Cloud-based marketing automation solutions have been making headway for quite some time, but the technology got a serious boost earlier this year when Salesforce.com and Oracle shocked industry analysts by signing a nine-year partnership to integrate their systems for accessing and storing data over the Internet.
This unprecedented partnership solidified projections that cloud-based computing is becoming the preferred option of marketing automation providers and users, as it offers remote access and reduces the need for on-site maintenance of servers, among other benefits.
With rivals Salesforce and Oracle standardizing their cloud-based computing platforms, observers note that it ultimately will be easier to integrate applications from different vendors, making the cloud even more attractive for marketing and sales applications.
Before cloud computing increased in popularity, all data was traditionally stored on a local hard drive. Cloud computing enables marketers to upload data to a global network that can be accessed from any device with an Internet connection.
Oracle Eloqua, HubSpot, Marketo and ExactTarget, which was acquired by Salesforce in July 2013, are among the vendors offering cloud-based services, also known as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).
Benefits Of Cloud Computing
David Lewis, CEO and Founder of DemandGen International, a consulting firm that helps companies select and use marketing automation and customer relationship management systems, noted that his company has never purchased a server. Instead, the company relies entirely on the cloud.
“The whole cloud computing revolution has enabled companies like us to exist, where that would have been pretty difficult in the past,” Lewis said. “The amount of money to get a business up and running with all of the infrastructure that we would have needed would almost have been potentially cost prohibitive. Let’s say this, the money we would have spent on the resources to set up and administer an equipment board would have taken investment dollars away from our sales and marketing efforts.”
The advent of the cloud was a win-win situation for both buyers and vendors. Automatic updates eliminate the need for future manual installation, allowing marketers to focus their time on the buyer’s cycle.
“We push out the updated version of every release to all our customers at the same time, ensuring there is no interference to their operating environment,” said Mark Woolen, VP of Product Marketing at Salesforce.
Challenges And Concerns
While cloud-based marketing automation systems have proven to be of great use to businesses of all sizes, there are challenges to cloud-based computing. For one, the vendor basically owns the customer experience once a company hitches its wagon to the cloud. One minor glitch with the service will affect every customer who has paid for it. This is an added pressure that didn’t exist for vendors before cloud-based software became popular, because individual companies solved their own problems internally.
“That is a challenge for vendors like us and others in the category, but it only makes us stronger and makes for a better experience for the customer,” said David Michaud, VP of Product Marketing at Oracle Eloqua. “They get that immediate value out of it instead of, perhaps, in the old model, bugging their IT department to upgrade when they’re busy with other challenges and projects.”
Michaud cited the outages of high-traffic web sites such as Google and Amazon as an example of what can happen, even in the immediate short term, when a cloud-based network malfunctions.
The systems also come with added structural risk. The cloud’s flexibility is dependent upon storing all data and processes into a single location, largely outside of the client company’s control, and potentially leaving the door open for privacy breaches. Thus, businesses have to really do their homework when selecting the vendor for their automation systems.
“Vendors can screw up and lose your data or share it with a competitor,” said Alex Salop, Director of Enterprise Product Marketing at Brainshark. “Someone with malicious intent can get to your data. The government can access your data. Those are all concerns and they’re all valid concerns.”
Making The Most Of The Cloud
Cloud computing is still fairly contemporary, so as a marketer, it is best to learn as much about it as possible, observers advised. Acquiring knowledge of both the industry and the software solutions goes a long way in staying ahead of the competition.
“If you haven’t invested yet in a marketing automation system, you are being out-marketed by companies that have. You cannot effectively compete,” Lewis said. “No matter how much success you’ve had to date, not getting a marketing automation system would be the equivalent of, in the mid-90s, saying ‘I’m not sure I need a web site yet.’”
Woolen said companies using cloud-based marketing and sales automation systems such as Salesforce need to take advantage of the fact that they can integrate their sales and marketing teams in the same direction for valuable projects.
“Even the most forward-thinking organizations… also are often saying, ‘Great, I’ve got a marketing automation tool that puts marketing in my pipeline, and I’ve got a Salesforce automation tool that puts sales in my pipeline,’ but it really should be the same pipeline,” Woolen said.
Mathew Sweezey, Marketing Evangelist for Pardot, said recognizing the individual users of the software was vital in identifying the most relevant content to publish.
“We’ve pumped so much information and marketing into people that it’s very tough for a person to feel like it’s a personalized experience,” Sweezey said.“We’ve entered the age of the customer where it’s really talking about having this one-on-one personal relationship.”
Cloud-based marketing automation systems, although vital to the success of a modern marketing department, are not a magic bullet for all needs for an enterprise. According to Michaud, a company must have the right people in place to effectively execute cloud computing.
DemandGen’s Lewis added: “Take a look at what a modern marketing organization looks like, figure out where your gaps are, and make investments in the resources you need.”
This advice, according to Lewis, could come in the form of hiring new employees that are more in tune with the technology than traditional marketers, or hiring an outside consultancy to provide them with the necessary expertise to succeed.
More Clouds On The Horizon?
With the exception of retailers and financial service companies — which must rely on keeping customer confidentiality — most businesses are moving toward the cloud-based software.
“The only on-premise programs we see now are Excel spreadsheets,” said Michael Topalovich, CTO of Delivered Innovation, a firm that designs cloud-based systems. “Our target customers are growing B2B organizations, companies that are four or five years old now. They haven’t known anything but cloud services. Everything seems to be going there.”
Lewis said he hears from an average of two vendors per week that have developed new marketing systems, and “100% of them are cloud technologies.” He also said it has been at least three years since he has seen a new on-premise marketing solution.
With this evolution of the cloud comes the necessity to understand what it will offer in the future. Cloud-based marketing automation systems are making it easier for sales and marketing teams to work integrate their goals than ever before. Lewis said he believed two areas will be most affected: reporting and content production/distribution. He also predicted that companies like Adobe will have a significant impact on the latter.
“If you think of the systems as the engine, Adobe provides the fuel,” Lewis said.“If you take all those content tools and you fuse them into marketing automation and your web, you can bring all your pieces together. If I want to create a landing page or a piece of content, I’ll pull up my Adobe platform for creating digital content and use those tools to publish it right where it needs to go, whether that’s to the web, an output device, or integration into my marketing program.” — additional reporting by Jonathan Lee
