BUYER S GUIDE MARKETING AUTOMATION

Transcription

1 BUYER S GUIDE MARKETING AUTOMATION

2 SUMMARY Because it seeks to serve as the central repository for marketing and sales data, a marketing automation tool can be a particularly complex piece of software. Therefore, the selection process can be difficult as well. This guide examines the marketing automation industry and profiles leaders in specific market segments to supply you with a clear picture of which products are best for what application. TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 Introduction 4 Marketing Automation Solutions 4 Solutions for Small Businesses 7 Solutions for Mid-Market Firms 10 Solutions for Enterprise 13 Industry Trends 14 Taking Action 2

3 INTRODUCTION Marketing is growing increasingly complex. Like other areas of technology, expertise is developing in specific niches such as search engine optimization, marketing, content development, etc. Of course, something has to tie all of these together to form a holistic marketing machine - that s where marketing automation software can help. Marketing automation tools, once used only to organize, segment, and schedule campaigns, have now grown to encompass automated social media interactions, dynamic page content, and even automatic scoring of prospects, all based on user behavior. The 22 percent annual growth 1 of the marketing automation industry is proof that simply hosting a website or sending s to hundreds of prospects is no longer enough. If data is the new competitive advantage, then marketing is the new playing field. Consequently, marketing automation has a large role to play for businesses looking to perfect their marketing strategies through data and advanced analytics. In your search to find the right product, there are a number of precautions to keep in mind. The key characteristics to look for are: price, usability, and core functionality. Nearly all automation systems will be deployed through the cloud, which saves you a great deal of money up front, but each plan may feature different pricing tiers. Read the subscription options carefully before making a decision. Although the number of options is growing, vendor choice is still relatively limited. This guide will walk you through considerations and prominent solutions for any business size. MARKETING AUTOMATION BUYER S GUIDE 3

4 MARKETING MARKETING AUTOMATION AUTOMATION BUYER S BUYER S GUIDE GUIDE MARKETING AUTOMATION SOLUTIONS 1. SOLUTIONS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES As your business grows, you ll need to consider how to organize your marketing for a larger audience. Without a large marketing department, it may only take a few employees to run the entire show, so maximizing efficiency is key. Since you may not be able to call on an extensive IT department, you ll want to prioritize usability. Usability goes beyond the way the interface looks; more importantly, it refers to how easy it is for you to perform any given action. Finally, small businesses should prioritize a few core functions: marketing, landing page templates, CRM integration, and lead scoring. These four features work in a logical flow: You ll need landing page templates in order to easily create web pages for gathering customer information. Then, you ll want to set up campaigns to keep in touch and build trust. As users interact with your campaigns, you ll need lead scoring that automatically adjusts their score to indicate when they re ready to buy. Once they re ready to buy, you ll want to be able to pass prospects along to your CRM so your sales team can follow up at the right time. > TOP SOLUTION: ACT-ON Founded in 2008, Act-On supplies small businesses with an array of features usually reserved for larger, more expensive products. Features of particular note are Act-On s integration with Salesforce, its open API, and its overall ease of use. The fact that Act-On integrates with Salesforce makes for a great value addition to companies of all sizes. Even if you re not using Salesforce, Act-On includes access to its API as part of its standard package, so you can connect other third-party systems, or even your custom-built software, without paying for middleware. Perhaps the most appealing feature is the platform s consistent usability. Act-On allows any user to easily navigate the system and conduct powerful marketing campaigns with ease. The system does have drawbacks, however. If you re accustomed to using MailChimp or some other type of dedicated service provider, you ll find Act-On s builder less than impressive. The landing page templates can also be clunky, so if you focus on creating design-heavy landing pages, you may want to look elsewhere. 4

5 CASE STUDY: ACT-ON + COBBLESTAY 2 CobbleStay rents luxurious vacation properties worldwide. To best represent the company s service, CobbleStay s website is filled with gorgeous photography of the different locations for rent. This is great for drawing in traffic, but CobbleStay s sales and marketing team were having trouble determining if visitors were worth following up with, or if they were simply browsing. CobbleStay implemented a CRM to help better qualify prospects, but they quickly realized they needed marketing automation software to complement their CRM. After implementing Act-On, CobbleStay was able to easily create lead scoring logic that reflected each lead s interest based on their behavior. The result? Targeted s that more than doubled the industry open rate, and CobbleStay realized a 500 percent return on investment. COMPARABLE PRODUCTS ACT-ON INFUSIONSOFT ONTRAPORT LEAD MANAGEMENT Lead Scoring/Grading Automatic Notifications Lead Nuturing Segmentation SOCIAL Social Campaigns Social Sharing Paid Media Placement 5

6 ACT-ON INFUSIONSOFT ONTRAPORT CONTENT MANAGEMENT Builder/Campaigns Dynamic Content Landing Page/Form Builder SEO Optimization A/B Testing Webinar/Event Management ANALYTICS Revenue Analytics Social Analytics Web Analytics INTEGRATION API Data Import/Export CRM Social CMS MISC. Resource Library 6

7 2. SOLUTIONS FOR MID-MARKET FIRMS If you re a mid-market organization, chances are your marketing team has grown with your organization. Naturally, this increases your reach, which increases the number of leads and interactions. Growth in reach and audience requires more granular segmentation and personalization tools. Your audience won t grow the way you want it to without isolating and emphasizing the interests of each segment. In terms of marketing automation, this means you should look for products that offer powerful A/B, or split, testing tools and analytics. You ll need these features to better identify and speak to the needs of your audience. Also, look for products that can dynamically change content based on the characteristics of the prospect viewing it. For example, you could change the call to action on your landing page based on the position a prospect occupies in the sales funnel, or based on the industry they work in. > TOP SOLUTION: HUBSPOT Founded in 2006, Hubspot positions its platform as an all-in-one inbound marketing solution. With Hubspot, users can modify and test nearly any type of content. Additionally, Hubspot s content management and publishing features are intuitive, making it simple for even non-technical users to author and post blog content. Navigating from the blog view to the social media sharing view only requires a couple of clicks, and analytics are equally accessible. However, everything in Hubspot isn t simple, so they ve anticipated common technical challenges with a library of tutorials and a friendly, patient customer service team. Weaknesses of Hubspot include a steep learning curve for technical aspects of marketing automation, as well as a focus on B2B companies rather than B2C. Specifically, Hubspot s ecommerce capabilities and integration could be better, and certain actions could be more granular. Hubspot also runs on the higher end of the cost spectrum. 7

8 CASE STUDY: HUBSPOT + IMPULSE CREATIVE 3 Impulse Creative was looking for a way to scale their business, increase the lifetime value of their customers, and align their fragmented software suite. Before selecting Hubspot, the ad agency worked nearly exclusively on a per-project basis. After vetting different solutions, Impulse went with Hubspot to centralize their social, creative, and business processes. The result was exceptional. Not only did Impulse Creative grow its retainer base of customers by 6X, they also increased revenue by 3X. The agency even developed new services that they could monetize; they now offer consulting on inbound marketing, training, and full-service delivery. Hubspot has not only allowed our agency to embrace the inbound experience, but it has also opened up our agency to being able to transform the way we report progress to our clients. -Remington Begg, Chief Remarkable Officer, Impulse Creative COMPARABLE PRODUCTS HUBSPOT PARDOT SALESFUSION LEAD MANAGEMENT Lead Scoring/Grading Automatic Notifications Lead Nuturing Segmentation SOCIAL Social Campaigns Social Sharing Paid Media Placement 8

9 HUBSPOT PARDOT SALESFUSION CONTENT MANAGEMENT Builder/Campaigns Dynamic Content Landing Page/Form Builder SEO Optimization A/B Testing Webinar/Event Management ANALYTICS Revenue Analytics Social Analytics Web Analytics INTEGRATION API Data Import/Export CRM Social CMS MISC. Resource Library 9

10 3. SOLUTIONS FOR ENTERPRISE For large corporations, the most important features to look in marketing automation software will be reporting or analytics and integration. With the sheer amount of data being generated by your marketing campaigns, website interactions, and social media efforts, enterprise-grade reporting is necessary to justify marketing spend, calculate ROI, and predict necessary marketing investments. And given the amount of data you ll be managing, it s vital to make sure your data is easily transferred between all your systems. > TOP SOLUTION: MARKETO Designed to meet the needs of large enterprises, Marketo supplies users with a diverse feature set, all accessible through drag-and-drop menus, allowing easy navigation and quick campaign creation, report generation, or automation rulebuilding. Instead of having to utilize a third-party tool like Google Analytics to generate marketing reports, Marketo provides baked-in analysis of marketing performance and channel ROI. Marketo comes with a number of report templates, and users can drag-and-drop desired metrics to create custom reports, and even custom dashboards. model, allowing marketers to see every touch point for leads throughout their lifecycle. Additionally, Marketo makes it easy to copy entire campaigns using its clone function. Even if it s something as complex as a trade show, users can clone the event, replicating everything from the social media campaign to event materials. Marketo also integrates with a number of enterprise-grade platforms, like SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, and Salesforce. Also, Marketo comes at a high price point, but that may not be as large of a concern for enterprises. Marketo even has a multi-touch attribution 10

11 CASE STUDY: MARKETO + CITRIX 4 Citrix, a company that needs no introduction, had just obliterated its goal of $2 billion in revenue. However, this multinational company was still using an antiquated platform that relied exclusively on adhoc reporting and was only utilized by their North American team. To help the company reach its goal of $5 billion in revenue, Citrix chose Marketo to improve its lead management and nurturing. A centralized, global platform like Marketo provides Citrix with a leveraged investment that dramatically reduces the time and resources spent with third parties to set up and execute marketing programs. The result has been lower costs and a substantially higher marketing ROI. -Eva Tsai, Director of Marketing Operations, Citrix After implementing Marketo, Citrix s marketing operations become significantly more agile, responding to lead behavior on a day-to-day basis rather than week-to-week. As a result, the company realized a 23 percent increase in marketing contacts and doubled their lead-toopportunity conversion rate. COMPARABLE PRODUCTS MARKETO ELOQUA LEAD MANAGEMENT Lead Scoring/Grading Automatic Notifications Lead Nuturing Segmentation SOCIAL Social Campaigns Social Sharing Paid Media Placement 11

12 MARKETO ELOQUA CONTENT MANAGEMENT Builder/Campaigns Dynamic Content Landing Page/Form Builder SEO Optimization A/B Testing Webinar/Event Management ANALYTICS Revenue Analytics Social Analytics Web Analytics INTEGRATION API Data Import/Export CRM Social CMS MISC. Resource Library 12

13 INDUSTRY TRENDS BROADER ADOPTION Despite the surge of data and the increasing complexity of digital marketing, only an estimated 16 percent of B2B businesses are using marketing automation as of The lone industry where marketing automation has a solid foothold is Information and Technology, which boasts an adoption rate of around 65 percent. In other industries, the adoption rate is as low as 2 percent. Although marketing automation is undoubtedly complex, it offers a number of substantial benefits at reduced labor costs. Visit CTOAdvice.co to learn more about business technology solutions, read more professional guides, or subscribe to our newsletter. 13

14 SOURCES 1. Only 16% of B2B Companies Use Marketing Automation: Study. Ad Age. Last Modified May adage.com/article/btob/16-b2b-companies-marketing-automation-study/293410/ 2. Be Our Guest: Better Leads Drive Bigger Revenue for CobbleStay Vacation Rentals. Act-On. Accessed on December Impulse Creative Scales Business and Increases Retainer Client Revenue 6x with Hubspot Partnership. Hubspot. Accessed on December Case Study Citrix. Marketo. Accessed on December GUIDE PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS 5. Liberty Center by Shane Gorski under CC BY / desaturated from original Amgen Tour of California Prologue by Richard Masoner used under CC BY / desaturated from original 7. shoppers encased in amber. by Michael Davis-Burchat used under CC BY / desaturated from original 8. Cityworker1 by Yrhenwr used under CC BY / desaturated from original 9. London by Dave Collier used under CC BY / desaturated from original 10. waiting for the lights by Dave Young used under CC BY / desaturated from original 11. Gear by Sonny Abesamis used under CC BY / desaturated from original 12. windy city by Jo used under CC BY / desaturated from original 14