Here are The Marketing Automation Alert’s best marketing automation-related articles curated today, Thursday, 2/28/13. 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
Engaging boards on the future of marketing – McKinsey Quarterly
From www.mckinseyquarterly.com – Today, 8:45 AM
At many companies, the whole organization is becoming more responsible for customer engagement. A few are extending this thinking to the boardroom. A McKinsey Quarterly Governance article.
Excerpt…
Three tips for improving engagement
First, much as most boards now include a strategy day in their calendar of meetings, we think it’s worth considering a customer-engagement day to take stock of the broadest strategic implications of changes in the marketing environment and of the company’s position with customers. On such a day, the directors of another Asia-based services company took decisive action to rethink its premium-pricing strategy after coming to grips with big changes under way in the customer base.
Second, it’s important to be mindful of the board’s composition, given the fast-changing nature of marketing. For example, including more board members with public-sector experience—including political-campaign skills—can provide valuable counsel to today’s ever-more-exposed CEOs.
Third, it’s important to keep board involvement strategic in nature and clearly aimed at governance issues and not the day-to-day management of marketing activities. To be sure, it can be valuable for board members with specialized expertise to provide it fairly regularly; we know of one company that’s asked an innovation guru on the board to work closely, between meetings, with the head of R&D. Yet any such involvement must ultimately connect back to the board; otherwise, there’s a risk of creating a cadre of shadow managers. In this case, the R&D director and board member jointly update the board on innovation efforts to ensure that it remains plugged in.
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
Why this is important: As we have seen over and over, spending for Marketing Technology will exceed IT by 2015 (Gartner). Your board (should you have one) will expect to understand why. As a marketer, you may want to start formulating your plan on how to bring the board along a particular path so that they fully support the investments in marketing technology.
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Understanding Social Media’s Visual Revolution – Profs
From www.slideshare.net – Today, 8:27 AM
Ann Handley of MarketingProfs, Nick Westergaard of Brand Driven Digital, and Mike Hayes of Ben and Jerry’s share their thoughts and tips for joining social media’s visual revolution.
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
We’re not completely sold on Visual Storytelling for B2B as communicated over social media, but there are pointers from the deck (as well as the article on Profs) that you can pull to your own benefit.
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Landing Page Techniques that Drive Higher Conversion – Marketo
From blog.marketo.com – Today, 8:23 AM
Summary…
Shorter Forms Increase Conversion Rates
What we do know is that the less we “charge” for access to an asset, the more likely a visitor will be willing to the information exchange. There are many studies available that demonstrate how reducing form fields on a landing page improve conversion rates. Marketo ran a study that concluded that reducing form fields from nine fields to five improved conversion rates by 34%.
Progressive Profiling
Progressive profiling is by far one of my favorite features of marketing automation. For those who may be familiar with this feature, progressive profiling simply allows marketers to update a prospect’s information over time, dynamically updating forms to reflect information that may still be missing for that individual. In essence, rather than gathering all of the information about a prospect up front, information is gathered over time and the prospect’s record is continually updated.
Conversion Paths
Conversion paths involve using multiple landing pages as opposed to a single landing page to convert visitors. Often with search advertising, keywords may not clearly define a searcher’s intent or requirement. Conversion paths, or a series of landing pages connected on a path, can help searchers drive down through pages to a more specific result.
Social Form Fill and Social Login
Finally, the newest tool in the collective marketing automation toolbelt is social integration. The social form fill option makes it easier for landing page visitors to complete forms with just a click of a button.
How to Get Started
When clients ask me which of these approaches they should employ, I recommend them all! But as marketers, we must often prioritize these initiatives.
- First and foremost, if you’re not already doing so, implement progressive profiling on all of your forms. Progressive profiling provides a “quick win” for marketers to begin gathering much more information over time about prospects, and no salesperson has ever complained about having too much information about a prospect! As you implement progressive profiling, begin reducing your landing page form fields so you can put more prospects into the pipe faster and begin that nurturing process.
- Second, consider how you can begin integrating conversion paths into your current conversion process. This requires mapping out which assets can be used, like progressive profiling, to gain more information about prospects over several pages in a path.
- Third, begin by planning to add social form fill and social login to your landing pages. While this may require greater initial effort, the benefits in the end will be better conversion and more accurate prospect data.
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
Tremendous post! Click through to see the examples with greater details, and follow the author’s recommendations on how to get started! Bookmark this for future reference!
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Lead Nurturing and Marketing Automation: 15 Key Questions Answered (Questions 13-15) – Profs
From www.marketingprofs.com – Today, 8:05 AM
Summary…
Question 13: What are the keys to successful nurture campaigns?
Here’s a quick list of five:
1. A clear, powerful, and unique core value proposition (CVP).
2. Evidential support for your value proposition.
3. A valuable offer to initiate the conversation.
4. A clear understanding of prospects’ buying (thought) process and the associated sticking points for each stage of the buying process.
5. A steady hand. Nurture campaigns don’t run themselves; they require constant maintenance, adjustment, and review.
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Question 14: Can you provide an example of a typical nurture sequence?
Start with a basic series, watch the behavior of leads closely, and then fine-tune and adjust the nurture as necessary. It’s an ongoing process that takes some time every month to analyze, evaluate, and adjust. At times, you may replace entire messages and reports, at other times you may make subtle adjustments, and at other times still you may send out one-off broadcast messages to specific segments because of noticeable trends.
Everything you do, however, should tie back to…
- A core value proposition that identifies a unique value of the product to the prospect
- The customer buying process
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Question 15: How do I select a marketing automation vendor?
Before you evaluate marketing automation platforms, you need to understand what you need the system to do for you. That means you need to know your product’s value proposition, your customer buying cycle, what constitutes a sales-ready lead, and how you want to communicate the status of leads to your sales team. Given those parameters, you can begin the evaluation process.
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
This has been an excellent series for those relatively new to marketing automation. Use the The Marketing Automation Alert’s search function to find and review all 15 questions.
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Customer Experience Matrix: Yesterday’s News: Marketo Plans IPO, Eloqua Eyes B2C
From customerexperiencematrix.blogspot.com – Today, 8:11 AM
Key excerpts…
[David Raab has] little doubt that Marketo can manage a successful IPO. But it’s less clear it can survive long-term as an independent company. Previous marketing automation leaders including Eloqua, Unica, and Aprimo all ended up as part of larger organizations. The fundamental reason is that marketing is ever-more-closely related to other business activities, as companies strive to provide an integrated customer experience. Clients prefer to buy complete, integrated suites for all customer-management functions. They good news for marketing automation vendors is that they can plug a gap that many big vendors need to fill.
But the real world is more complicated than the picture suggests. B2B and B2C marketers have different requirements. Eloqua is more flexible than most B2B marketing automation systems but still can’t match a good B2C system. The biggest issue is data structure: Eloqua is built around a standard model based on CRM systems. It does let users add auxiliary tables but even those are subject to some constraints. A true B2C system can accommodate any data model. There are also issues of scalability and of specialized needs such as programs with hundreds or thousands of segments. It’s hard to imagine Eloqua competing in the top tier of B2C. It might be able to support mid-size B2C systems, but that doesn’t seem to be Oracle’s intent.
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
Regarding Marketo: we believe that either Marketo is acquiried by a larger fish before the IPO, or the IPO will give Marketo the fuel it needs to acquire components (and clients and market share). Regarding Eloqua: technology will drive this, and we tend to think that Oracle’s product leaders will give Eloqua the direction it needs on how to approach the major B2C companies.
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New Marketing Report: B2B Lead Generation Trends 2013 – Everything Technology Marketing
From www.slideshare.net – Today, 7:43 AM
Welcome to the 2013 B2B Lead Generation Report! It’s no secret that B2B marketing is undergoing dramatic change. Marketing professionals are under immense pressure to deliver results and justify significant program and headcount investments. The B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn conducted the 2013 lead generation survey to better understand how B2B marketers are adjusting to new challenges, and to identify new trends and best practices. The results are in! We received over 800 responses and are excited to share the results with you. We hope you will find this report an interesting read that contains the critical data points and trends to inform your 2013 marketing plans, campaigns and budget allocations.
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3 Common Mistakes Marketers Make With Their Analytics – Marketing Land
From marketingland.com – Today, 7:49 AM
Summary…
1. Thinking Greater Time On Page Equates To A More Engaged Customer
A better metric to optimize your page around is bounce rate, which measures the percentage of customers who leave a page if it’s the only page they visit. This metric properly accounts for both intent to view a page and if the page satisfies the viewer’s needs.
2. Thinking Return On Investment (ROI) Is Always The Best Measure Of Marketing Effectiveness
As a simple rule of thumb, if you’re measuring short-term marketing performance, ROI is better given its simplicity. However, if your marketing activities stretch out over a few years, payback period and NPV are better.
3. Incorrectly Thinking That Word Of Mouth Traffic Or Other Traffic Equals Organic Traffic
While visitors did find you via an organic search, that’s not necessarily how they first heard about you. These visitors could represent word of mouth traffic — individuals referred from a current customer or follower of your company.
The second potential issue is that your analytics platform displays last-touch attribution, the last medium the visitor used before he or she converted to a lead. Leads typically visit your site multiple times and through different sources before converting. This means that last-touch attribution masks the original and potentially most important source that generated the lead.
Finally, the keyword could represent a visitor who originally found you through social media or a paid advertisement campaign but that insight was lost because the tracking cookie expired or a different computer was used.
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
Here are three pitfalls to which the B2B marketer can fall prey. The approach: peel away a few layers of the onion to find that which really matters. And when you look to hire that marketing scientist (Stat major?), ensure they understand what is marketing-pertinent.
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Marketing Research Chart: New email marketing developments for 2013 | MarketingSherpa
From article – Today, 7:39 AM
In this week’s chart, we learn about new email marketing developments expected to affect marketers in 2013.
Q: What new developments will affect your email marketing program in the next 12 months? Please select all that apply.
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The Search Engine Evolution Timeline [Infographic] – Bit Rebels
From www.bitrebels.com – Today, 7:40 AM
In the beginning, the Internet was a static place. Not until we kickstarted the search engine evolution timeline did we get a way to search for content.
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A Guide to Scoring and Grading Your Leads [INFOGRAPHIC] | Marketing Automation – Pardot
From www.pardot.com – Today, 7:35 AM
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The Rise Of Social Business Liking to Leading – Croakun
From report.croakun.com – Today, 7:37 AM
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CMOs to Rein in Traditional Ad Spend, Press on With Digital Marketing – Marketing Charts
From www.marketingcharts.com – Today, 7:31 AM
Despite consumer and marketer beliefs that traditional media advertising on the whole is more effective than online advertising, marketers continue to shift budgets away from traditional media and towards digital marketing channels, finds Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business in its latest installment of The CMO Survey. In this latest survey, CMOs forecast a 2.7% decline in traditional advertising spend over the next 12 months, after predicting a 1.9% decrease in August 2012, an 0.8% decrease in February 2012, and a 1.3% increase in August 2011.
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
And when segmenting between B2C and B2B, the percentages hold. No shocker, and scooped for you should you need justification.
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Inbound Marketers Attribute Web Traffic Gains to Blogging, SEO – Marketing Charts
From www.marketingcharts.com – Today, 7:34 AM
In a study using data from 5,048 customers and surveys from 236 professionals knowledgeable about their company’s marketing strategy, HubSpot has found that virtually all of its customers experienced an increase in traffic since using HubSpot, with a plurality (25.1%) attributing that increase to blogging. SEO (18.9%) social media (16.9%) and email marketing (13.5%) also got the nod for traffic increases, although few said paid search ads (5.6%) were behind their gains.
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What’s really important in B2B today? – ADMA
From www.adma.com.au – Today, 7:13 AM
The core issues…
B2B marketers and salespeople now know that the buying process has changed, but knowledge is only one part of the equation. There is still a lot of work to be done and change that businesses need to address to balance the equation. Looking at the following proof-points you will see that companies are still far behind on developing buyer-centric content, aligning their operational lead management process, proper measurement and overall managing of the process of change:
Buyer-centric content is missing
- When asked what recommendations they would make to solution providers about their content, 76% of respondents said “Curb the sales messaging” as their number one recommendation – Demand Gen Report, May 2012
- Only 14% of organisations align their content to their buyers’ journey – Forrester, 2011
- 86% of the “unique benefits” touted by vendors [to buyers] was not viewed as unique by buyers – Corporate Executive Board, 2010
It is clear that given the buyer’s new perspective, B2B marketers must learn to connect with buyers in their current state and speak to their needs, not ours.
There is a lack of lead management process
- Only 9% of companies surveyed state that lead management is a core competence – ITSMA, “B2B Services and Solutions, Lead Management Benchmarks,”2011
- Only 5% of businesses claim they have every buyer interaction orchestrated and less than 25% have a defined lead to revenue lead management process – Forrester, 2011
This lack of internal alignment creates gaps in the buying process, delivers a bad buying experience for our customers and, ultimately, leads to lost revenue.
Organisations are measuring the wrong things
- Only 21% of companies measure marketing ROI while 78% measure open rates – MarketingSherpa, 2013
While engagement metrics should be managed, the measurement of revenue-focused outcomes should be priority one.
Organisations must move from tactical to strategic demand generation
- 45% of businesses use more than 13 tactics in their demand generation – Content Marketing Institute – 2012
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
We’re certain we can find counter factoids/arguments to the above, but the point is valid: there is excellent marketing technology out there to help the B2B marketer bring it’s marketing function to the next level where it is a strategic asset.
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11 Reasons Prospects Don’t Convert Into Customers – Convince & Convert
From www.convinceandconvert.com – Today, 6:58 AM
Bad website content can chase away potential customers. The good news is that these fatal flaws are easily rectified. Here are eleven conversion killers that you can change to turn prospects into customers.
Review the entire list and make sure your website has zero conversion repellents. [The author leaves] you with a cheat sheet.
- Define conversion
- Make the website clean
- Connect with keywords
- Nix the jargon
- Foster credibility
- Offer helpful content
- Inspire interaction
- Embrace social media
- Nurture
- Make the site easy to search
- Direct the visitor
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
A brief and to-the-point post that covers the basics. You’ll want to click through for the explanation to any of the conversion killers listed (but we think it is self-explanatory).
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Five exceptional interactive infographics and why they worked – Econsultancy
From econsultancy.com – Today, 7:24 AM
The bar for infographic quality has been raised. After three years of brands from every niche jumping onto the trend, it’s become increasingly difficult for infographics to stand out and gain the attention they promised back in 2010.
Infographics are still effective, they just need to be extra creative or interesting to work effectively in 2013. One increasingly popular solution for added creativity is to make the infographics interactive using HTML5 and JavaScript.
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
This is the second infographic scooped article in as many days pertaining to infographics.Take a look at the examples, and see how you can turbo-boost your infographics.
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