Archive for the ‘OneView’ Category

Newer Entries »

Is Your Social Media Marketing Accountable?

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, Delicious, Yelp, YouTube, FreindFeed, Slideshare, Flickr… it seems like every day another social media channel is launched. With ever dwindling resources, marketers must choose where to spend their time and effort. It’s tempting to just engage on the most recognized channels. But how many of us really know which of these channels is most effective for our particular audience?

Many of these services can offer metrics and statistics, but how easy is it to compare the efficiency of your LinkedIn question versus your blogpost, versus your tweets?  Marcus Tewksbury of “The Marketing Mojo” fame is hosting a webinar on this topic for Alterian on Thursday of this week. I’ve been reading The Marketing Mojo site for almost a year now and they have a good handle on both social media and general marketing.  I’m curious to see what Marcus has in store. Here’s a link to the webinar if you’re curious.

Tags:
Posted in Marketing, OneView, Social Media | Comments Off

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.

Tags:
Posted in LoopFuse, Marketing Automation, OneView | Comments Off

The Quota Carrying CMO

Monday, November 30th, 2009

There is an interesting shift happening in corporate America at the moment with regards to performance evaluation of marketing departments.  While I suspect that this shift may be global in nature, I have only personally witnessed it in the states and will therefore limit myself from over-reaching generalizations (seems almost quaint in the blogosphere today).

About 7 months ago I was discussing marketing automation tools in general, and LoopFuse in particular of course, with a marketing SVP and highlighting the different value propositions for the sales department versus the marketing department.  Given his role, I focused my discussion primarily within the marketing side of the equation, but he repeatedly kept redirecting the conversation towards the benefits for sales.  Initially I thought he was simply trying to identify any reservations or concerns that the sales VP might have by asking all of these sales-oriented questions.  But as the conversation progressed I learned that this marketing SVP’s personal bonus was not tied to the traditional measures of marketing success (brand awareness, lead volume, events, etc.) but instead was based almost entirely on revenue.

At the time I considered his company’s personal performance measurement approach to be interesting, but not particularly relevant.  One outlier is an anomaly, two is a coincidence, three is a pattern, and four is a trend.  As of today I have encountered my fourth marketing executive who is primarily rewarded based on the success or failure of the sales department.  At first, this approach seemed unfair to the marketing department.  But as I see this trend growing I realize that almost everyone is rewarded based partially on the success or failure of others, especially at the executive levels.    In this case the CMO is actually carrying the company’s global quota just like the sales executive.  One potentially positive aspect of this approach is that your sales and marketing departments may find that there is significantly less friction between them because their respective leadership’s goals are now perfectly aligned.

Are you a marketing VP?  Is your bonus compensation driven almost exclusively through revenue quotas?  Tell us how it has impacted yourself, your team, and your organization.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Marketing, OneView | Comments Off

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.

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

OneView v3.20 – Context-Sensitive Help and Open Communities

Monday, August 31st, 2009

OneView v3.20 (release FAQ) was released last week after weeks of testing and hardening by our QA staff. It stands out among all of our releases, as the focus was not concentrated on the LoopFuse side, but shared equally and externally by providing tight integration with our new Community Support Portal.

The new Community Support Portal is now populated with over 100 articles, FAQs, videos, and screencasts. It hosts a complete reference documentation section for all aspects of LoopFuse OneView. Its goal was to cover every category, module, page, and possible user action in the product and out (Aspects of our Web Service API are also covered for techno-savvy users).

The highlight of our integration is that we now have a seamless integration for users in our OneView product and our Community Support Portal. That is, users (even non-paying trial users) can easily login to the portal from within the product and ask questions or share ideas and feedback openly.

One particularly innovate approach to online help we have taken is making the OneView Help System  contextually aware – no matter what section of the product you happen to be in, calling the online help menu will point you to the correct Help Article, Category, and pre-fill the correct Search Terms.

One-Click Context-Sensitive Help System

In keeping with our original beliefs, we have decided to make our Community Support Portal completely open and transparent. Anyone, even guests, may browse the documentation and online discussions. We feel it is important to show prospects all aspects of the product and level of community participation. From companies as large as Oracle to your local gardening forum, open communities benefit registered users and anonymous ones alike. They provide an open door for all to window-shop your offering before taking the next step.

At its core, leveraging communities for effective marketing and sales is not an original idea (it’s actually Marketing 101), which of course makes me wonder why our over-funded Canadian friends and those other guys (you know, the ones that rhyme with stiletto and spend their lives telling you how much they know about marketing) chose to lock-up their documentation and community conversations with an iron door that only paying users can unlock. C’mon guys, what are you hiding? ;-)

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

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. ;-)

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

Blocking registration spam – a better alternative to CAPTCHA

Wednesday, January 28th, 2009

If you have a web site with registration forms you have probably been spammed by a bot (or will in the near future). Most people think of spambots as rogue programs that run on the internet harvesting email address from web sites to then later spam via email (i.e. “Get your diploma today” emails). While this still occurs on a regular basis, there is an increasing trend of forum spam which can pollute your lead capture data.

Many web sites deploy CAPTCHA tests within their web site form registrations to protect against spambots. However, what most people don’t know is that most of the spambot software used today, such as the popular XRumer, can defeat CAPTCHA.

It is a little surprising that software programs can get past CAPTCHA seeing how it is difficult for most humans to respond correctly to them. However, with the wide availability of OCR packages, it is probably easier for computers to now figure out CAPTCHAs than it is for humans. If you don’t believe me, just take quick look at the demonstration pages for PWNTCHA and Gimpy and you will see how accurate computers can be at guessing the correct responses for CAPTCHA on the web.

The good news is a better alternative to CAPTCHA is easy. Just add an additional form field with a simple logic question. For example, 4 + 5 = ? or Is fire hot or cold?. The answer to type in the form field is easy for humans, but much more difficult for spambots. Obviously the answer given will need to be verified on your server before accepting the rest of the information posted, but this is typically trivial to add if you are already doing data verification. Generally simple arithmetic questions are best since math is universal and won’t have to worry about language barriers to word problems.

Hopefully this tip will help those of you already facing problems with large amounts of bad data polluting your registration data from spambots. For those of you who don’t face this problem, this tip might well prevent you from ever having to.

Tags:
Posted in LoopFuse, Marketing Automation, OneView | Comments Off

Drupal / LoopFuse Integration Module Released

Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008

Today, our friends at Drupal announced the release of the LoopFuse OneView integration module for Drupal. The module, now available from the Drupal website, allows for pluggable integration between the Drupal CMS and the LoopFuse OneView Marketing and Sales Automation platforms. This is a natural pairing for two technologies that are widely used throughout the internet – Our products have a considerable overlap in who they appeal to… Marketing and Sales executives.

The original impetus for this module, was started by Chuck D’Antonio under the Acquia umbrella. Much of it came about as Acquia became a LoopFuse customer and felt a tighter integration that would benefit the community would be fruitful. This is OSS, as it was meant to be. I couldn’t agree more. ;-)

Taking the press release at face-value would be a mistake, as there is an important message here, regarding the future direction of both companies. I believe it is evident that Drupal has continuously set itself apart from other Web CMS  by appealing to a more sophisticated crowd. The same is true for LoopFuse. At the same time, however, I would state that both companies have a fair understanding of what it means to have mass appeal… allowing a simple user to get up-and-running in minutes, yet enabling high-end users with unlimited flexbility and scalability. This is a delicate balancing-act for any company, but one that I believe our friends at Drupal/Acquia know very well how to master.

Posted in Marketing Automation, Open Source, Plugins, eMail Marketing | Comments Off

Introducing Closed-Loop Reporting

Wednesday, June 25th, 2008

With our OneView 3.6 release, LoopFuse enables marketers deeper and richer insight in to the Lead Funnel through an easy-to-us and intuitive user-interface. With our Closed-Loop Reporting enhancement, marketers are now able to visualize the entire Lead Funnel and pin-point the time involved in having prospects and leads move through the funnel at different stages. We can honestly say that this level of reporting is unseen in any competing product. (hurry up guys, you’re playing catch-up now) ;-)

So what do the new reports include and why should you care?

The idea? behind this addition to our flagship product, is simple:

  • Empower marketers with unprecedented insight in to the Sales Cycle.
  • Supply knowledge in to what marketing initiatives are working and what isn’t.
  • Visualization that supports the further alignment of marketing and sales goals.
  • Contrast and compare marketing and sales performance during different times in the company’s history.

Funnel Analysis allows you to answer the most important question a marketer has – At what rate are my prospects moving along the lead funnel?. LoopFuse OneView provides key metrics, such as the rate of conversion between First Contact to Conversion, or Lead to Opportunity. With better insight in to these key metrics, OneView then allows you to better tune your nurturing and campaign initiatives.

For a full listing of the 3.6 enhancements, click here.

In one of my initial blog posts, I commented on the rapid pace of innovation that LoopFuse was going to bring to the Marketing and Sales Automation industry. Clearly, we’re delivering on our promise to inject better reporting and usability in to a a stagnant market…. this release is proof-positive that the LoopFuse machine continues to out-pace the competition with a better product, better support, and affordable pricing.

Keep your eyes on this space for future release announcements, which will include major enhancements to our flagship product and have LoopFuse moving in to new online markets. ;-)

Tags:
Posted in Marketing Automation, OneView, eMail Marketing | Comments Off

LoopFuse OneView 3.0 Announced

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

So ends yet another cycle of coding, testing, deployment, and overall innovation. Although I’m starting to get tired of constantly out-innovating our bobo competitors and watching them cry like little babies, I never get tired of bragging about it or taking their customers – such is business, the American way.

This past weekend, the LoopFuse team deployed the latest release [press] of our On-Demand offering to our Tier-1 network operations center. This release marked a major milestone for LoopFuse, as it added several significant features to an already feature-rich and flexible product suite, designed to improve marketing and sales efficiency (ie. Increase revenue and lower costs). Below is a short description of what you’ll find in the latest release:

  • Automated Lead Nurturing: This isn’t your grandmother’s lead nurturing tool. OneView’s Lead Nurturing module touches every part of the LoopFuse system and your CRM, allowing you to create the richest lead nurturing programs for your organization imaginable. You can instantly build workflow’s that encompass a lead’s web activity, email activity, and CRM activity and have that workflow automatically send email campaigns and modify that lead’s fields within your configured CRM. The additional reporting capabilities built around lead nurturing also allow you to not only gauge how your programs are performing, but provide the necessary information to better-tune them for maximum efficiency in warming up your prospects until they’re ready to buy.
  • Activity History CRM integration: Now in 3.0, OneView automagically enters in real-time information in to your CRM for specific leads. The as-it-happens activity history injection is triggered whenever a lead visits your site, opens an email campaign, or completes a lead capture form. This is an important addition, allowing sales personnel to have real-time actionable data from within your CRM and continuing to provide a 360-degree of a particular prospect’s activities and interests.
  • Lead Capture Reporting: What good is a process if you can’t measure it? To answer that question, we’ve augmented our reporting capabilities with a real-time look at your lead capture information. Marketers can now gauge their lead capture activity for specific lead capture forms and also view trend information over time.

So thats my elevator-pitch on the recent additions to the LoopFuse platform. All great additions to help round-out our marketing automation solution.

Looking forward to February, we will be releasing Google AdWords API integration, allowing marketers to better measure ROI against their Google AdWords spend. Although this is possible currently, the addition of the API integration will make the process seamless and increase flexibility for our users… and inevitably make our competitors cry some more.

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

Newer Entries »