B2B Marketing Obsolete, Really? (Part III)

[Posted by Laura Ramos]

At the end of October, Rebekah Donaldson, founder of Business Communications Group LLC, joined me for an informal discussion during a Forrester Teleconference about the future of the business-to-business marketing profession. We received some great questions from the audience after our talk. Earlier this week, I spoke again on this subject when MarketBright VP of Sales, Mike Pilcher, asked me to join Eric Rogge, VP of Marketing at Exalead, to talk about the future of both sales and marketing.

While Mike and I did our best to prophesy a grim future for our respective professions, Eric -- as Rebekah did about two weeks earlier -- helped to illuminate a way forward. In the end Mike, Eric, and I agreed that technology will be a key element (but not if applied indiscriminantly) to help marketing and sales shift from obnoxious bullhorn to respectful partner. Eric made three points worth underlining:

1) For marketing to evolve, we need to learn to listen more than we talk. We need to create listening posts throughout the Web that reveal what the market wants, prospects find interesting, and which problems are worth solving. Technology can help us do this, but not without human brains behind it to filter out the noise and tell us what's important.

2) Qualifying leads means more than answering the BANT questions. Early online interactions should prove to buyers that we are interested in doing business together, not just in hooking prospects and tossing them over to sales. Techology helps by tying lead scores to behavioral (as well as factual) information, but marketing has to be smart about where to take the conversation next.

3) Move fast, especially when you get it wrong. As Eric said, one "aw heck" can overcome 10 "attaboys", so it's important for marketers to move beyond the front of the pipeline to make sure customers are overwhelmingly satisfied -- and that sales doesn't take bad business. Great customer insight, fed by marketing-specific database information, helps marketers do this efficiently.

I wanted to thank Eric for providing this great insight and hope he doesn't mind my paraphrasing his contribution to the Webinar. Bottomline: the road out of marketing obsolescence is paved with open, truthful conversations and a true concern for our customers' future success. Technology will smooth the path, but not shorten the journey.

Tags: B2B marketing, social media, demand management :: Add to del.icio.us

Demandbase: A New Twist In The Lead Management Automation Market

[Posted by Laura Ramos]

In a recent survey of over 2100 IT professionals who buy or recommend telecom and networking solutions, we found buyers turn to peers and colleagues first, followed by vendor, industry trade, or professional Web sites, to inform their purchase decisions. In fact, 88% said Web sites were important in helping them decide what to buy. However, many tech buyers visit vendor Web sites many times to learn about and compare products, yet few register or leave evidence of their activity.

B2B marketers looking for ways to turn their Web sites into demand generation tools have some new solutions to consider.  Yesterday, Demandbase announced a new software suite to help marketers harvest passive traffic visiting Web sites. As part of a broader lead generation, on-demand platform, Demandbase offers a free, downloadable Web application built on Adobe AIR (one of 3 investors in an $8M round they also announced.) Demand Stream™ includes a Web widget that shows sales and marketing the names of companies visiting the Web site in near real-time.  Users can query this widget to find out more about these visitors and decide if they want to purchase full business contact information. I think the idea of an iTunes™ -like interface — and pay-as-you-go pricing structure — for viewing, sorting, and selecting B2B contacts is intriguing.  I worry that this tool only ends up helping sales pick out cold calls to make, and is not used by marketers enough to segment, collect, and improve their prospecting databases. The technology appears useful at both ends of this spectrum.

The lead management automation market, about which I blogged previously, continues to attract new players at a rapid rate. The main problems targeted are keeping the pipeline full of marketing-qualified leads and automating the process of nurturing demand not yet ready to buy.  One side of the supply helps firms generate demand — acquire leads in a sales-led “push” model, one that feels more focused on outbound communication. I would put Demandbase here along with firms like Active Conversion, Hubspot, iHance, Leadlander, Sales Genius, and Zoominfo. (I’m sure I forgot a few. Feel free to chime in if I did. Or disagree with the list…) 

On the other side, I see solutions more oriented toward marketing and enabling a “pull” model, one focused on letting prospects engage at their own pace.  I would put the lead management automation crop here: Eloqua, Loopfuse, Manticore Technologies, Market2Lead, Marketo, and Vtrenz.  I would also put another group — one more focused on helping marketing align with, support, and enable sales: firms like BrightMarket, einsof, Longwood Software, and Salesforce.com with their Saleforce Content offering, to name a few. 

When evaluating any technology to help manage demand, the short list of features should look something like:

1) Prospect data acquisition — helps with targeting, list building, list management, and data quality. Starting to see providers team up with data aggregators (Jigsaw’s name comes up here) to provide new sources of business contacts. Reverse IP look up appears to be the new thing here.

2) Online lead generation — provides or connects with email delivery, online advertising, search marketing adword tools, landing pages, registration/information capture, and offer testing. Among other stuff.

3) Online activity analytics — rather than examine overall site traffic and usage patterns like Omniture and WebTrends, these tools focus more on tracking what one individual or opportunity is doing.  Analytics include Web site visits, return visits, email opens, and click-throughs with an emphasis on letting marketing, insides sales, or account managers know when these activities happen.

4) Lead scoring — in a prior post, I make the case for quantitative scoring. And for including explicit (words) and implicit (deeds) information in the algorithm. I believe this is a key capability.

5) Routing/reporting — automation to help close the loop with sales and give marketing visibility into the sales pipeline. Must include some sort of dashboard for everyone to access internally.

6) SFA integration — ditto the above. Synchronizing prospect and opportunity databases is key. The data has to flow back and forth and not dirty up the pipeline with raw leads.

7) Lead nurturing —  automates follow up communication, is drip or event-triggered, and allows marketing to educate, persuade, and accelerate buyers as they move through the purchase process to the point where they become “sales ready.”

For those needing more capabilities to help with sales enablement or account-based communication, I would add:

8) Sales/marketing portal or workspace — includes account spaces/threaded discussions, sales call/activity prep, libraries for marketing content, task lists.

9) Collaboration — capabilities like wikis, sales-contributed content, voting and tagging.  Just makes it easier to manage all the stuff. Social networking stuff fits here too.

10) eLearning — checklists, directed sales tools, self-serve courses, quizzes, certifications, etc.  Stuff to help sales management get the new guys/gals up to speed.

Ok, that’s enough for now. I’m sure this post will generate its fair share of comments, outrage, and controversy. All thoughts are welcome!  I’m gearing up to write a market overview about this space, so hearing from you early in the process will help to shape that research.

Tags: B2B marketing, lead management, marketing technology :: Add to del.icio.us

B2B Lead Management Market Heats Up

[Posted by Laura Ramos]

Since the start of this year, I’ve been receiving a boatload of briefing requests from companies wanting to show me their lead generation and management solutions.  Most recently, Marketo just announced their lead management solution. While honored, I also find reviewing these solutions confusing because there is a lot of variation in the product presentations and overlap between categories.  And it’s not clear to me if lead management automation deserves to be a separate category or to be subsumed as part of the broader marketing platform. (I know Suresh Vittal includes lead management as a component of his enterprise marketing platform. But does the B2B need the same platform components as B2C?) Here’s how I see it and I’d like to hear your views as well.

There are four primary buckets of technology solutions aimed at solving the “how do I make lead generation activities more effective?” problem:

1) Web analytics – typically the stronghold of companies like Coremetrics, Omniture, and WebTrends, the analytics area bleeds over into lead management as companies go online to generate demand.  Many of the marketing automation companies have added some fairly sophisticated analytics to monitor prospect’s online behavior and help marketers qualify and score them based on Web site visits, registrations, and downloads.

2) Database services – powerhouses like Dun&Bradstreet, Harte-Hanks, Acxiom, Equifax, infoUSA, and Merkle dominate this category, but B2B marketers tend to think of them more as list generators than providers of a broad spectrum of strategic data management to direct mail execution. My point: B2B marketers are looking elsewhere for help generating demand.

3) Marketing automation – lead by firms like Aprimo, Unica, Oracle/Siebel and SAS, this category is at the core of what Forrester calls the Marketing Technology Backbone.  The problem is: these platforms are heavy on campaign design, execution, and reporting and light on lead management.

4) “Pure play” lead management – this group is lead by Eloqua, but there are a LOT of firms throwing their hat into this ring including Vtrenz, Hubspot, Manticore, Market2Lead, Marketo, LoopFuse, einsof, iHance, Precience, among many others. (That I’m sure to hear about them since I know I’ve missed adding many to this list.)

Here’s the problem. There are at least 4 amorphous groups of solution providers also setting their sights on this space:

1) Lead generation services or tools – Because this category contains both service providers (that look more like agencies or telesales outsourcers) and software as a service vendors, there are probably more than I could possibly name.  Recently, I’ve heard from companies like Bulldog Solutions, InsideView, Jigsaw, netFactor, Reachforce, PointClear, Genius, Leads360, among others. Folks, at less than 20 employees, many of you look more like boutique agencies than true technology providers. Positioning yourselves as “lead management” does not help differentiate what you REALLY do.

2) Email services – Julie Katz at Forrester writes about this group.  The lead management vendors are developing one-to-one email capabilities that help sales people be more consistent and productive.  In B2B, it’s not about batch-and-blast acquisition as much as it is about using email to continue a conversation.

3) Search engine marketing services providers – Shar VanBoskirk covers this market, but I’ve found companies like Reprise Media, IMPAQT, iCrossing and iProspect doing a lot more to help B2B marketers understand how to turn search optimization or paid clicks into qualified leads. Tools that analyze who’s clicking – and help B2B marketers make heads or tails out of Google’s analytics – are bleeding over into the lead management space.

4) Online portals – I know, this is a broad category.  But I’m thinking about firms like Business.com, TechTarget, Buyerzone, and a ton of others who syndicate content, host catalogs, attract eyeballs, and offer to “sell” these leads.

Whew!  Lots of stuff, huh? So here’s the two big questions:  When do you use which? (or a combination of the choices?) And will the lead management market continue to grow in addition to – or despite – the plethora of offerings hovering around it?

My bet is on lead management growth because B2B marketers need to fully embrace online marketing as their primary way to engage and educate buyers. They need a platform that fits together with their CRM/SFA systems but separately helps them to identify and sort the best leads from the rest and to nurture those not yet ready to buy.  B2B marketers also need systems that help them align sales activity and marketing messages, monitor marketing’s impact on the pipeline, and close the loop on closed deals.  I think the lead management platforms hit directly on these problems and will shift marketing’s role from filling the pipeline to managing the customer lifecycle.

Tags: B2B marketing, lead management, marketing technology :: Add to del.icio.us

Independent ESP e-Dialog Makes Out Well In Acquisition Deal

[Posted by Julie Katz]

About a month ago, I completed a Wave of eight email service providers, a point-in-time snapshot of ESP capabilities and strategy. Blink your eyes for just a second though, and the market shifts. I just got word that previously independent ESP e-Dialog has been acquired by e-commerce and multi-channel solutions provider GSI Commerce. The news is not a complete shocker, since e-Dialog has been looking to sell and satisfy investors for a while now. Teaming with GSI Commerce will help e-Dialog extend its foothold in the retail space. Here are some details of the deal. e-Dialog:

• Cashes out for $157 million. That's a whopping expression of the value of email, considering e-Dialog's 12-month EBITDA (Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) of $6.5 million.
• Retains its independent status. e-Dialog will be an independent operating unit of GSI. The company won't move its headquarters. And, though e-Dialog claims there won't be an impact to its technology because, unlike mergers of other ESPs, GSI does not have a proprietary email platform, both sides will need to work hard at integration.

So all looks good and rosy, as acquisitions do on the first day. But some questions remain for me:

• What does this deal mean for e-Dialog's non-retail clients? The company built a solid reputation in the travel and publishing industries, so what advantages does this acquisition bring them?
• What impact will there be on e-Dialog's characteristically nimble approach to solving clients' particular email issues through innovative technology solutions? And what of its analytics program?
• Will e-Dialog's small email business get lost in the behemoth GSI and suffer the fate of other independent ESPs that got swallowed up in the M&A craze of a couple years ago?

I give them a year to adjust and then, well, it'll be just about time for another Wave.

Do Interactive Marketers Actually Buy Technology?

I was just talking with Suresh Vittal on my team about how to project interactive marketer investments in technology.  In some cases in the US Interactive Marketing Forecast, we include technology investments in our projections of marketer spend on a given channel (for example, email marketing spend includes investment in email message delivery).  But for the most part, the IM forecast is based on current and projected media spend.

So the conversation Suresh and I had was to think through enough assumptions, to estimate how much marketers invest in technology. 

I'll tell you, my overall hypothesis is that there is not significant investment in technology among interactive marketers today.  I certainly support that IMers spend on agency fees and professional services engagements.  But outside of ad serving and email delivery, what technologies are they buying to aid their interactive program management?  I'm not talking here about content management tools, or commerce platforms associated with managing a Web site.  I mean marketing management packages used to create, analyze and execute interactive/online programs.  It feels to me that most of the interactive marketing technologies that are used, are accessed through a marketers' agency relationship (and likely included as passed-through fees that are paid to the agency).

As interactive marketing investments grow, I see mid-market firms spending more on self-service technologies.  But I think enterprise firms will continue to leverage services relationships instead of packaged solutions for their IM program management and execution. 

I'm interested in writing something on yield management tools and ad serving in the coming months.  So I'd love to hear your thoughts on how interactive marketers leverage technology (sounds like a funny little paradox, I suppose.  But you know what I mean!).

Omniture continues to extend its execution capabilities

Omniture acquires yet another solution to complement a growing application set for interactive marketers. Last week Omniture announced that it was acquiring Offermatica. I can’t say that I am surprised by the announcement. Omniture had signaled its intent to aggressively pursue its vision of an integrated solution for online marketing with its acquisitions of Touch Clarity and the announcements of SearchCenter and the Genesis platform in the last year. At that time we thought it was a good idea but Omniture needed to – 1)integrate multiple acquisitions 2) handle a large and growing network of partners and 3) learn to compete in new markets. While these imperatives remain true today, two additional themes become particularly relevant. The need to: 1) harmonize the platform around one single data collection and optimization engine and 2) convince the partner network that they intend to collaborate on integrating their tools. The second theme is particularly challenging – What signals is Omniture sending its burgeoning partner network when it cherry picks point solutions like Offermatica? How do they execute an aggressive acquisition plan while nurturing relationships with other innovative optimization and online marketing partners? Their chances of succeeding as a online suite will depend on their ability to rationalize the redundant technologies and extend their solutions organically and through the partner network.

Tags: interactive marketing, optimization :: Add to del.icio.us

Brand monitoring update

I'm not going to be updating Forrester's Brand Monitoring Wave in 2007 - although many companies have emerged from the woodwork, most of the buyer's side appears to remain in education mode.  However, in certain industries like pharmaceuticals, brand monitoring solutions are in wide use and treated like marketing mix models - that is, no one wants to talk about their "secret weapon."

So until the Wave gets updated, we've created a Brand Monitoring Vendor Product Catalog (client access required).  I say we because Sarah Glass, a research associate on our team, did most of the work to put it together.  Information on 27 vendors has been included; we identified over 40 potential participants.

If you are reading this post and would like to be included, please let us know.  (Every participating vendor gets a copy.)

Moreover, if you are a client-side marketer and would like to share your story - on or off the record - I'm all ears.  I have heard a lot of talk about client attrition from "the market leaders" but few clients to go public about it.

Vtrenz: Good Move Or Not For Silverpop?

Earlier today, Silverpop announced their acquisition of marketing demand management start-up Vtrenz. My colleague Shar VanBoskirk and I had the opportunity preview this event with Bill Nussey and Will Schnabel. From a B2B marketing perspective, this combination holds promise because email and lead nurturing make good bedfellows. In B2B, email is a low cost way to continue prospect conversations and it gives marketing a direct channel for incubating buyers during longer B2B purchase cycles.

Because there's not a lot of overlap in technology or customer bases here, the prospects for a richer, more rounded offering are good. However, this combination is not unique: Eloqua also offers email, lead warming, and prospect analytic solutions. So -- other than giving Eloqua some stiffer competition -- will this merger matter in the greater email market?  Probably not, but I'll let Shar weigh in on that question.

To make this deal stand out, Silverpop needs to:

+ Demonstrate solid product integration. Buyers expect software that comes from one company to share common user interface and administration features. Also to work seamlessly with incumbent sales automation systems. Silverpop needs to adopt the clean UI and user experience Vtrenz brings to the marriage across both offerings to make the union stand out in the market.

+ Get two separate sales teams to successfully cross-sell. Sure, both products optimize around communications delivery, but customer acquisition activity is quite different from lead nurturing. I'm not convinced the buyers or leverage points inside either installed base are close enough to make the cross-sell a slam dunk. A few solid testimonials here would alleviate my skepticism.

+ Most importantly, show that they can scale from high-volume, batch-oriented email delivery models used for customer acquisition down to the lower volume, ad hoc delivery that lead nurturing programs require. Lead development automation works when telemarketing/inside sales uses customer behavior and engagement to drive the process, aided by tools that make it easy for them to continue the conversation, make appropriate offers, and track prospect responses.

Anyone else have a different perspective on this? Feel free to post your comments about how this merger matters to you.

Tags: B2B marketing, email marketing :: Add to del.icio.us

Understanding Contact Optimization Technology

Yesterday was a banner day for me in my young career as a Forrester analyst - my first research piece was published. It's a marketing technology brief titled "Understanding Contact Optimization technology." So what is contact optimization? We define it as a mathematical approach to determining the best mix of messages for each customer in order to maximize marketing objectives while satisfying business constraints. Put simply - this technology is for high volume direct marketers intent on transforming themselves from a product centric organization to one that emphasizes customer need.

Here is the executive summary -

Marketers place contact optimization technology near the top of their wish lists. But we think there's a disconnect. Contact optimization is suited for high-volume direct marketing organizations that face the unenviable task of reconciling millions of combinations of customers, offers, and channels with customer analytics, business rules, and contact policies to deliver the optimal message to each customer. Firms considering contact optimization must recognize the far-reaching impact of the technology, and manage the business process and cultural change needed to support widespread adoption.

My next piece is focused on defining marketing optimization and I will follow that up with research focusing on the future of enterprise marketing applications. The market has long talked about an integrated marketing platform. We call it the marketing technology backbone. I would love to hear your thoughts about innovative marketing technologies that belong on the backbone as well as requirements that, in your opinion, remain unfulfilled.

Tags: direct marketing, contact optimization :: Add to del.icio.us

Salesforce.com Launches Salesforce for Google AdWords

Last week, Salesforce.com announced another acquisition from within its AppExchange network. Kieden which was founded in January 2006 – yes, 2006! – is now Salesforce for Google Ad Words. More power to the four guys that founded the company! They built an app that allows users to create, manage, and measure search engine marketing campaigns within their Salesforce application. The app integrates directly with Google and results are tracked within Salesforce. Salesforce is currently pitching a free 30-day trial offer and plans to offer the service at $300 monthly.

   

This is great new development that will undoubtedly be useful to many Salesforce customers. But, does Salesforce pose a threat to all of the marketing technology specialists out there? I think not. At least not in this decade.

    

Customer data – organized in a manner conducive to slicing and dicing, segmentation, and targeting – is crucial to marketing. Moreover, marketers agree that they need more comprehensive technology solution that helps them: 1) integrate marketing programs across channels and lines of business; 2) optimize their customer contact strategy and customer interactions; 3) improve collaboration program efficiency; and 4) measure performance across the marketing mix. We call this the Marketing Technology Backbone. Salesforce.com does currently – and appears to have no designs to – provide this framework for marketing.

    

But, nonetheless I find the Salesforce AppExchange fascinating and believe it offers a critical lesson that current marketing technology leaders would naïve to dismiss lightly. That is: Salesforce.com has dramatically increased the software innovation cycle. Traditionally, new technologies emerge, they achieve some measure of success, they are acquired, and then the nightmare to integrate the platforms ensues. Best case, the process takes five years. Did I mention that Kieden was founded in January 2006! Now, with the acquisition, there’s no integration required -- a little rebranding and that’s it.

   

Marketers are always looking for the next thing that will help them differentiate the way they approach their audience. In my opinion, the vendor that figures out how to provide a framework that integrates the marketing process while enabling marketers to “plug in” new features, functions, and extensions will ultimately win the marketing technology race. What does this vendor need to “own”? The customer data layer, a consistent way to define and roll up marketing activities, campaigns, and programs, the marketing plan, the marketing calendar, marketing measurement, and so forth. All of the design and execution tools that leverage the customer data can fall within “the network.”

   

So what marketing technology firms are taking this approach? Few to date. One example is Omniture which announced its Solution Network back in March. But, in my opinion, this is the future and it gives hope that The Marketing Technology Backbone may, some day, be a reality.

      

Thoughts?

Tags: Salesforce, Search Engine Marketing, Google, Enterprise Marketing Management, Omniture :: Add to del.icio.us