The Marketing Automation Alert

Key excerpt...

Silverpop’s new features load customer behaviors from all sources into a central database, match identities to create a unified customer view, and make the resulting information available for real-time, automated interactions across all channels. The central database and cross-channel treatments are two of the three capabilities I’ve defined for a Customer Data Platform. Silverpop falls short on the third CDP function, which is integrated predictive modeling.  But it has partners who fill that gap.

Many CDPs have been quietly maturing for several years.  Silverpop's two-year gestation cycle is a good example.  I can't say precisely why so many are emerging more or less simultaneously, but suspect a combination of business conditions and ever-more-urgent marketer needs.  The long-term drivers are clear: more marketing channels make customer attention harder to attract, spread behavior across different media, and require coordinated contacts across channels. As a result, marketers need a unified customer database, unified campaigns, and way to deliver messages across whatever channels customers use now or in the future. This is what they get from a CDP.

It’s less surprising to see another CDP system than to see it coming from Silverpop.  After all, Silverpop’s twin heritages in B2C email and B2B marketing automation both use simple data models: flat lists for email and basic lead/contact/account tables for B2B marketing automation. Both types of systems traditionally merge customer data using only email address.  Neither build a company's primary marketing database or shares data with external systems. So its quite unexpected to see Silverpop ingest data from any source, cross-reference any set of individual identifiers, offer access to the data, and send messages for delivery by other systems.

Great knowledge today: skim away and pick what you need. If SEO is of interest, check out the report from BrightEdge. Some interesting perspectives are offered regarding last week’s Marketo IPO, from a Sloan Management gathering regarding Big Data, and Eloqua’s take (and our take) on their impressions on the success rate with marketing automation. Don’t overlook the graphics, especially the Periodic Table of Social Media. Have a great Monday, my marketing bubbalas.

Receive a daily summary of The Marketing Automation Alert directly to your inbox. Subscribe here (your privacy is protected). If you find this valuable, please share by using the links below:

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Featured Marketing Automation Article

More Holes Than Swiss Cheese: Why Marketing Automation is Still So Controversial - Eloqua

http://sco.lt/9MloOX

From blog.eloqua.com - Today, 9:06 AM

In March EConsultancy held their annual Digital Cream Event in London.  It was a great pleasure for me to be a part of the marketing automation roundtable where I had the chance to hear 30 B2B marketers discuss how they...

Key excerpt...

I’ve finally decided that those who feel that marketing automation falls short of solving all their problems tend to be those same people who are disappointed with their CRM system, or with other types of technologies that are supposed to make our business lives better.

It’s so easy to fall into the trap, I often do it myself, of thinking that technology will ‘sort everything out’.  When really, technology is only ever the enabler of better ways of organising and scaling processes.  If those processes don’t already exist at your company, you are going to struggle.  Either way, you need the process, but once you introduce technology it only highlights the ‘holes’ or gaps.

The best quote of the day, in my opinion, was “Marketing automation forced our company to be brutally honest about our lead management process.”

iNeoMarketing's insight:

A surprising blog headline from Eloqua which immediately caught our attention, but when you read it, it harkens back to the early days of CRM when sales use of CRM hovered around 10%. It all points back to self: marketing automation, and more broadly marketing technologies, serve as a means to significantly improve your operations. And if you don't use these tools as internal benchmarks/blueprints, you're making your organization more efficient at being inefficient.

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BrightEdge: 2013 Search Marketer Survey Results

http://sco.lt/8vWJuL

From info.brightedge.com - Today, 9:00 AM

Ten Key Takeaways from the 2013 Search Marketer Survey

1. Mobile and tablet search is the next frontier
2. Local search is bigger than ever
3. Video offers search and social opportunities
4. It’s time to quantify and communicate SEO value
5. ROI across multiple channels like search and social is what truly matters
6. The C-level is paying more attention to SEO
7. SEO metrics need to keep up with SERP changes as they happen
8. Social for SEO is big; so is SEO for Social
9. Content Marketing is back, and in a big way
10. Page-centric SEO makes its mark

iNeoMarketing's insight:

Great data against which you should benchmark activities and review/adjust your strategy!

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Big Data Analytics Specialist Tableau Software Raises $254M In IPO, Shares Close 64% Up; Marketo’s First Day Up 78% To $23.10 | TechCrunch

http://sco.lt/7pKBuL

From techcrunch.com - Today, 8:50 AM

One year to the day of the troubled Facebook IPO, the climate for tech IPOs in the public markets is significantly less stormy, especially for companies in the enterprise space.

Key excerpts...

Business intelligence provider Tableau Software, trading as “DATA”, is one of the more highly anticipated tech IPOs of the year, and so far it has not disappointed. It priced its IPO at $31 per share, and it, popped 58% in early trading, and closed at 64% above opening price, or $50.75/share.

Meanwhile, Marketo, a cloud-based marketing services company, priced its IPO at $13 per share. It will be trading as MKTO on the NASDAQ exchange. It went up by more than 50% in early activity and then continued to creep up: it closed at 68% nearly 78% above the IPO pricing and trading at $23.10.

Tableau Software, as its stock ticker unsubtly hints, is aimed more at a big-data play, offering visualization and analytics that it says are easy enough for non-technical people to use. Up to now, it still offers the majority of its services as downloadable, on-premises software rather than as cloud-based apps.

iNeoMarketing's insight:

This scoop is offered as a perspective. As important as marketing technologies are and will continue to become, it's dwarfed by the more broad based offerings such as Tableau (raising $254M vs. $85M for Marketo).

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Marketo IPO Bodes Well for HubSpot - BostInno

http://sco.lt/9InQZd

From bostinno.streetwise.co - Today, 8:44 AM

Excerpt...

HubSpotsays the earliest it will IPO is the beginning of 2014, but that plan got a bit of a boost today as one of its major competitors experienced a nice bump during its public offering.

Marketo, a marketing automation company and oft-cited HubSpot competitor, went public today. And, as Forbes reports, it saw a nice bump:

Marketo shares surged after the company’s initial public offering today, rising more than 50% from its offering price.

iNeoMarketing's insight:

You probably saw the results of the Marketo IPO, which bodes well not only for HubSpot, but for many other marketing technology companies. Follow the money.

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Big Data and Big Change Management: A Path Forward | MIT Sloan Management Review

http://sco.lt/8cmnK5

From sloanreview.mit.edu - Today, 8:39 AM

Organizations that deal with big data analytics often grapple with change management.

Excerpt...

But in all the classroom discussions that surfaced around the big issues from big data — privacy, security, costs, infrastructure, data volume, data quality, and data governance — the reality that many organizations grapple with is change management: whether or not they can manage the human and process changes necessary to make the most of their analytics initiatives.

Bottom line: the real question is whether or not they can change the culture of their organization.

Consider the experience of one course participant, who talked about how her organization, a software company with 100 million customers, is struggling to implement a new analytics program that will enable both multi-channel customer communications and upselling. To achieve these goals, the company needs to change the way it handles sales data (replace batch processing of sales information with real time processing) and communicates with customers (replace blanket email communications with more personalized, one-on-one communications).

For this problem, the researchers offered two approaches: Pentland talked about how to get people to do what you want them to do, while Brynjolfsson provided a model to evaluate the process end of change management.

To get people to do what you want them to do — in essense, to get buy-in on analytics — Pentland talked about creating a model that combines the intuitive thinking employed by HiPPOs (highest-paid person’s opinions) with quantitative reasoning from “the quants.” Bringing the two together enables organizations to explore data, visualize relationships and understand in a human, intuitive way what data is telling them.

iNeoMarketing's insight:

Fascinating article, and revealing. We have always assumed that people would accept the increased benefits derived from an organization from Big Data: in retrospect, how naive. It's as if it needs to be mandated by senior management (not optional) so as to drive the initiative(s) through the organization.

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Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Using schema.org markup for organization logos

http://sco.lt/6OgORd

From googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com - Today, 8:32 AM

Today, we’re launching support for the schema.org markup for organization logos, a way to connect your site with an iconic image. We want you to be able to specify which image we use as your logo in Google search results.

Using schema.org Organization markup, you can indicate to our algorithms the location of your preferred logo. For example, a business whose homepage is www.example.com can add the following markup using visible on-page elements on their homepage:

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Organization">;

  <a itemprop="url" href="http://www.example.com/">Home</a>;

  <img itemprop="logo" src="http://www.example.com/logo.png" />

</div>

iNeoMarketing's insight:

We missed this last week, and it's pretty cool, where your lolgo may be used in Google search results.

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7 Subreddits Online Marketers Should Follow - ClickZ

http://sco.lt/7ah1Yv

From www.clickz.com - Today, 8:05 AM

How marketers can use Reddit to discuss topics, ask questions, keep up with news, and participate in the community that surrounds us.

Summary...

But I also use Reddit to keep up with topics that are related to the work that I do. It's a way to discuss topics, ask questions, keep up with news, and participate in the community that surrounds us. Below is a short list of the Subreddits that I think online marketers should be on.

• R/Advertising
• R/Design
• R/Socialmedia
• R/Adporn
• R/Bigseo
• R/Whateveryouareworkingon: The last suggestion is that you find a subreddit for whatever product you are marketing

iNeoMarketing's insight:

There's also R/AutomatedMarketing, but seriously, forget Reddit and follow The Marketing Automation Alert!

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How to Be a Badass Link Builder - Search Engine Watch

http://sco.lt/7WrRJ3

From searchenginewatch.com - Today, 8:21 AM

If you build links like an actual human being then you're building links like a badass. You're making friends and your links are bulletproof. It's hard work. It will take time, energy, and brainpower to increase your rankings and traffic.

Key excerpt...

Getting the Link

• Once you've found a site, come up with a concept. Would a simple link to your site be a resource for that page's audience? Can you contribute unique content? Find an angle. If your site isn't a resource, you need to provide unique content.
• Find the webmaster or blog owner's name. Read their site. What do you like about it? Is there anything missing, especially something that you can provide? Get to know the site.
• Write an email. Don't make a copy/paste form. Just write the webmaster a real message. Talk about what you liked, who you are, and your ideas. Let them know you're a real human being. Form a relationship if you can.
• Don't try to sneak crappy, irrelevant anchor text in your content. If the anchor text isn't a natural fit in the content itself, put a link in your author bio. Don't abuse the blog owner. Give them something useful.

iNeoMarketing's insight:

No surprise that this is a qualitative exercise requiring elbow grease. We like the "human" approach.

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5 Pillars of a Successful Modern Web Design - Search Engine Watch

http://sco.lt/5RV1pB

From searchenginewatch.com - Today, 6:57 AM

The SEO practices you implement in site design that optimize for search engines should be invisible. Modern day web design success requires a multi-function, multi-skilled approached to ensure maximum impact for your business.

iNeoMarketing's insight:

Click through for great details to each.

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[INFOGRAPHIC] 5 Ways To Continue The Conversation After The Big Event - MarketingThink by Gerry Moran

http://sco.lt/7WMdpR

From marketingthink.com - Today, 7:56 AM

Now that you have returned from an event how do you continue the conversation using social media? This infographic and post shows you 5 easy ways to maintain your presence with social selling techniques.

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Modern Marketing: A Bold New Frontier [INFOGRAPHIC] - Pardot

http://sco.lt/52sKI5

From www.pardot.com - Today, 6:47 AM

iNeoMarketing's insight:

A Sheldon Cooper special!

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Rankings of Best Marketing Automation Software - topseos.com

http://sco.lt/8kN0xF

From marketing-automation.topseosrankings.com - Today, 6:36 AM

Marketing Automation. Rankings and reviews of best marketing automation software and marketing automation tools.

iNeoMarketing's insight:

Any list that doesn't include Eloqua is faulty. Use at your own caution.

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 [INFOGRAPHIC] 2013: Periodic Table of Social Media | inboudvisibility

http://sco.lt/4tilLV

From visual.ly - Today, 6:41 AM

Summary...

The topic for this B2B social media case study is familiar: LinkedIn. The overall strategy and goal are also familiar: Use third-party validation from customers for thought leadership and brand awareness, and build an online community around a specific target audience.

The twist comes in the actual channel used to execute this campaign. DocuSign took what might have been a pretty standard email effort, and instead of using its email database, it utilized LinkedIn to send a series of sponsored InMails from its webinar speakers. Read on to learn the results of this marketing effort.

In March EConsultancy held their annual Digital Cream Event in London.  It was a great pleasure for me to be a part of the marketing automation roundtable where I had the chance to hear 30 B2B marketers discuss how they...

Key excerpt...

I’ve finally decided that those who feel that marketing automation falls short of solving all their problems tend to be those same people who are disappointed with their CRM system, or with other types of technologies that are supposed to make our business lives better.

It’s so easy to fall into the trap, I often do it myself, of thinking that technology will ‘sort everything out’.  When really, technology is only ever the enabler of better ways of organising and scaling processes.  If those processes don’t already exist at your company, you are going to struggle.  Either way, you need the process, but once you introduce technology it only highlights the ‘holes’ or gaps.

The best quote of the day, in my opinion, was “Marketing automation forced our company to be brutally honest about our lead management process.”

Organizations that deal with big data analytics often grapple with change management.

Excerpt...

But in all the classroom discussions that surfaced around the big issues from big data — privacy, security, costs, infrastructure, data volume, data quality, and data governance — the reality that many organizations grapple with is change management: whether or not they can manage the human and process changes necessary to make the most of their analytics initiatives.

Bottom line: the real question is whether or not they can change the culture of their organization.

Consider the experience of one course participant, who talked about how her organization, a software company with 100 million customers, is struggling to implement a new analytics program that will enable both multi-channel customer communications and upselling. To achieve these goals, the company needs to change the way it handles sales data (replace batch processing of sales information with real time processing) and communicates with customers (replace blanket email communications with more personalized, one-on-one communications).

For this problem, the researchers offered two approaches: Pentland talked about how to get people to do what you want them to do, while Brynjolfsson provided a model to evaluate the process end of change management.

To get people to do what you want them to do — in essense, to get buy-in on analytics — Pentland talked about creating a model that combines the intuitive thinking employed by HiPPOs (highest-paid person’s opinions) with quantitative reasoning from “the quants.” Bringing the two together enables organizations to explore data, visualize relationships and understand in a human, intuitive way what data is telling them.

Easy reading day today: soak it in on this fine Spring day (or Fall day, if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere).  The one that we absolutely, positively want to point out to you is today’s featured article on SlideShare: we don’t know what we have to do to convince you that this is the #1 content marketing vehicle for B2B. We’ve included a couple of marketing automation primer scoops, a revealing experiment in color testing for landing pages, and a few excellent infographics. Have a wonderful weekend my marketing siblings (go ahead, wish us a wonderful weekend right back)!

Receive a daily summary of The Marketing Automation Alert directly to your inbox. Subscribe here (your privacy is protected). If you find this valuable, please share by using the links below:

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Featured Marketing Automation Article

Slideshare Is The Biggest Opportunity In B2B Content Marketing - B2B Marketing Insider

http://sco.lt/99hFXl

From www.b2bmarketinginsider.com - Today, 8:41 AM

Excerpt...

In a recent conference, I was asked my opinion on what is the biggest opportunity in B2B Content Marketing? Without hesitation, I answered “Slideshare.”

With more than 50 Million visitors per month and more than 100 million pageviews, slideshare is one of the top websites in the world and should be a key focus of any B2B content marketing program.

According to Comscore, Slideshare is used by business owners and business executives at a rate 5 times any other social network! The top categories in Slideshare are Business and Technology, followed by Education, Travel and Health.

iNeoMarketing's insight:

Dang it, what do we have to do to convince you that SlideShare is a MUST?? DO WE HAVE TO SCREAM?????? The power of SlideShare and LinkedIn combined is so great that it's a must social media channel for B2B. Look: the VP of Global Marketing for SAP is telling you this!!

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What You Need to Know About Marketing Automation - Search Engine Watch

http://sco.lt/5g7jOr

From searchenginewatch.com - Today, 8:33 AM

For any successful organization that relies on the Internet for leads and sales, marketing automation stands to increase efficiencies and revenues. Here's a look at marketing automation: the primary elements, core benefits, and opportunities.

Key excerpt...

The 10 primary elements of marketing automation include:

1. Email Marketing: Initial and scheduled delivery based on buyer interests, roles, personas and actions.
2. Landing Pages and Forms: For each campaign.
3. Campaign Management: Includes development or repurposing of content (creative, video, short and long-form.
4. Marketing Programs: Associated offers and content to support sales.
5. Lead Generation: Associated advertising, social media, word of mouth and search engine visibility to drive participation in the system.
6. Lead Nurturing / Lead Scoring/ Lifecycle Management: Includes prioritization of customer types based on fit and likelihood to buy, in addition to the filtering of leads by engagement and interest. Assumes existing customers are always leads, and keeps them in a system that continuously delivers relevant content.
7. CRM Integration: Transfer of leads to sales opportunities and follow-up. This includes technical integration of platforms like Salesforce.com.
8. Social Marketing Capabilities: Includes integration of social media platforms such as Hootsuite to achieve better tracking and attribution of social to sales.
9. Resource management: Includes consultative services.
10. Marketing Analytics: Includes measurement of the revenue contribution of each campaign and associated program element.

iNeoMarketing's insight:

Again, another primer for the newbie. And the author refers you back to Jon Miller!

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Marketing Automation Tools: How To Find The Best Match For Your Business - 38Pitches

http://sco.lt/73HOQD

From 38pitches.com - Today, 8:29 AM

Key excerpt...

First, there is the basic question — Does our company in fact need marketing automation tools? To answer that question properly, one needs to self-assess needs, staff abilities, level of management support, and budget.

These questions can guide one to answering that fundamental question:

- What exact toolset is required to meet our business’ unique needs? There is no “one-size-fits-all” solution on the market.

- What specific goals are there? The identification of goals requires that the right stakeholders be consulted.

- Does management support exist? A C-level executive should sign-on to support the endeavor.

- Does our organization have the required internal skill set? Maximizing ROI is fully dependent upon a willingness to adopt a new platform and to engage in the necessary training.

- How will success be measured? The better one understands the reasons for pursuing a marketing automation
platform, the easier it will be to set appropriate benchmarks.

- Has cost been properly established? The marketplace offers both all-inclusive tools and others that resort to a wide array of add-ones that can dramatically increase costs.

iNeoMarketing's insight:

A nice, easy article for the MA newbie. If you are, click through to read, then come back here and search the tag "marketing automation". Plenty of excellent information to assist you. BTW: Jon Miller has written some excellent articles on MA selection, and you'll want to refer to his posts (again, scooped here).

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Landing Page Optimization: Color emphasis change increases clickthrough 81% | MarketingExperiments

http://sco.lt/85qaPp

From www.marketingexperiments.com - Today, 8:24 AM

Summary...

In the treatment, the team simplified and sequenced the pricing, and used a color design to emphasize the value of the offer. By strengthening the communication of the offer’s value through color, copy and layout changes, the treatment increased clickthrough by 81%.

iNeoMarketing's insight:

What's the value in taking information and providing a much better visual presentation? In this case, CTs almost doubled. TEST!!!

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DocuSign's targeted LinkedIn InMail strategy creates 3 large pipeline opportunities | MarketingSherpa

http://sco.lt/5yQrI1

From article - Today, 8:15 AM

Summary...

The topic for this B2B social media case study is familiar: LinkedIn. The overall strategy and goal are also familiar: Use third-party validation from customers for thought leadership and brand awareness, and build an online community around a specific target audience.

The twist comes in the actual channel used to execute this campaign. DocuSign took what might have been a pretty standard email effort, and instead of using its email database, it utilized LinkedIn to send a series of sponsored InMails from its webinar speakers. Read on to learn the results of this marketing effort.

iNeoMarketing's insight:

A different approach to using email marketing to drive registrants. What we don't know from the article's results is if it compares favorably to other webinar registration drives, i.e., this one drove 3.5% conversions, but what were past registration rates? May be worthy of testing.

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All Eyes on Native Advertising, Despite Uncertainties - eMarketer

http://sco.lt/4ocLNh

From www.emarketer.com - Today, 8:06 AM

Seeing digital advertising integrated into the content experience on social networks, news sites and streaming services is a somewhat new phenomenon, but it has taken off quickly.

Excerpt...

Social networks, news sites, digital content aggregators and streaming media services are rife with ads that are integrated into the content experience. According to a new eMarketer report, “Native Advertising: An Emerging Consensus for a New Kind of Ad,” these so-called “native ads” are providing new ways for marketers to reach target audiences and new avenues of monetization for content sites that are under intense revenue pressure.

Although business prospects for native advertising are positive, the medium has its detractors. Some media executives and marketers are wary of the blurring of lines between content and advertising that occurs with native ads, particularly in the context of news sites. Others question the return on investment of these ads, arguing that native ads cannot scale for multiple placements.

iNeoMarketing's insight:

As banner ad performance shrinks to as close to zero as you can get, there's a grasp for something different, and that different is native advertising. We've been keeping an eye on this, and find it as a better alternative to display...for now. Watching for backlash.

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Silverpop Launches Universal Behaviors, Creating Real-Time Individualized Campaigns

http://sco.lt/4llWvx

From www.silverpop.com - Today, 7:43 AM

SilverpopTM, the only digital marketing technology provider that unifies marketing automation, email, mobile and social, today announced at its Amplify 2013 customer conference, the launch of Universal Behaviors. Now for the first time, marketers will have access to a live stream of real-time behaviors that they can easily understand and instantly integrate into highly relevant individualized campaigns.

“Marketers are being bombarded with a tremendous amount of data about their customers, which often seems like noise,” said Bryan Brown, director of product strategy for Silverpop. “To deliver highly relevant campaigns that convert, marketers have to not only hear everything, but act on what they learn. Now they can extract individual conversations and engage each person in real time. Universal Behaviors removes any remaining barriers to the vision of delivering true one-to-one communications to limitless numbers of customers via behavioral marketing automation.”

iNeoMarketing's insight:

We normally do not scoop product or company announcements, but we are doing so today with two. This is one from Silverpop, which caught our eye inasmuch as we find it intriguing that they are offering a service that catches behavior from across a variety of different vendors. See the release for details.

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[INFOGRAPHIC] Marketing Automation with a CRM System - Workbooks

http://sco.lt/9APFMv

From blog.workbooks.com - Today, 7:30 AM

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When Did Social Media Lose Its Way? [Infographic] - Profs

http://sco.lt/5bdixF

From www.marketingprofs.com - Today, 7:27 AM

Social Media - In the early days of social media, users interacted like real people do. However, in time, social networks evolved into pits of broadcast messages. Here's how companies lost their way ...

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 [INFOGRAPHIC] 2013 Sales Performance Optimization | DocuSign

From visual.ly - Today, 7:26 AM

2013 sales performance results across multiple industries and company sizes.

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 [INFOGRAPHIC] The Anatomy of Content Marketing | ContentPlus

http://sco.lt/68DTBB

From visual.ly - Today, 7:24 AM

Quality content is at the heart of any successful marketing strategy. Just like the heart powers the body, quality content drives marketing strategies