Some of the highlights reported by specific vendors included:
- Marketo adding 146 new customers, reaching the 1,000-customer count
- Eloqua reaching 900 customers
- Pardot reporting its most successful quarter to date, adding 100 clients in Q1
- Neolane increasing its revenue 80% compared to Q1 2010
- SalesFUSION adding 100% more customers over the same period last year
- Genius.com continuing its 75% year-over-year customer growth rate
- Silverpop adding 20% more new customers in Q1 2011 than Q1 2010
- eTrigue expecting a 60% year-over-year revenue increase in 2011
HubSpot, which has made a point of differentiating itself as an inbound marketing software platform, also noted huge growth following its recent funding news. “We sold more new customers in Q1 than the entire marketing automation market sold,” said Mike Volpe, VP Marketing at HubSpot. “HubSpot added over 450 new customers in Q1 alone. Well over 4,000 companies now use HubSpot in 31 different countries.”
“We are seeing a lot of clients getting to the point where they’ve mastered the basics — they are seeing an increase in their sales and better ROI on their campaigns — and so they are ready to take their use of marketing automation to the next level,” said Adam Blitzer, COO and Co-Founder of Pardot. “There is a hunger for information on best practices, innovative uses for marketing automation, more advanced features and other factors that show us that marketers are becoming more sophisticated users.”
Pardot, which focuses primarily on the SMB market, has seen automation adoption “spread like wildfire” among its target customer base. “Smaller businesses see tremendous value in being able to save time by automating processes, plus they are getting more value out or their marketing spend by implementing things like lead nurturing,” Blitzer said. “Though we aren’t involved as much in the enterprise space, I strongly believe that the technology is spreading through organizations of all sizes.”
“We are seeing greater cooperation between sales and marketing in the development of programs,” said Jim Meyer Vice President, eTrigue. “More and more companies are now allowing Sales to participate in the development of programs which include required touches from sales. We are seeing a much greater focus on customers defining customer journeys that can be enhanced and modified to refine the process. This is leading away from batch and blast approaches except for time sensitive events.”
Further indicating traction among the SMB market Genius.com CEO Sam Weber said the company’s freemium accounts recently surpassed 1,000, while Genius.com continues to see a 7-8% conversion rate from free to paid accounts.
Although Revenue Performance Management has been a buzz phrase throughout the last year, some say the concept is perhaps too advanced for new adopters. “The feet on the street user, especially SMB/Mid-Market, is still in the mode of understanding what this technology can do and how best to use it in their day-to-day lives,” said Kevin Miller, EVP Marketing & Sales at SalesFUSION. “They haven’t been using this technology long enough to think outside of the trenches the way Marketo and Eloqua want you to think. That’s a way’s off yet for all but the most progressive and large companies, which is a very small portion of the demand generation market. That said, good old fashioned campaign ROI is important and most savvy marketers know how to do it using old tools and today’s demand gen tools…Look for another 24 months of heavy adoption from companies large and small — and a dramatic shake out of social media tools that are causing mass confusion — and then maybe you’ll get to Revenue Performance Management as the driver, not the nice-to-have side effect.”
“Today, like last year, BtoB marketers continue to define their social media strategies,” said Bryan Brown, Director of Product Strategy at Silverpop. “Unlike last year, however the value of doing so is clear. Now the challenge has shifted to developing and implementing social, mobile and even location-based techniques that are integrated with their more mature email programs and are measurable.”
