I get to dive into a pile of new data about industry trends. Think Scrooge McDuck and his pool filled with gold coins.Indeed, with 208 data points on 22 vendors, there’s so much data that it’s a challenge to make sense of it. The approach I settled on this time is to compare the average score of each item against its average in the previous edition, six months earlier....

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Raab Report: Financial Comparison of B2B Marketing Automation Vendors

I’ve been so busy analyzing the new VEST data that I missed the announcement that Eloqua’s would make its initial stock offering today. The valuation was a bit disappointing – $368 million, or just over four times revenue trailing 12-month revenue – but certainly a good return on its backers’ investment of about $41 million. And the stock did rise 12% on the first day. Good for them, and congratulations.Coincidentally, I was already planning to...

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Raab Report: B2B Marketing Automation Industry Is Getting More, Not Less, Fragmented

I’ve gotten used to thinking of the B2B marketing automation industry as entering a consolidation phase, during which a handful of dominant vendors emerge and small vendors drop away. That’s why I was a bit surprised when yesterday’s blog post showed that the “big four” industry vendors (Infusionsoft, HubSpot, Marketo, and Eloqua) are actually growing slower than the “next four” largest (Pardot, Act-On Software, Net-Results, and SalesFusion)*. ...

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