“[BtoB marketers have subscribed to the idea that] if you build the great content, prospects will come,” Payne said. “But that’s not really how we consume and find content today. Content going forward isn’t just about the right message in the right place. It’s about getting the right people to like, share and suggest the content.”
This new model of information sharing, Payne said, is reliant upon mobile and social tools, which are changing the way that marketers engage and interact with prospects and customers. By building these tools into the revenue engine, BtoB organizations are employing innovative techniques to garner richer, actionable information to effectively message to prospects.
Using Social, Mobile & Apps To Drive Revenue
Eloqua has demonstrated its commitment to the social, mobile revolution with its recent release, Social Media Suite, launched at Dreamforce 2011 in late August. Among its new features is Social Sign-On, which provides web visitors with a one-click option for form completion by signing in through LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter accounts.
The Social Suite also features Klout segmentation, social sharing tools and Twitter for Sales, which publishes a live feed of prospects’ most recent tweets in the Eloqua Profiler dashboard.
Addressing the massive proliferation of mobile devices, the company also unveiled Eloqua Engage for the iPad, which will be officially released on December 11, 2011. The new release will also be available on the web through HTML5, and will be integrated into Salesforce.com.
“The pace of change due to social and mobile has been dizzying,” Payne noted. “The result is a change in the way we structure business. We need to move from web-based to social-based.”
With the rapid growth of cloud-based services, channels and applications, getting a complete view of the buyer can be challenging. Released at Eloqua Experience Europe in June 2011, the Eloqua AppCloud is designed to enable marketers to browse, evaluate and integrate marketing, sales and social media applications.
Dubbed an “online marketplace for BtoB marketing applications,” the AppCloud features dozens of apps, including Jive, Data.com and Adobe Connect. According to Payne, 20% of Eloqua customers are using apps within the Eloqua AppCloud with many using as many as 10 apps.
Payne marked the one-year debut of Eloqua 10, the HTML 5-enabled release of its marketing automation platform, noting that nearly a quarter of its customers are now using the new version. Payne added large customers on Eloqua10 have seen a 166% increase in generating leads. Smaller customers on the platform had a more than 350% increase in leads, he said.
In July 2011, Eloqua introduced Revenue Suite, a set of applications and services designed to help businesses increase revenue and more accurately predict future growth. Using dashboards and real-world benchmarking data, businesses can track, analyze and accelerate growth through every stage of the revenue cycle. Payne highlighted that marketers are now stepping up to the table to be a bigger part of the conversation.
“CEOs say the reason that marketing hasn’t had the same seat at the table is because they don’t bring the same KPIs to the table that the rest of organization brings,” he said.
Additionally, Payne pointed to internal benchmark research, which showed that the companies using marketing automation across their entire global enterprise outperformed revenue growth of the S&P 500 by three times. In addition, customers implementing a Revenue Performance Management strategy outperformed the S&P 500 by five times.
Payne highlighted 5 revenue performance indicators (RPIs) for process-based revenue forecasting:
1. Value: What’s the funnel worth?
2. Conversions: What’s the percentage of prospects turned into revenue? (Remember no one sells click throughs or MQLs, he said.)
3. Reach: Who can I target to drive value?
4. Velocity:What time will it take to see revenue?
5. Return: Financially and logistically, what is your organization getting back?
Pointing to marketing’s expanding presence in the revenue cycle, Payne wrapped up his keynote by congratulating the more than 100 recent graduates of customers Eloqua University, a program aimed at increasing marketers’ skills and confidence.
