Archive for November, 2010

B2B Marketing Automation: When to automate process

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

Although Marketing Automation is a hot topic these days, many marketers wonder what specific aspects of marketing should be automated.  This is a good question to ask because in general, there is no substitute for direct person-to-person interaction when it comes to building a business relationship.  However, there are many communications performed on a monthly, weekly, or even daily basis where you would use a template for the correspondence, even if it is just a mental template.  These correspondences are usually good candidates for automation.

An example of automation almost everyone uses is an auto-responder when someone submits a Lead Capture Form.  This is important to do, so that the person filling out the form gets immediate confirmation that the information has been received and to set expectations on when they can expect to hear a reply.  An auto-response email also provides a good opportunity to include extra information about your product or service that can help them along until they get a direct response based on their inquiry.  For example, if someone submits a registration form to contact marketing about a press event, the auto-responder email could contain a link to your press kit.

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Inbound Marketing Channels

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

A well-designed Loopfuse Lead Flow will funnel traffic from your inbound marketing channel.  Your presence in cyberspace and the content which drives engagement creates an avenue for a click.  That click starts the opportunity to connect in a relevant, personal and timely way with a stranger.  Turning that stranger into a friend is the art and science behind the powerful Loopfuse demand generation engine. (more…)

Choosing the right captain for your marketing automation ship

Monday, November 29th, 2010

Interview with Scott Olson (President, Mindlink Marketing)

For many marketing organizations, the implementation of a marketing automation tool and methodology is going to represent a major departure from the status quo.  With marketing automation there is a major focus shift to collecting and analyzing data.  Segregating prospects, understanding where they fall in the buying process, or through which channels they prefer to interact all require the ability to apply data to marketing problems.  Having the right mix of internal skill sets is critical to success with marketing automation.

In this episode we are joined by Scott Olson, the President of Mindlink marketing.  Scott and team focus on helping organizations better leverage data and understanding of the customer’s buying process to craft content and stories that drive conversion.
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Loopfuse Tracking

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010

The opportunity to hone in on your prospective buyer in a one-to-one approach versus a one-to-many traditional marketing campaign requires attention to Lead Scoring and tracking. Setting up your system to follow the Loopfuse buyer from initial landing site contact to engagement with your sales and value propositions requires attention to each of the predetermined steps which qualify a buyer for the sales funnel. (more…)

Taking Your Website to the Next Level: Analyzing Web Performance

Monday, November 22nd, 2010

And finally,  it’s very important to measure the performance of your website.  Below is an excerpt from the article on “Analyzing Web Performance” from  Taking Your Website to the Next Level, ……

Lastly, you’ll want to be sure you measure how well your website investment is paying off. It’s actually very easy to learn how many people are visiting your website, where they’re from, whether they registered, how they found your website, etc. This information is very helpful—it shows you how well your awareness generation programs are working (e.g. advertising, PR, etc.) so you can figure out which ones to keep investing in, or drop.

Setting web analytics is easy. Sign up for Google Analytics or LoopFuse FreeView (or both!) and follow the instructions they provide for adding their analytics to your site; it’s very easy to do, and here are some samples of what Google and LoopFuse can tell you about your website visitors:

Download a copy of Taking Your Website to the Next Level

The right marketing automation partner can help you avoid the avoidable mistakes

Thursday, November 18th, 2010

On the surface, implementing a marketing automation tool appears fairly simple.  The problem though, is in not knowing what you don’t know.  Implementing a tool isn’t that hard, but getting it setup in a way, with the processes to match, to produce business value is another matter.  This is not an effort you want to go alone.  Like a tile floor, if it’s done wrong you have to rip and replace.

Someone that knows a thing or two about marketing automation, having installed and trained some of the earliest implementation of said tools is Don Dalrymple, President of AscendWorks.  Beyond his deep knowledge of the inner workings of many marketing automation tools, Don is also extremely well versed in training marketing organizations to focus on the customer rather than the process.

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Integrated Marketing

Wednesday, November 17th, 2010

Disparate systems can be a problem.  The continuity of data which helps you understand your return on investment for marketing initiatives is easily broken.  What is hard to manage becomes less motivating to use.  Thus, the problem of piecemeal marketing presents itself in a world where it is completely possible to measure the lifecycle of a prospective customer from interest to doing business.

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The role of Business Directories in Marketing Automation

Wednesday, November 17th, 2010

Web analytics data provides B2B Marketing executives a wealth of information regarding their outbound and inbound marketing initiatives. A critical and passively-collected component in a website visitor’s profile, is the distinct company or ISP used by a prospect while browsing your website. Visiting company information collected from site visitors provides marketers with indicators on just how broadly and deeply marketing efforts have penetrated a company. However, making that information actionable by marketing and sales alike is made easier with a consolidated marketing toolset, as found with most marketing automation software.

Visiting Company Analytics

Although much of the information collected by web analytics software is collected passively (by resolving IP addresses to a Company’s name), the enriching of that data with third-party business directories such as Hoovers, Jigsaw, and LinkedIn is where the value lies for marketing and sales.

The value of business directory data is lost if it is kept in a silo, because the data is only valuable when it is joined with other behavior data from a prospect which may be composed of web analytics, email marketing, and CRM information.

Now armed with a complete view of a prospect along with business directory information, an organization can:

  • Target a visiting company with focused campaigns.
  • Identify and contact key personnel and decision makers.
  • Effectively segment a lead database, ie. company size, revenue amount, industry, etc…

Although much of the value contained within business directories is nothing new to marketers and sales reps, as you can see, the real value is in making it actionable. Making information actionable is only possible when you have a clear picture of a particular prospect or company within one database (or marketing dashboard), such as those found in marketing automation solutions. Subscribing to business directory services without a plan on how that information will be used in your marketing campaigns will rarely if ever show fruit. Likewise, services such as Leadlander, that simply track users and display company information remain an island of unactionable information and don’t solve the problem faced by marketers today: How do I leverage all of my different databases of information for my marketing strategies? The answer is in selecting a marketing automation vendor that focuses on aggregating of all the random bits of information for you, in one place, so you can leverage it in your marketing initiatives.

I didn’t realize LoopFuse Marketing Automation did that!

Tuesday, November 16th, 2010

Recently I was on a call with a customer who had signed up for FreeView but was looking to upgrade to one of our paid packages. They had used our marketing automation system but had a few questions just before making the switch. As we discussed some of the setup to get a clean database after the testing phase, the subject of using lead capture to retain prospects was brought up.

One of the team members said “Oh we’ll just use Web2Lead and then import the data back in to OneView”. That is when I reminded them that OneView offered the ability to create lead capture forms and that would enable the use of many other features such as list segmentation, scoring, lead nurturing, and email campaigns without the extra steps of having to import CSV lists back from Salesforce.

They had temporarily lost sight of the purpose of marketing automation software. The idea is that OneView sits between your website and Salesforce, gathering data and helping you automate the process of capturing, nurturing, and qualifying leads before they are fed into your CRM where your sales team can take further action.

Once our conversation was over, the customers had realized exactly how they could leverage OneView to help with their marketing automation efforts and streamline their processes.

Taking Your Website to the Next Level: Getting your Website Built

Friday, November 12th, 2010

Continuing with tips on Taking Your Website to the Next Level, below is an excerpt from the article on “Getting your Website Built”……

It’s common for medium to large-sized companies to spend anywhere from $20,000 to $500,000 on a website design and development effort. These projects often involve specialized web and creative marketing consulting firms that perform the analysis described above and then design and build a site to fit the need.

Here is a high-level outline of the website development process that the big firms follow, with tips on how to do it for less. (more…)