By Carlos Hidalgo, President, The Annuitas Group
I read last week’s Demanding Views column – Marketing Automation is not Synonymous with Lead Generation, and while I agree with some of the assertions stated in the article, I believe the article fell short in describing marketing automation and what is needed for it to be successful.
By Shreesha Ramdas, Chief Operating Officer, LeadForce1
Today a lot of BtoB companies are opting for marketing automation solutions. This makes good business sense--why should you lose out on those possible sales opportunities when you are doing everything possible to drive traffic to your web site?
Marketo made simultaneous announcements this week that the company has surpassed the 500 customer mark in just two years, and that it has closed $10 million in Series D funding to further accelerate the company’s rapid growth curve.
Phil Fernandez, president and CEO of Marketo, said the company added 119 new customers in the first quarter of 2010. He told DemandGen Report that the company has set an internal goal to grow its customer base to 1,000 by the end of the year, which would require it to step up its already rapid growth rate to an average of more than 165 per quarter.
Catering to the BtoB and BtoC marketing arenas, Silverpop recently announced the launch of a new digital marketing platform designed to combine email-marketing tools with its top-ranked marketing automation and lead management applications.
“For some time now, I felt that the solutions supporting BtoC and BtoB marketers should come together into a single, scalable platform that makes the unique tools of each marketing discipline available to all, and our clients have overwhelmingly agreed,” said Bill Nussey, CEO of Silverpop.
With more businesses looking to distribute their content and thought leadership out via social networks, Act-On Software has announced the addition of a new application called Twitter Prospector, designed to help clients automate the process of publishing content on Twitter and then measure and track the activity of prospects from the social network.
While there is no secret sauce that guarantees success ROI from a marketing automation rollout, a new report from Forrester found four key practices which proven to accelerate time to value on lead management initiatives: profiling and targeting, lead scoring, mapping content and nurturing early-stage buyers.
SOLUTION SPOTLIGHT
Genius.com is the only Marketing Automation solution that truly “gets” sales.
Genius Provides on-demand solutions for marketing automation, lead nurturing, email marketing, demand generation, and social marketing that allow both marketing and sales professionals to identify and connect with their best prospects online in real-time, without requiring IT involvement.
The following white paper covers 10 of the most important steps companies will need to master in order effectively automate their marketing. Each step represents a progression in the phased approach and includes quick checklists for nurturing, scoring and other key automation functions.
Net-Results announced the integration of its marketing automation platform and lead management tools with Salesforce.com. Coupled with Salesforce.com, Net-Results' new application is designed to bridge the gap between sales and marketing with regard to prospect and lead handling.
The phrase “content is king” applies to a wide variety of media platforms, but it is especially fitting when it comes to crafting a demand generation strategy. In the Lessons From The Trenches Survey, recently conducted by DemandGen Report, early adopters of marketing automation cited better content as a top priority they would change if they were to lead a rollout at another organization. Specifically, 78% said they would “prepare the organization by building proper processes and content offers to feed the automation system.”