Archive for the ‘LoopFuse’ Category

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Make Marketing Intelligence Actionable

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

And now the fifth way marketing automation provides job security for marketers from 5 Ways Marketing Automation Provides Job Security for Marketers.  Below is the excerpt from the white paper:

“5. Make Marketing Intelligence Actionable

For most marketers, the challenge with channel proliferation is not a lack of data, but a lack of data integration.  Disparate systems (email marketing, web analytics, landing page creation tools, digital asset management, and CRM) often fail to bring critical information together in one centralized location.  Marketing automation tools should integrate with CRM solutions (e.g. Salesforce.com) to deliver a centralized source of multi-channel analytics for one version of the truth in simple, drill down dashboard reporting designed for marketers.

Website Analytics allow organizations to quickly assess website trends with accurate statistics covering a wide-range of metrics. This type of real-time insight is critical to marketers so they can identify areas of improvement and better tune the website to increase message response.  Likewise, marketers can measure response and engagement by incorporating call to action website links in email campaigns.

It’s also important for marketers to track the success of their email campaigns, in real-time, to make adjustments or additions to a campaign based on user response. Marketing automation can provide comprehensive reporting across CRM and marketing tools, so marketers can see a complete picture of recipient activity, email bounces, bad email data, link activity, geographic breakdowns, as well as associated opportunity. Comprehensive reporting allows marketers to adequately judge the effect of marketing campaigns on real dollars.

Job Security Scorecard:

  • Drill down reporting gives marketers the confidence to say “We have that information” instead of “I’m not sure” when the CFO or CEO ask for more granularity on trends in the data.
  • Centralize prospect behavior across marketing channels.  Marketing becomes an offensive asset in the organization. Rapidly adapt to changes in the market and streamline marketing campaign execution.
  • Real-time dashboards standardize key metrics: funnel analysis, call-to-action, click-through rates, the number of qualified opportunities, website performance, and collateral downloads.”

Download a free copy of 5 Ways Marketing Automation Provides Job Security for Marketers

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Posted in CRM Integration, LoopFuse, Marketing, Marketing Automation, OneView, Web Analytics, eMail Marketing | Comments Off

Yammer – keeps them coming back

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

Yammer is a secure Twitter (and more) for your internal organization. We have been trying it out and one feature I really like is the occasional email reminders letting me know the activity going on within our account and the gentle coaxing to participate. The emails are short and to the point and usually start off with “We haven’t heard from you lately.” Then it provides some ideas for posting and a link to login.

Although I’ll admit that the majority of the time I delete the emails, Yammer is persistent, yet doesn’t nag. Eventually, Yammer catches me between tasks and the reminder works as I’ll log in to catch up and the ideas for posting give me a quick starting point. I’m not a Yammer addict yet, but with respect to email reminders, they’ve certainly done a great job.

There are two interesting aspects of Yammer’s lead nurturing program here.  First, this program is a response to a lack of activity on an account.  This is a subtle, yet important, distinction.  The vast majority of nurturing programs are reactive; a user is enrolled into the program as a result of submitting a form, visiting a landing page, etc.  In essence, this program must be running continuously and must check for inactivity on an account.  The second interesting aspect of this nurturing program is that it must take into account activity data that it assumably stored in a separate application database (my next post will show you how to do this in LoopFuse OneView).

Does your organization automatically engage with users/prospects based on inactivity?

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Easy gets Easier with the SalesForce.com Wizard

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

A recent Forrester report on Marketing Automation vendors places total marketing penetration somewhere between 2-5%. The report and its estimates point to several problems that contribute to lower adoption rates, including a lack of “innovation and easy-to-use features“. This is not something that has gone unnoticed by LoopFuse and other vendors in the industry; yet the vendor reponse to the problem is often worlds apart.

Other vendors try to answer the problem with difficult-to-configure/use/maintain products, yet back them with the promise of professional services designed to get you up-and-running quickly. This is a mirage that acts as a leech to your marketing budget, thus removing the incentive for the vendor to ever innovate. Certainly this Enterprise 1.0 way of conducting business (i.e. enslaving customers) is contributing to the slow pace of adoption during these lean times.

Our answer to the problem is simple – LoopFuse seeks to make adoption painless, by innovating on features and ease-of-use and NOT throwing a bus-load of $500/hr consultants your way. The choice could not be clearer in that LoopFuse OneView empowers marketing and sales with a full-featured simple-to-configure/use/maintain product that doesn’t require hand-holding or a monthly chunk of your marketing budget. We have the incentive the innovate as we have to win your business every month.

To simplify the on-boarding process for trial users and customers, our latest LoopFuse OneView 3.21 release included the easiest-to-configure SalesForce.com integration method in the industry. Our new SalesForce.com Integration wizard uses a 4-step process to integrate OneView bi-directionally with SFDC. The entire process takes you from establishing a connection between the two systems, to importing all of your Lead Records within minutes. That means, within a few minutes of signing-up for the free trial, you are ready to send an email campaign or build a nurturing program to all of your prospects/leads.

For more information on the SalesForce.com integration wizard, click here.

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Email Open-Rates Lie

Monday, November 16th, 2009

Email marketing is an industry that survives based on the ability to measure the effectiveness of email campaigns.  This is accomplished through some technical wizardry that leverages two primary features of HTML-based email : images and hyperlinks.  In order to track if/when an individual email recipient actually opened the email campaign, the recipient’s email client must display images.  Unfortunately, having images enabled in your email client can result in embarrassing situations such as opening what looks like a legitimate email in a business meeting only to find that it is a spam containing pornographic images.  As a result, more and more email client programs (Outlook 2007, Gmail, AOL, Windows Live Mail) come with images disabled by default.  As more email client programs adopt this default setting, email marketers will see fewer and fewer “opens” in their campaign analytics and may even misinterpret the trend as a reflection of their campaign quality when it is simply a byproduct of technical evolution.

It’s all Relative

Does this mean that email marketers should ignore the open-rate statistic when evaluating their campaign performance?  No, but it does mean that the open-rate is only meaningful as a relative measurement of whether your email was compelling enough for people to open.  For example, it’s valid when doing A/B testing to compare whether email subject A or email subject B was more compelling (but, of course, only if the segmentation of groups A & B is completely random).  But it is not valid as a measurement of this year’s total email open-rates versus last year’s.

Nurturing Gone Awry

Another dangerous practice is using “email open” events as conditions inside of your lead nurturing programs (in LoopFuse we refer to these as leadflows).  I have had two new LoopFuse customers propose leadflows which take different paths depending on whether the recipient actually opens a particular email.  However, if the recipient has images disabled there is simply no way for the leadflow to determine the correct path.  This can create a confusing or even frustrating experience for their prospects as a result.  If you want to react to a prospect’s email interactions, a click-through is much more reliable.

In an era of analytics overload, it’s understand exactly what the data is telling you, not just what it says.

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Posted in LoopFuse, Marketing Automation, OneView, eMail Marketing | Comments Off

What's in Your Wallet?

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

We re-launched the LoopFuse.com website a little while back with some new whizbang graphics, product details, case studies, etc.  The web team did an amazing job (thank you!), but what I am particularly pleased with is the return of our pricing page.

Having been in the software business for the last 15 years, I’ve always been amazed at how few of the “enterprise” software companies provide pricing on their websites.  Instead, you were forced to call a commissioned salesperson who would reveal only the price for a specific configuration you specify (as if their pricing structure were a matter of national security) which included a “one-time only discount” that expires at the end of this month!  Feels more like a trip to a used-car lot than a serious business solicitation.  This pricing model at one of my former employers was casually referred to as the Capital One model because the price you were quoted was based on the popular Capital One tagline “What’s in YOUR wallet?”

Why are some companies nervous about sharing their pricing information publicly?  Because knowledge is power when it comes to price negotiation.  The more someone knows about the prices paid by other similar (and dissimilar) customers, the chance of them overpaying drops dramatically. Some companies show highly inflated list prices, but with the full knowlege that due to deep discounting none of their customers will never pay full price (think used-car dealerships).  These practices are left over from the days when information hiding was helpful in extracting every possible penny from a customer.  However, the advent of communities, the social graph, and technologies such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook have enabled prospects to quickly and easily connect with existing customers of any vendor.

So why do companies still use these ethically challenged tactics?  The same reason that pawn shops and payday lenders still exist.  To exploit an imbalance of power or knowledge with the customer for financial gain.  So much time, effort, and money is wasted in corporate America today as a result of this game.  Demand more from your vendors.  Demand fair, transparent, public pricing, starting with your marketing automation provider.  Too much to ask?  We think not.

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We're Hiring: 3 Customer Support Specialists

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

LoopFuse is looking to add 3 Customer Support Specialists to its growing ranks of happy team members. Positions are to be at our home office in Atlanta, GA.

… and without me yammering on about how awesome it is to work here ;-) , I give you the blurb straight from our HR Dept….

Job Description
Customer Support Specialist

Summary :
Provides technical assistance and training to customers by performing the following duties and responsibilities:

  • Provide client support and technical issue resolution via E-Mail,  and phone.
  • Provide training to clients in the use of the LoopFuse OneView system and its integration with client websites and CRM systems.
  • Obtain general understanding of Marketing Automation, EMail marketing, Lead Nurturing, CRM software, and operations related to company offered services.
  • Manage the customer on-boarding process.
  • Interact with customers and the community via the LoopFuse Community Portal.

The Ideal candidate will also possess the following skills:

  • Able to work independently and efficiently to meet deadlines.
  • Able to promptly answer support related email, phone calls and other electronic communications.
  • Self motivated, detail-oriented and organized.
  • Experience with E-Mail marketing systems and E-Mail desktop clients.
  • Proficient with SalesForce.com administration.
  • Proficient in Internet related applications such as E-Mail clients and Web Browsers.
  • Excellent communication (oral and written), interpersonal, organizational, and presentation skills.

Education and/or Experience :
Four year certificate from college or technical school; or three to six months related experience and/or training; or equivalent combination of education and experience.

Language Skills :
Ability to read, analyze, and interpret general business periodicals, professional journals, technical procedures, or governmental regulations. Ability to write reports, business correspondence, and procedure manuals. Ability to effectively present information and respond to questions from groups of managers, clients, customers, and the general public.

Reasoning Ability :
Ability to solve practical problems and deal with a variety of situations. Ability to interpret a variety of instructions furnished in written, oral, diagram, or schedule form.

Work Environment :

Work hard. Play hard. (Ok, so I added that part in. Don’t tell HR) ;-)

Please send resumes and cover letters to winners@loopfuse.com

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What is LoopFuse?

Monday, August 17th, 2009

I was recently asked to describe ‘What is LoopFuse’ for a the ReachForce B2B Lead blog and I thought that some of our readers might enjoy it as well so I’ve cross-posted it here.

Sophistication Made Simple

LoopFuse was founded on the principle that marketing automation should be powerful yet simple. In fact, it was the founders’ experience of implementing a marketing automation system at JBoss that led directly to the creation of LoopFuse OneView. Some marketing automation vendors achieve power and flexibility, but at the expense of usability. Others have a fantastic user interface, but a shallow feature-set. LoopFuse OneView strikes the delicate balance between sophistication and simplicity by hiding complexity with integrated contextual help, intuitive defaults, and wizard-driven configuration.

In addition to making LoopFuse OneView easy to implement and easy to use, we also make it easy to buy. Our complete pricing list is publicly available from our website so that our prospects know exactly how much LoopFuse will cost before engaging our sales team. (Refreshing, isn’t it?) Even better, there are absolutely no hidden fees. No setup fees. No support fees. No per-user fees. No API fees. You can even pay by credit card. Try LoopFuse OneView with zero risk by signing up for a fully functional free trial on our website. Your account is immediately provisioned without ever speaking to a LoopFuse salesperson.

Lead Management

Target, track, capture, score, segment, nurture, route, convert, close, and analyze your leads in a single tool that tightly integrates with your CRM. Start with anonymous web activity collection that provides the basis for web analytics such as most popular pages, best referrers, search terms, and most active companies (via IP address). Collect registration data and convert anonymous visitors into identified prospects. Continuously evaluate the quality of each prospect according to his/her profile and behavior and route qualified prospects to the CRM. Nurture unqualified prospects by providing a contstant drip of highly relevant and timely information (via email) to engage the prospect until they are ready to buy. Arm the salesperson with all of the relevent information necessary to close the deal. Finally, analyze the effectiveness of each lead source to determine the best use of your marketing dollars.

Sales Enablement

LoopFuse will automatically create new leads/contacts/tasks in the CRM based on the LeadFlow you define. Existing leads/contacts in the CRM are continuously updated with information such as lead score updates, new registration form data, email campaign activity, and latest web activity. Within 1-2 clicks the salesperson has access to every piece of data ever collected about a prospect, including the prospect’s company & location (even if prospect left it blank), and all of the activity (anonymous included) associated with the prospect’s company. The prospect data is further enriched with one-click access to the prospect’s LinkedIn profile as well as data about the company from Hoovers, Jigsaw, ZoomInfo, and Google. By adding a prospect to their watchlist, a salesperson can be immediately notified when the prospect visits the website. Calling a prospect while they are browsing your site ensures that you have their full attention.

Performance & Scalability

While much of our early success was concentrated within open-source companies, LoopFuse continues to add customers from traditional software companies, SAAS providers, media companies, etc. One of the advantages of having so many open-source customers early on was that it required us to build a highly scalable infrastructure to manage the millions of transactions (page views, emails, registrations, etc.) per day that result from our customers offering free software. This continues to be a strategic advantage for LoopFuse as we can easily scale to accmodate customers of any size.

Why LoopFuse?

  • Basic setup in less than 1 hour via configuration wizard
  • Unlimited database size at no extra charge!
  • Free trial to prove the value before you purchase
  • Because it works

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Congratulations to Zimbra

Friday, May 29th, 2009

I would like to congratulate Zimbra, the popular e-mail and collaboration company (and a division of Yahoo!). Since they started using Loopfuse OneView™, Zimbra has increased its Sales and Marketing efficiency by 50% – special thanks to Greg  Armanini and John Robb of Zimbra for collaborating with us on the case study.

With over 41 million paid mailboxes worldwide, there is no doubt that Zimbra is redefining the email and collaboration space.  Achieving such web business success requires the right strategy coupled with the right partners to make it happen - especially with over 200,000 unique web visits a week to its homepage, www.zimbra.com.

While Zimbra initially chose Eloqua for marketing automation, they subsequently replaced them with LoopFuse OneView, which is easier for the Zimbra team to use and it tightly integrates with Salesforce.com, its CRM partner.

According to Greg, Zimbra is using LoopFuse’s demand generation, email marketing and lead scoring capabilities to keep the Zimbra sales team focused on “the most likely prospects in order to function efficiently and profitably.” I look forward to following Zimbra’s continued success.

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LoopFuse with LinkedIn Integration

Thursday, April 16th, 2009

A few weeks ago, we released our OneView v3.17. Although originally marked as a “Beta” feature for this release, our LinkedIn integration has received extremely wide-spread adoption by sales people using the service. Clearly, the ability to quickly identify contacts you may have in common, leads to a more personal sales approach.

In keeping with our ease-of-use goals, I’ll walk through a typical process, that within 2 clicks of the mouse, will have you viewing all of the people you have in common with this particular prospect…

Of course, it all begins with a lead that our Marketing team either captured from a web-form or may have purchased and imported in to the LoopFuse system.

Here we see a portion of the Lead Dashboard within the system that describes our lead, in detail.

Click to Enlarge

Now, we simply click on the button labeled “LinkedIn Information”, and are instantly transported to the appropriate results on the LinkedIn website…

Click to Enlarge

Did I say two clicks? Ok, so it’s really just one click, but you get the point… One-click shopping for leads. ;-)

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Funded.

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009

Since our founding in 2007 as the pioneer in marketing and sales automation, we’ve seen rapid adoption of our On-Demand (SaaS) platform across both large and small organizations. Two years later, we mark a significant point in our history, having secured a Series-A round from True Ventures, led by John Burke, and the addition of our new CEO, Sean Dwyer,  to our ranks.

A Special Thanks

I won’t take this funding announcement to blog about how wonderful we are, drink our own kool-aid, and pat ourselves on the back, as some would expect. I will however, take this opportunity to thank the group of people that enabled us to get where we are today… our customers. Our customers have maintained a steady and unwavering belief in LoopFuse, the company and the vision from day-one. It is with their support, that we have not only reached this point in our history, but with their input and suggestions, have built the most innovative software they use every day to generate millions of dollars in sales. To our customers, allow me to say that everyone at LoopFuse thanks you for helping us build the strong partnership that exists today.

Funding

Through a rather serpentine twist of fate and coincidences, we were introduced to the partners at True Ventures (Thanks, Dave!). I can honestly say that they are the perfect partner for LoopFuse, with a perfect alignment of vision, goals, growth philosophies, and the importance of a solid team of dedicated A Players. I’ve met a lot of VCs in my career… these guys are truly different and an excellent partner complementing the LoopFuse executive team. We are extremely fortunate to have such a talented group of people working with us, along with our new admiral at the helm, Sean Dwyer; who loved using the product so much, he decided to run the company.

When Tom and I started this company, we were two guys (and a rather angry pit-bull) with an idea and a dream to revolutionize how online business is conducted. We’ve always maintained a belief that the success of the company and its customers is an inevitability. Even though the industry peddles the mirage of marketing automation, we actually deliver re$ult$, and believe that the influence this industry can have on business is much larger and broader than where we are today. Follow us, and you will see.

To Marketo and their overpriced Toy for Marketing Tots™, and Eloqua, with their Techological Torture Device™, I say, Get some coffee and try to stay awake. If it was bad for you when it was two guys (and a dog), it’s going to be an utter nightmare now.

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