Are you running into limitations with your current marketing automation solution? Perhaps your solution is missing core functionality for cross-channel marketing or reporting. Maybe you’ve found that even basic workflows are inflexible and cumbersome for your team to create or replicate. It’s also possible that you’re facing reliability or support issues that hinder your success.  Last but not least, has the only person who understands how to operate the whole dang thing left the organization?

The fact is, if you don’t have key functionality, system reliability, or support resources, you simply won’t achieve the best results. Worse, you may be slowing down your entire business. If you don’t make the move to a robust, scalable platform, you’re in real danger of falling behind your industry peers and top competitors.

We’ve helped with the data migration and process improvement for many organizations.  Don’t get stuck with failing configurations and platforms.

This week Allinio had the pleasure of being a guest of AHA! Business Radio, and President Joe Zuccaro spoke of the need for businesses to be data literate and how to get started with Marketing Automation.  We’ve included the podcast here:

 

Today a brief but interesting report on Fox News called “US Military Teams Up with Silicon Valley to Revolutionize the Battlefield” is a great example of a military organization trying to find better ways to gather, store, analyze, share and act upon data.

The Defense Innovation Unit Experimental (DIUX), which is “non-dilutive” venture arm of the Department of Defense, fosters collaboration between the Armed Forces with tech companies in order to obtain tools to more effectively and efficiently execute missions.

The end of the article reveals the most important point – these technologies will help “to quickly answer that warfighter question: “To engage or not to engage?”

We in the private sector are using CRM and Marketing Automation and a variety of other digital tools to answer that question.  In business and sales, timing is everything.  What is you firm doing to make sure your salespeople are engaging at the right time?

Leave it to the genius marketers at Marketo to create an entertaining infographic about Marketing Automation. We saw this and wanted to share it with you.

What we like about it is that it introduces the “world” of Marketing Automation to the marketing arena in a fun analogical way.  As you visit various lands in the world, you will appreciate how diverse and complex this world is.  But the wonderful news is that the wonders of Marketing Automation can be learned by any Marketer with the drive to survive in the new business climate.  Take a few minutes to visit the “wonders” but don’t spend too much time wondering if you should get marketing automation.  Everyone we talk to who has it does not want it taken away…  Thanks to Marketo!

 

Creative Commons by ralphandjenny

 

If you were smart, you’ve spent all summer preparing for fall campaigns.  You are even smarter if you’ve adopted Marketing Automation for your campaigns.  While you take a break this weekend, enjoy yourself, knowing that come Tuesday your campaigns can begin to kick in without too much worry.  While creating content is a lot of work, the Marketing Automation is making your professional life a lot better.

If you’re not one of the lucky ones above, GET MARKETING AUTOMATION NOW so you can be ready to start 2014 and get the data that will help your organization sell better.

 

That is all.  Enjoy!

In October of 2012, email service provider ExactTarget announced the acquisition of Marketing Automation vendor Pardot for $95 Million.  Now, less than a year later, Salesforce annnounced the acquisition of ExactTarget for $2.5 Billion, outdoing Oracle‘s $871 Million acquisition of Marketing Automation vendor Eloqua, which had just IPO’d that August.  And let’s not forget Marketo, which recently IPO’d and as  of today has a market capitalization of $780+ Million.  What does this mean/what might happen next?

This is a brilliant move by Salesforce; the scuttlebutt of the industry is that Salesforce didn’t see a fit between it and Eloqua or Marketo, and the former was acquired by Salesforce’s arch-rival while Marketo probably always had its sights set on an IPO.  And despite its investment in HubSpot, that platform has come a long way but perhaps was not as advanced as Salesforce would have liked.

Salesforce obviously needed Marketing Automation, and Pardot had it; but Pardot was already acquired by ExactTarget, so Salesforce had to buy ExactTarget.  This is reminiscent of the late 1990s, when WorldCom wanted an IP backbone, and that backbone, operated by DIGEX, was already acquired by a mediocre competitive local exchange carrier known as Intermedia Communications.  WorldCom bought Intermedia and then got rid of the non-DIGEX assets.  Since the Pardot platform already had email capabilities baked into it, will Salesforce rid itselft of non-Pardot assets?

This also leaves a huge question mark for Marketo – who are possible buyers and how long will it last independently?  We think it won’t be a year before some bigger fish swims up and swallows it whole.  Will it get a handsome multiple or will it now be looked upon as less desirable?  While it truly has grown professionally, will a new owner allow it to be so aggressive from a marketing perspective?

And how about Act-On?  They have been up-and-coming in the Marketing Automation space, but will anyone ask them to dance in the near future as they grow?  The trio of Eloqua, Marketo, and Pardot have set the tone for what’s going on in the space, but will the lesser players be able to evolve and leverage these events?

One thing’s for sure – Marketing Automation has proven its value to the B2B Marketer, to the investor, and to Allinio.  It’s here to stay.  What else does anyone need to be convinced?

Pardot does it again: A great infographic that speaks for itself (we know, that’s what they’re supposed to do)… But personalization is easier said than done – it’s another painful but necessary phase of an organization’s transformation into a truly network-centric, data driven company.  The challenge to personalization is knowing what to personalize in your content and how to gather that granular data.  Progressive profiling on forms on your landing pages can facilitate that but it may take a while to fill enough fields in your records to make it worth while.  Start with things you can easily measure like gender, region of the country, industry, and even language.  From there you also have to create the content that will be served dynamically, so be ready to amass a lot of components, including images.

Nevertheless, Pardot gives you a good place to start understanding the importance of personalization better.  Enjoy!

 

Almost a year ago we blogged about the lack of Marketing Automation skills, which fit into a broader category of Marketing Operations.  Since then we’ve been helping companies go through the painful but necessary transformation to become network-centric organizations that capture “data-driven revenue.”  The main challenge is that we have not come far enough in getting people with the right skills in positions where they can make a positive impact on the top line.  Fortunately, Marketo recognizing the skills gap, has come out with its own certification program that facilitates proof of mastery of its complex platform; Without this knowledge, to really understand such a platform, you may have to rely on their extensive but non-linear online resources or go through a grueling trial by failure routine.

But someone has done that, how do you find them?  What is their value to your organization?  We recently caught wind of yet another company’s attempt to find a Marketo knowledgeable person and they presented this job description:

Marketing Operations Manager

The marketing operations manager will support the success of this Company’s sales and marketing programs by providing the information needed to make management decisions and the technology infrastructure needed to execute these programs. The marketing operations manager will work closely with sales and marketing leads to maximize the effectiveness of marketing and sales automation to drive leads through the marketing and sales processes.

This important position will report directly to the Chief Strategy & Marketing officer and will have significant exposure to executive management. Success in this role requires Salesforce.com and Marketo administration experience, excellent analytical abilities, and discipline and diligence to do things right.

Principal Responsibilities

• Document lead conversion and sales cycle processes and identify inconsistencies, gaps and areas of improvement.
• Implement lead-to-revenue process improvements in Marketo and Salesforce.com including creation of fields, workflows, assignment rules, reports and views for daily use by sales and marketing.
• Assist in training sales and marketing users and enforce correct use of Salesforce.com.
• Continuously monitor and manage data quality and information accuracy of contacts, leads and opportunities data in Marketo and Salesforce.com.
• Upload marketing lists and leads with appropriate data controls and cleansing.
• Support campaign setup and list pulls in Marketo and Salesforce.com.
• Setup email, campaign and program templates in Marketo for use by marketing team.
• Lead the integration of marketing infrastructure – Marketo, Salesforce.com, Web properties, WebEx – to support integrated marketing programs and proper lead flow.
• Setup and manage lead scoring and lead nurturing programs in Marketo.
• Provide weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly lead-to-revenue metrics to sales management, marketing management and the executive team.
• Analyze customer data, marketing data and sales data to support key decisions.
• Lead the marketing budget development process working with the Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer and marketing directors.
• Track budget on a weekly basis and support the procurement process.

Requirements

• 2+ years of Salesforce.com administration experience
• 2+ years of Marketo administration experience.
• Clear understanding of the lead-to-revenue process in an enterprise software company
• Experience integrating salesforce.com with other marketing tools such as Marketo and websites.
• Fluent in using Microsoft Excel for creating sales and marketing analysis and charts for executive management.
• Experience creating and tracking marketing plans and budgets with Microsoft Excel.
• Extremely detail oriented, meticulous and analytical.
• Strong interpersonal skills; ability to work well with sales management and other teams.
• Good PowerPoint skills.
• BA/BS in Marketing or Business preferred

Not bad, so what do YOU think?  How much should a person who can fulfill those tasks and meets the minimum requirements earn? $50K?  $60K?  $70K?    More?  How are your going to “create the demand” for people with those skills to work for you? We’d love to hear what you think.

(By the way, if this job decription describes YOU, we also want to talk to you because we have projects which require your skills…)

Allinio was at Marketo‘s 2013 User Summit last week.  Yes, it was fantastic.  Yes, Marketo is clearly doing some innovative things for its customers.  Yes, their platform is poised to proliferate more Marketer’s devices in light of its fortchoming IPO.  However, we’re not talking going to comment on Marketo directly today.  Rather, we are going to share with you the efforts of a company that is part of their “LaunchPoint” ecosystem of companies that add value to the Marketo platform…

Those big bashes at conferences do make for good networking.  While savoring mini-carnitas tacos, we had the pleasure to meet Josh Krasengor, CMO of Red Funnel Consulting, the developers of FatStax.  FatStax is a mobile app that basically records a salesperson’s use of a touch screen when presenting customers in a face-to-face scenario.  We had some questions for Josh to explain this useful too.

Allinio: How does your product/service allow Marketers to better gather, analyze, share, and act upon data?

Krasengor: Corporate marketers don’t have visibility into real-time sales activity in the field.  Additionally, field marketers and salespeople are often too busy to enter leads in a timely manner or document the details about face-to-face interactions with prospects. They also sometimes lack the appropriate tools. Consequently, organizations miss out on the opportunity to coordinate their sales and marketing efforts to earn optimal returns on their marketing automation investments.

FatStax Marketo Mobile Marketing Automation Integration allows organizations to eliminate the disconnect between sales and marketing operations when it comes to capturing leads and documenting sales engagement. With just a few taps on an iPad, field personnel can document leads and interesting moments, and send them to marketing automation, like Marketo in real time. At the same time, reps can send product information to a lead or respond to a lead inquiry via email.

Allinio: What is the value proposition of your product/service to Marketers?

Krasengor: This mobile marketing automation process eliminates the communication gap between field sales teams and marketing by giving field reps the ability to quickly and easily enter leads and interesting moments into their marketing automation tool directly from their iPads. Lead data can be instantly included in marketing automation nurturing programs and your organization can make the most of each acquisition dollar spent.  What you’re actually doing is extending the reach of marketing automation campaigns into the field, thus creating an onsite marketing automation channel

Let me spell out the benefits clearly for your readership:

1. Extend the reach of marketing automation campaigns into the field creating an onsite marketing automation channel
2. Improve collaboration between sales and marketing
3. Capture a larger number of interesting moments and gauge the level of product interest for more leads
4. Generate more MQLs
5. Start the lead nurturing process sooner
6. Target leads more appropriately
7. Track the effectiveness and usage of marketing assets to identify the content that best drives conversion
8. iPads are cool and much more effective way to engage prospects and sell

Allinio: What is a common misconception that the market has about your product/service?

Krasengor: The FatStax Mobile Marketo Automation Integration is a new concept that solves the business problem and fixes the disconnect between marketing in sales. There is not much misconception, however since it is a new concept, people are just beginning to realize the potential that mobility brings to sales and marketing. Mobility, via the iPad, opens a new channel for marketing automation. Right now, we want to educate marketers that mobility can fix the disconnect with marketing and sales and make your marketing automation programs much more successful. And, sales can be more productive with the right content on their iPads.

Allinio: What is the most successful or innovative use of your product/service by a business to date?

Krasengor: We just announced the FatStax Mobile Marketo Integration partnership and we have a few customers that are also Marketo clients, and some have a strong background with marketing automation, so there is big interest in this integration. We have existing customers with global sales teams using FatStax. Think about how many interesting moments those sales teams can be capturing in the field and sending to marketing for nurturing in a marketing automation campaigns?

Allinio: What is your greatest challenge as a marketing organization?

Krasengor: If you asked me this question two years ago, I would have told you the disconnect between marketing and sales around leads and CRM was my biggest challenge to solve. But now, since we use our own products and put our money where our mouth is, we don’t have this challenge. Now the biggest challenge as a marketing organization is communicating our solution to the world. When you have a powerful new concept like mobile marketing automation and are leading a new mobile revolution, you really have to educate people about what it is first and peak their interest before you run out and sell. Being a smaller company that is growing, this process takes time and is a challenge, but once people start to understand mobile marketing automation and see results, this challenge will minimize and it will become standard.

Allinio: Josh, thanks for the demo and explanation.  This fills a need out in the field and saves a rep time.  Rather than do something and log it or vice versa, you are doing both at the same time.   Plus you can’t count on the prospect to download things on their own time so this is a good way to see that it gets done, especially when it comes to initiating them into a nurturing program.    It will really become valuable when a company has a wide range of content that the rep can send based on buying role, buying stage, and some personal attributes.  Hopefully the reps will adopt this tool when they see how easy it is to use.  Good luck in the rest of 2013!

Sometimes we need to toot our horn – Yes, that’s an avatar of Allinio’s President, Joe Zuccaro (@joezuc) in a recent Marketo infographic about Marketing Automation.   Joe was approached by Marketo to contribute to this infographic and their latest publication, The Definitive Guide to Marketing Automation.  So we had to ask him:  How did a nice guy like you get such notoriety?

Joe responded, “I’ve been a Marketer – as a minion and as a manager.  I’ve been in Sales – carrying a bag, a smiler and dialer, a channel manager, and I’ve managed salespeople.  So I’ve seen the revenue side of the enterprise from many angles.  And if there’s one thing I’m passionate about, it’s measurement and accountability.  When I saw Marketing Automation in its fledgling state, I knew this was the thing that businesses desperately needed.  And so I have made it my passion to share these important tools with businesses.  Marketing Automation can give businesses information superiority over their competitors if executed correctly.  Or it can be a large timesink and money pit.  It’s my passion that has guided me into speaking out about Marketing Automation and networking with some of the leading platform vendors and the best of the Marketing Automation experts.”

Marketers need help in making the transformation into a network centric, data-driven organization and I want to help as many as I can possibly help.  I’ve known the folks at Marketo for years – they are trailblazers in the Marketing Automation space and I’m humbled to be included in this content with such great Marketing Automation thought leaders as Carlos Hidalgo (@cahidalgo) and Mac MacIntosh (@B2B_Sales_Leads).  I guess my passion got me in the group.”

We also asked what he thought of the Wizard of Oz theme of the infographic.

With a grin, Joe chimed in, “What fun! That’s got to be one of the most endearing movies of all time, and thanks to Marketo I have a closer connection to it.  And I’m glad they portrayed me realistically, even with my Jimmy Durante schnozzola, and didn’t make me look like a Flying Monkey.”

OK, Joe, you’re still a barrel of monkeys (pun intended), but let our readers review the infographic and see it’s actually useful: