Marketing Automation - Gleanster Research CheatSheet:

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CheatSheats:
ÆÆ Concept CheatSheats: Explaining
the nuances of a key concept.
ÆÆ Technology CheatSheats: A
comprehensive guide to a technology.
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Technology Cheat Sheet
Marketing Automation
InsideaTechnologyCheatSheet
The Technology, Defined
What’s does it do?
Industry Jargon & Acronyms
Features & Functions
Pricing
Justifying the Investment
Before You Buy
Compliments of:
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available compliments of:
Gleanster is a new breed of market
research and advisory services firm. Its
analyst reports highlight the experiences
of Top Performing organizations; why they
invest in technology, how they overcome
challenges, and how they maximize the
value of their investments.
Marketing automation is one of the fastest
growing categories of technologies
supporting marketing. Marketing
automation was originally designed to
support a complex business-to-business
(B2B) sales cycle where the buying cycle
could stretch out for many months and
demand multiple touches by marketing
and sales. The tools help nurture and
qualify opportunities in the pipeline
to drive sustainable revenue growth.
For this reason, marketing automation
initially gained traction in software,
financial services, manufacturing, and
professional services industries. But the
nature of the technology and the ability
to automate highly relevant marketing
communications based on prospect
behavior makes it ideal for customer
acquisition and customer retention.
As a result, marketing automation
continues to gain traction in B2B and
B2C organizations of all sizes. However
conservative estimates would suggest
adoption is still low relative to the
number of organizations that would
see tremendous value from these
technologies.
Marketing automation was originally
designed to help nurture and qualify
prospects in a complex sales cycle. The
tools offer a unified platform to engage
customers over time and route highly
qualified opportunities to sales at just
the right time (through integration with
CRM). Core channels that are native
to marketing automation include email,
landing pages, social media, and web
analytics (in some cases mobile and
paid search).
The tools facilitate digital multi-channel
communications (mainly via email,
landing pages, website analytics, and
social media) with target audiences to
collectandaggregateindividualcustomer
data across different engagement
channels. What really makes marketing
automation tools compelling (and where
the “automation” really comes into
play) is the ability to configure business
rules that can trigger and initiate
communications with prospects at just
the right time, over just the right channel,
with just the right message, without
manual intervention from marketers. In
essence, marketing automation tools
help marketers automate more intimate
relationships to identify new revenue
opportunities, gain visibility into the
effectiveness of marketing spend,
and unite marketing and sales in the
common goal of maximizing profit for the
organization.
What can you do with
marketing automation tools?
Send outbound email campaigns to a
list of recipients. For B2B companies
marketing automation can fully replace
a stand-alone email marketing tool
from a feature function standpoint. In
a B2C setting with high volume email
requirements (millions of emails a year),
stand-alone email marketing tools are
generally more adept at handling large
volume email communications and
managing deliverability.
• Capture leads online via landing pages
created and hosted by marketing
automation.
• Configure campaigns that can
include multiple channels such as a
landing page, social media, and email
communications. These campaigns
can be configured to send over time
or delivered when prospects take
The Technology, Defined
What does it do?

Technology CheatSheet: Marketing Automation 2
COMPLIMENTS OF:
a certain action. Campaigns are
configured from a single interface so
performance data is also available
across the holistic campaign.
• Define business rules to take action
based on prospect behavior in an
email or landing page.
• Automatically deliver an email when
a prospect takes a specific action
through business rules inside of
marketing automation technology (for
example, the prospect clicks inside
an email, registers online, views a
webpage, or visits a landing page).
• Track and monitor prospect behavior in
social media channels.
• Prioritize leads by assigning an
aggregated score (lead scoring) to each
individual prospect in your customer
database. The lead score is aggregated
for every known prospect (and
customer) in a marketing datamart and
represents the individual’s “propensity
to purchase.” Prospect behavior can
add to or subtract from the individual
lead score which is updated in near real
time within marketing automation. For
example, if a prospect visits a website
multiple times in a given timeframe and
fills out a form, they would receive a
higher score than someone who just
visited the site once – this behavior
should differentiate a hot lead from a
tire kicker. When the prospect reaches
a specific score threshold business
rules in marketing automation tools
can automatically route the prospect to
CRM for sales follow-up.
• Out of the box integration between
marketing automation and popular
CRM providers give sales reps full
visibility into high priority leads routed
by marketing automation. Marketing
automation can also facilitate sales
alerts via email or trigger notifications
inside of CRM.
• Configure a landing page online that
captures information on new leads and
automatically adds them to a series
of onboarding emails to nurture and
educate them before reaching out via
sales.
In many cases our survey respondents
will indicate they don’t use marketing
automation and they are capable of
achieving some of the above bullets
without these tools. Disconnected and
fragmented tools may allow marketers
to accomplish some of the above, but
they probably can’t facilitate automated
business rules around nurturing the
relationship and routing leads to sales
AT JUST THE RIGHT TIME. Sales
has finite time and resources, so you
only want them focusing on the leads
that are real short-term opportunities.
Marketing automation provides the
most efficient and streamlined means
of building personalized cross-channel
relationships with prospects via whatever
channel they choose.
As such, the easiest way to tell if
marketing automation could improve
the pipeline is to talk with sales and
find out if reps really value the leads
coming from marketing. Are leads
educated? Do marketing and sales
bicker about each other’s performance?
That’s a sign of friction in the process.
Marketing automation can help shine a
light on poor marketing communications,
inefficient lead qualification, and sales
performance. It’s about accountability
and improvement in the right areas. In
most cases, the organizations that need
these tools the most don’t recognize they
have a problem until it’s too late.
A rose by any other name would smell as
sweet – so says Shakespeare. Marketing
automation tools have been known by
a variety of different names, but in all
cases the features are identical. The
marketing automation space is rife with
acronyms and confusing classifications.
Here are some you might run into when
researching marketing automaton
investments.
This is a fairly generic term and is often
used by email marketing and campaign
management providers, which further
confuses things. In general, marketing
automation tools have three defining
characteristics: they are multi-channel,
they offer lead scoring, and they tightly
integrate with CRM to bridge the gap
between sales and marketing.
Revenue Performance
Management
Primarily used by the larger players in
the space (who target large enterprise).
This term was used to spearhead the
first IPO in the industry and it stuck. It’s a
very appropriate term because the tools
aren’t limited to automating marketing,
they effectively optimize revenue
performance by aligning marketing
and sales efforts. But typically budget
holding individuals are marketers,
and most marketers don’t think of
themselves as revenue performance
managers. So most players still position
around the term marketing automation.
Gleanster covered the term in a full
Gleansight benchmark report knowing
that users may run into the concept and
therefore should know what it means
in the context of a purchase decision.
Revenue Performance Management can
be defined as the process of tracking
and optimizing all marketing and sales
contacts through the customer life cycle.
RPM systems provide a unified view of
the entire revenue cycle, from initial lead
generation through customer growth and
retention. This distinguishes them from
Industry Jargon & Acronyms

COMPLIMENTS OF:
earlier marketing automation products,
which were primarily limited to lead
acquisition and nurture.
Lead Management
Originally these capabilities were known
as lead management technologies
because they did just that, managed
leads for B2B organizations. But as
adoption spread across B2B and B2C it
became obvious a more generic term like
“marketing automation” was appropriate.
Lead Management = Marketing
Automation.
Digital Marketing Platforms
Digital marketing platforms are a
very generic way of describing any
platform that facilitates digital marketing
communications. It’s sort of like a blanket
way of describing any digital marketing
system; email marketing, campaign
management, marketing automation.
Campaign Management
Campaign management technology
primarily refers to business-to-consumer
platforms. These technologies typically
don’t have lead scoring capabilities
or integration with CRM. They would
manage any form of large or small
marketing execution across online and
offline channels from a centralized
platform.
Demand Generation Technology
Demand Generation and Lead
Management were used interchangeably
for a few years. Demand Generation
Technology = Marketing Automation.
Marketing and Sales Alignment
Only a handful of players positioned
themselves around marketing and sales
alignment. All marketing automation
solutions address marketing and sales
alignment so if you run into this term,
it’s largely a byproduct of marketing
automation. If used appropriately
marketing automation will help drive
accountability in marketing and sales.
Marketing Automation Platform
(MAP) – For a short while, MAP was
used interchangeably with marketing
automation.
Omni-Channel Campaign
Management
A platform for executing campaigns
across channels such as email, social
media, landing pages, mobile, etc. May
or may not include lead scoring; if it does
include lead scoring it’s the same thing
as marketing automation.
Cross-Channel Campaign
Management
A platform for executing campaigns
across channels such as email, social
media, landing pages, mobile, etc. May
or may not include lead scoring; if it does
include lead scoring it’s the same thing
as marketing automation.
Lead Classifications
The nature of marketing automation
demanded a holistic view of the marketing
and sales cycle. An new discipline has
emerged whereby leads, prospects, and
opportunities are granularly qualified to
determine where they are in the buying
cycle, what type of content to send to
them, and when they should be passed
to sales. As such, a handful of terms have
been widely adopted by B2B marketers
that ultimately classify a leads propensity
to buy.
Inquiries
These are leads or prospects with
unknown buying intent, a percentage
inquiries will be transformed into MQLs
using content generated by marketing.
These individuals are not ready to talk to
sales.
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)
– MQLs are leads that are ready to be
engaged by sales, but Sales needs to
accept or validate that they are educated.
Sales Accepted Leads (SAL)
Sales validates the MQL lead is qualified
and begins engagement.
Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)
The lead is validated as an opportunity
and enters the pipeline.
Buying Cycle
The buying cycle is different from the
sales cycle because it is focused on
demand generation. There are four
stages in the buying cycle: attention
(does the buyer know she has a
problem?), interest (does the buyer want
to solve the problem), desire (does the
buyer want to learn more about how you
can specifically help solve the problem),
action (the buyer is educated and ready
to talk with sales).
The Sales Cycle
The sales cycle is the series of stages
a typical customer goes through when
deciding to buy something. Usually
the sales cycle is described from the
customer’s perspective to articulate how
a company will engage at various stages.
Sales cycles are sometimes expanded to
include the buying cycle at the top of the
funnel.
The features within marketing automation
have largely become a commodity with
little differentiation from vendor to vendor.
What does change is the robustness
of these features. For example, every
marketing automation tool has lead
scoring capabilities, but some allow for
very advanced scoring criteria which
is designed for complex enterprise
environments while other solutions have
simple scoring configuration designed
Features & Functions

COMPLIMENTS OF:
for a company that is new to marketing
automation or too small to use more
advanced features.
Ask vendors for a trial of the system
before you buy, but be prepared to
leverage the system in full by adding
the tracking code to your website. The
tracking code is a tiny snippet of HTML
that goes on the website pages you want
to track within marketing automation.
Tracking codes will give you basic
information about website analytics,
but more importantly, they are used in
lead scoring algorithms to determine
when and how long prospects visit the
site. Usually, cookies will help track
anonymous visitor behavior and later
append this data with the user after they
identify themselves on a form.
In general, you are looking for a solution
that your organization feels comfortable
using (and of course one that integrates
with your CRM platform). Be sure to
get buy-in from everyone who might be
expected to engage with the platform (or
at least make sure the tool can sufficiently
meet their needs before making the
final investment). Ease of use is a very
subjective criteria and the tool will
generate a faster return on investment if
the full breadth of features are embraced
sooner rather than later.
Below is a list of common features you will
find in Marketing Automation solutions:
Email Marketing
Email marketing campaigns are a core
offering in marketing automation, and
to a certain degree email is the main
engagement channel for executing
campaigns. While marketing automation
tools offer multi-channel engagement
(via social media and landing pages)
these channels are typically used to
trigger email campaigns or capture
email addresses. Marketing automation
tools make stand-alone email solutions
obsolete and, as a result, you can
completely replace legacy email tools
with marketing automation. Users
can create templates to generate
personalized emails from the system or
import email lists from trade shows, print
advertising, CRM and other sources.
Emails can also contain trackable links
to system-generated landing pages.
• Email Templates – Most solutions come
pre-configured with email templates.
• Email Preview – View how your email
will render in various email clients and
mobile devices.
• Deliverability Monitoring – Vendors will
monitor IP addresses to ensure they
aren’t blacklisted.
• Certified Email IP – You can certify your
IP address to maximize deliverability.
• A/B Testing – Compare two variables
such as the subject, creative, or copy
by sending a test to a sub-population
of users.
• Dedicated Email IP – Usually you pay
extra for dedicated IP addresses.
• Delivery Tracking – Notifications when
emails are delivered and/or opened.
• Drip Email Marketing – Create a
time-based drip-marketing campaign.
• Image Validation – Ensure images will
display properly across ISPs.
• Link Validation – Verification that links
are working before emails go out.
• Offer Optimization – Create offers
and let the system determine which
offer is most appropriate based on
pre-configured business rules.
• Scheduled Emails – You can schedule
when emails will get sent based on day
of the week, time of day, etc.
• Spam Analysis – Check your emails
for spam before you send them.
• Triggered Emails – Trigger
communications based on user
behavior.
• WYSIWYG Email Design – A
WYSIWYG (What You See Is
What You Get) interface for simple
configuration of HTML. These things
tend to be temperamental in marketing
automation for some reason so expect
some level of testing and optimization
across email clients. Also, some will
only work in certain browsers such as
Firefox, Chrome, or IE.
Social Media Integration
Social media marketing as become a
popular addition to traditional marketing
automation offerings. First generation
social media capabilities included
the ability to add social sharing links
to outbound campaigns and track
engagement or segment based on user
interaction with social links. Users can
post content to social media, track social
media-generated traffic, help recipients
share content to their own social media
accounts, and monitor social media
conversations. More sophisticated
features include forms and personalized
ads within social platforms, using social
sign-on to capture more data, and
building more detailed profiles based on
activities, consumption, connections and
influence.
• bit.ly Link Generation – generate bit.
ly links for sharing and tracking from
within the marketing automation tool.
Very helpful when configuring twitter
campaigns or links to assets in emails.
• Facebook Publishing – Publish and
manage campaigns on Facebook.
• Poll Voting – Create polls or surveys
hosted and aggregated within
marketing automation.

COMPLIMENTS OF:
• Referral Offers – create referrals for
prospects for prizes and sweepstakes.
• Social Post Tracking – Tack click-
throughs on social links and add them
as triggers in lead scoring
• Social Profile Data – Automatically
updated Twitter, Facebook, and
LinkedIn profiles.
• Social Sharing Widgets – Links so
prospects can easily share your
content on their social networks.
• Social Sign-on – Sign-on with
Facebook account, Twitter account, or
LinkedIn account.
Landing Pages and Web Forms
Marketing automation typically offers
hosted landing page capabilities so
users can host branded landing pages
to capture prospect data via forms.
Forms are designed to collect prospect
information and marry this with cross-
channel behavioral response patterns
allowing the organization to identify
which prospects are ready to talk to
sales. These pages are hosted by the
marketing automation system and post
data directly to the marketing automation
database. It’s generally a good idea to
evaluate APIs and Javascript capabilities
on landing page features so landing
pages can be hosted from your website
domain.Thatway,paidsearchcampaigns
will drive traffic to your domain, instead
of marketing automation provider hosted
links to landing pages.
Web Analytics and
Behavioral Tracking
Marketing automation tools are capable
of tracking behavior of individual visitors
on the company website, typically using
a combination of cookies to identify
visitors and tracking tags embedded in
company web pages. You will have to
insert a small piece of html code on your
website pages that you want to track with
marketing automaton. Conventional web
analytics captures page and session
statistics but does not usually link these
to persistent individual identities/pages.
Marketing Automation typically doesn’t
replace a web analytics tool, but it will
provide additional visibility into how
leads are interacting and behavioral data
can be used in lead alerts to sales to give
sales visibility into exactly what products
and services a product is evaluating.
Lead Scoring
Marketing automation calculates one or
more scores to quality of a lead, primarily
to determine when it should be handed
to the sales department. Scores are
configured within marketing automation
using business rules based on a
combination of individual attributes (title,
company, location, etc.) and behaviors
(search terms, email responses, Web
forms completed, pages viewed, etc.).
Scoring formulas can be complex, so
special interfaces are needed to make
them easy to build, understand, and
maintain. Lead scoring is used to quantify
the prospect propensity to purchase.
Scoring thresholds determine what score
is necessary for a lead to be determined
as sales qualified automatically flagged
in CRM for sales follow-up.
• Behavioral Scoring – Assign numerical
values to prospect behavior to
aggregate the propensity to buy based
onbusinessrules.Thesecanbegeneric
or based on specific parameters such
as page views, form submissions, link
clicks, or demographic attributes.
• Detractor Scores – Some platforms
allow you to set negative scoring
weights to reduce the prospects score
for behavior that tells you they aren’t
really that engaged. For example, you
could set negative scores for prospects
that don’t visit for 6 consecutive
months.
• Progressive Profiling – This feature
allows you to collect a small tidbits of
data from prospects in exchange for
valuable information.
• Prospect Deduplication – Removing
duplicate entries in the system based
on a business rule.
• Prospect Routing – Automatically
route leads to sales reps or marketing
abased on criteria. This can also
trigger email alerts to notify individuals
of pipeline activity
Lead Nurturing
Lead nurturing features are addressed
in two ways and both typically
leverage email communications. Drip
campaigns are configured within
marketing automation to send based on
pre-configured time intervals. Trigger
campaigns send communications
based on prospect behavior. The
system can be configured for automated
engagement based on the unique needs
of a prospect. In conjunction with lead
scoring, communications can adapt
based on the prospect readiness to talk
with sales. The messages can change
in response to lead behaviors such as
Web page views and email opens. Lead
nurturing flows may be simple, linear
sequences or can incorporate complex
decision rules that send different leads
down entirely separate paths. Marketing
automation tools general allow users
to configure nurturing campaigns as
process flows (much like a Microsoft
Visio flowchart) where elements are
drag-and-drop on a blank canvas and
linked together. Flowchart campaigns
are common in more robust feature rich
marketing automation tools and allow for
complex multi-branch campaigns. Linear
campaign configuration is common
in tools that tout benefits like “simple
configuration of nurture campaigns”
whereby simple steps can be configured

COMPLIMENTS OF:
like a list.
• Blogging Integration – Create, post,
or capture leads using a blogging
platform.
• Campaign Diagram – Crate flowchart
campaigns on a “canvas” – this is
how you configure your campaign to
take certain actions based on time or
behavior.
• Dynamic Content Creation – Allows
sales reps to send dynamically
customized content.
• Event Scheduling – Integration with
calendars from within marketing
automaton.
• File Hosting – Upload store and track
white papers, images, and other files.
• Landing Page Creation – use a
WYSIWYG editor to create landing
pages and host them from marketing
automation.
• Landing Page Templates – Templates
for landing pages, sort of like templates
for email.
• Sales Alerts – Sales reps can
configure mobile alerts for notifications
on prospects activity.
• SMS Message Creation – Send SMS
campaigns from marketing automation
• URL Customization – Customize URLs
for your landing page.
• Web Form Design – Create forms to
collect information about your visitors.
CRM Integration
The marketing automation system
maintains its own lead database, but
exchanges updates with CRM so both
systems have consistent information.
Integration may also extend to
coordinating campaigns between the
two systems and sending alerts to sales
people about behaviors captured by
marketing automation.
• API for Custom Integrations – API
integration from within marketing
automation.
• Automatic Field Mapping – When
uploading lists, the solution will
automatically recommend field
mapping to streamline list upload.
• Bi-directional Sync – Data synchs
between systems and updates based
on variance analysis.
• Lead Assignment – Routing leads from
marketing automation to CRM based
on certain criteria.
• Role-BasedPermissions–Permissions
based on title, role, function, etc.
• Sync Frequency – Control how often
the system synchs. Some CRM
solutions have limited sync caps each
month.
• Unlimited Custom Objects – create
custom objects and add them to
reports, fields, etc.
• CRM Task Creation – Create tasks
for marketing automation from within
CRM. For example add users to a drip
marketing campaign, from within CRM.
• Custom Sales Dashboard – Usually
marketing automation comes with a
customizable dashboard for CRM. This
gives sales visibility into the aggregate
lead flow from marketing and overall
performance for the month or quarter.
Segmentation and List Building
Mostmarketingautomationtoolswillallow
users to segment the existing database
by using a rules-based filter criteria that
essentially narrows down the list based
on user selected filters. Some solutions
will allow you to create dynamic lists
which populate in real-time as users fill
out forms online. Dynamic lists are used
to feed automated nurture marketing
campaigns such as a newsletter, product
demo, or special offer.
Reporting
The systems provide information on
messages sent, responses received,
and profiles of the lead database. Many
also import sales results from the CRM
system and use these for Return on
Investment calculations. Some vendors
go further to provide reports tracking
leads through stages in the combined
marketing and sales “revenue cycle” from
initial acquisition through closed deals.
Anonymous Visitor Tracking
A handful of marketing automation
tools have integrations with solutions
that conduct reverse look-ups on IP
addresses that visit your website. This
gives you additional information on
unknown prospects. While it’s not always
personally indefinable, the information
could be used to inform sales reps that
someone from a particular company
likely visited the site which might give
you a leg up in the opportunity.
Pricingisusuallybasedonactivecontacts
in the system, but can also be based on
email volume, page visits, and support
requirements. So if you have a list of
200,500 prospects but you only market
to 5,000 of them, you would pay for the
5,000. Expect to pay about $300 per
month on the low-end and up to $3,000-
$4,000 on the high end. Marketing
automation providers have been
slammed in recent years by marketers
who abuse the systems to send email
to non-opt-in recipients which eventually
mean the marketing automation IP
address gets flagged and blacklisted by
ISPs. Unless you specifically negotiate a
dedicated IP address from the marketing
automation provider, you are using a
shared IP address with everyone else, so
Pricing

COMPLIMENTS OF:
one company’s bad email practices can
have a negative impact on all users. That
said, the providers will “warm up” new
URLs over time to manage deliverability,
but it comes at a price. So the more you
abuse the system, the more likely you
are to see price increases over time.
Most marketing automation providers
will ONLY let you market to opt-in lists.
That means no purchased email lists or
random list uploads from the system or
you risk receiving a warning or potentially
being kicked off the system. Your big list
of random names isn’t going to do you
a bit of good – response rates are less
than 1% on non-opt-in recipients in most
cases.
Choosing a Marketing
Automation Tool Based
on Your Company Size
Gleanster segments market size
for marketing automation into four
categories:
• Very small: 1-10 employee companies
• Small: 10-100 employees
• Midsize: 100-5000 employees
• Enterprise: 5000+ employees
Providers addressing the needs of very
small companies usually exclusively
market to these organizations and are
priced for accessibility by small business.
One major issue with small business
adoption is lack of time to use the system.
Setup fees are a common way marketing
automation providers ensure new users
actually get to the point that they have a
usable system, so marketing automation
providers will assign success coaches
to augment the adoption process.
At 10-5000 employees the systems
generally offer similar capabilities
but pricing gets a bit more expensive
for companies on the lower end of
this spectrum. The most robust tools
target enterprise marketers demanding
complex outbound communications and
a high volume of active contacts.
Marketing automaton has moved
beyond the early adopter stage. Best
estimates suggest that somewhere
shy of 20,000 companies are using
marketing automation today; that
actually represents a tiny subset of
the organizations that could benefit
from marketing automation. While top
reasons to implement still center around
performance (revenue, lead quality, and
cost reduction), many companies are
starting to wake up to the harsh reality
that marketing automation is increasingly
necessary to maintain competitive parity,
especially in industries where prominent
competitors have already embraced
marketing automation and are raising the
bar on customer engagement.
Marketing automation is designed
to centralize and align disparate
technologiesthatsupportemailmarketing,
web analytics, landing page hosting, and
social media engagement, so marketers
can build a more comprehensive view
of the target audience at the customer
level. Marketing automation tools not
only allow organizations to divest of
disparate marketing technologies, they
help aggregate customer data so it is
available for business rules that can
automate individual communications with
prospects and customers based on their
propensity to buy. It’s simply not possible
for marketers to manually deliver the
type of relevant and cross-channel
communications that can be automated
by a marketing automation platform.
More importantly, marketing automation
helps to bridge the gap between
marketing and sales to route leads with
a higher propensity to purchase directly
to sales.
• Common Metrics for Justifying
• Cost savings on legacy software
licenses
• Cost savings in time configuring multi-
channel campaigns
• Cost savings on campaign reporting
• Top Performers report a 10-20%
increase in email click through rates
• Top Performers report a 34% average
increase in revenue
• Top Performers report a 56% increase
in sales accepted Leads
• Top Performers report a 16% increase
in bid-to-win ratios
Are you ready for marketing automation?
Consider this:
• Do you have content that can be used
in nurture campaigns? Blog posts,
whitepapers, thought leadership?
• Do you have resources that can own
the ongoing optimization?
• Do you have an executive champion
who can oversee the rollout?
• Are marketing and sales leaders
willing to work together to optimize the
pipeline?
• Do you suspect your current processes
(stand-alone email or fragmented
systems) are insufficient at creating
relevant customer interactions?
• Does value a steady flow of leads?
• Are you educated on the nuances of
inbound marketing?
Justifying the Investment
Before You Buy

COMPLIMENTS OF:
The answer should be yes to most, if not
all, of the above.
How Do We Select a
Vendor That Is “Safe” and
Will Still Be Around?
With dozens of providers, it’s a bit
hard to tell which one is right for your
organization. The marketing automation
space has been very active over the
last decade with double digit adoption
growth. Most notably, two of the
largest players went public (Eloqua and
Marketo). There will likely continue to be
volatility in the space with acquisitions,
mergers, and more IPOs. The number of
companies actually adopting marketing
automation is in the thousands and the
number of companies that should be
using marketing automation is in the tens
of thousands. Our recommendation is
don’t put marketing automation on the
back burner to see what shakes out.
If your competitors are early adopters
of marketing automation, they are
establishing best practices and gaining
a competitive edge by adopting early.
It’s generally easy to switch providers
and the on-demand offerings mean no
capital expenditures are required. To
hedge the risk spend the extra money
to move marketing automation data
into your CRM tool to centralize all
customer interactions. Essentially make
an ongoing backup copy of marketing
automation data- that way if you do need
to switch providers, you have a history of
all interactions in CRM.
Is It Hard to Switch Marketing
Automation Providers?
Switching providers is often perceived
to be a challenge, but actually it’s
quite common. Research suggests the
average Top Performer has used 2 or
more marketing automaton providers. It’s
easy to import and export user data from
system to system. You will, however,
likely lose the historical performance on
campaigns, website analytics, forms,
and the time it took to optimize nurture
marketing campaigns in a system
becomes a sunk cost. Sometimes it’s
a good idea to switch just to change IP
address for outbound communications.

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