BUYER’S GUIDE MARKETING AUTOMATION€¦ · MARKETING AUTOMATION BUYER’S GUIDE ... With Hubspot,...
Transcript of BUYER’S GUIDE MARKETING AUTOMATION€¦ · MARKETING AUTOMATION BUYER’S GUIDE ... With Hubspot,...
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MARKETING AUTOMATION BUYER’S GUIDE
SUMMARYBecause it seeks to serve as the central repository for marketing and sales data, a
marketing automation tool can be a particularly complex piece of software. Therefore,
the selection process can be difficult as well. This guide examines the marketing
automation industry and profiles leaders in specific market segments to supply you
with a clear picture of which products are best for what application.
TABLE OF CONTENTS3 Introduction
4 Marketing Automation Solutions
4 Solutions for Small Businesses
7 Solutions for Mid-Market Firms
10 Solutions for Enterprise
13 Industry Trends
14 Taking Action
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Marketing is growing increasingly complex. Like other areas of technology, expertise
is developing in specific niches – such as search engine optimization, email marketing,
content development, etc. Of course, something has to tie all of these together to form
a holistic marketing machine - that’s where marketing automation software can help.
Marketing automation tools, once used only to organize, segment, and schedule email
campaigns, have now grown to encompass automated social media interactions,
dynamic page content, and even automatic scoring of prospects, all based on user
behavior.
The 22 percent annual growth1 of the marketing automation industry is proof that
simply hosting a website or sending emails to hundreds of prospects is no longer
enough. If data is the new competitive advantage, then marketing is the new playing
field. Consequently, marketing automation has a large role to play for businesses
looking to perfect their marketing strategies through data and advanced analytics.
In your search to find the right product, there are a number of precautions to keep in
mind. The key characteristics to look for are: price, usability, and core functionality.
Nearly all automation systems will be deployed through the cloud, which saves you a
great deal of money up front, but each plan may feature different pricing tiers. Read
the subscription options carefully before making a decision.
Although the number of options is growing, vendor choice is still relatively limited. This
guide will walk you through considerations and prominent solutions for any business
size.
INTRODUCTION
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MARKETING AUTOMATION BUYER’S GUIDE
1. SOLUTIONS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES
MARKETING AUTOMATION SOLUTIONS
The fact that Act-On integrates with Salesforce makes for a great value addition to companies of all
sizes. Even if you’re not using Salesforce, Act-On includes access to its API as part of its standard
package, so you can connect other third-party systems, or even your custom-built software, without
paying for middleware.
Perhaps the most appealing feature is the platform’s consistent usability. Act-On allows any user to
easily navigate the system and conduct powerful marketing campaigns with ease.
The system does have drawbacks, however. If you’re accustomed to using MailChimp or some other
type of dedicated email service provider, you’ll find Act-On’s email builder less than impressive. The
landing page templates can also be clunky, so if you focus on creating design-heavy landing pages, you
may want to look elsewhere.
> TOP SOLUTION: ACT-ONFounded in 2008, Act-On supplies small businesses with an array of features
usually reserved for larger, more expensive products. Features of particular note
are Act-On’s integration with Salesforce, its open API, and its overall ease of use.
As your business grows, you’ll need to consider
how to organize your marketing for a larger
audience. Without a large marketing department,
it may only take a few employees to run the entire
show, so maximizing efficiency is key.
Since you may not be able to call on an extensive
IT department, you’ll want to prioritize usability.
Usability goes beyond the way the interface looks;
more importantly, it refers to how easy it is for you
to perform any given action.
Finally, small businesses should prioritize a few
core functions: email marketing, landing page
templates, CRM integration, and lead scoring.
These four features work in a logical flow:
• You’ll need landing page templates in order
to easily create web pages for gathering
customer information.
• Then, you’ll want to set up email campaigns
to keep in touch and build trust.
• As users interact with your email
campaigns, you’ll need lead scoring that
automatically adjusts their score to indicate
when they’re ready to buy.
• Once they’re ready to buy, you’ll want to be
able to pass prospects along to your CRM
so your sales team can follow up at the right
time.
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ACT-ON INFUSIONSOFT ONTRAPORT
LEAD MANAGEMENT
Lead Scoring/Grading
Automatic Notifications
Lead Nuturing
Segmentation
COMPARABLE PRODUCTS
marketing automation software to complement
their CRM.
After implementing Act-On, CobbleStay was able
to easily create lead scoring logic that reflected
each lead’s interest based on their behavior. The
result? Targeted emails that more than doubled
the industry open rate, and CobbleStay realized a
500 percent return on investment.
CASE STUDY: ACT-ON + COBBLESTAY2
CobbleStay rents luxurious vacation properties
worldwide. To best represent the company’s
service, CobbleStay’s website is filled with gorgeous
photography of the different locations for rent.
This is great for drawing in traffic, but CobbleStay’s
sales and marketing team were having trouble
determining if visitors were worth following up
with, or if they were simply browsing. CobbleStay
implemented a CRM to help better qualify
prospects, but they quickly realized they needed
SOCIAL
Social Campaigns
Social Sharing
Paid Media Placement
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ACT-ON INFUSIONSOFT ONTRAPORT
CONTENT MANAGEMENT
Email Builder/Campaigns
Dynamic Content
Landing Page/Form Builder
SEO Optimization
A/B Testing
Webinar/Event Management
ANALYTICS
Revenue Analytics
Social Analytics
Web Analytics
INTEGRATION
API
Data Import/Export
CRM
Social
CMS
MISC.
Resource Library
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MARKETING AUTOMATION BUYER’S GUIDE
intuitive, making it simple for even non-technical users to author and post blog content.
Navigating from the blog view to the social media sharing view only requires a couple of clicks, and
analytics are equally accessible. However, everything in Hubspot isn’t simple, so they’ve anticipated
common technical challenges with a library of tutorials and a friendly, patient customer service
team.
Weaknesses of Hubspot include a steep learning curve for technical aspects of marketing
automation, as well as a focus on B2B companies rather than B2C. Specifically, Hubspot’s
ecommerce capabilities and integration could be better, and certain actions could be more granular.
Hubspot also runs on the higher end of the cost spectrum.
> TOP SOLUTION: HUBSPOTFounded in 2006, Hubspot positions its platform as an all-in-one inbound
marketing solution.
With Hubspot, users can modify and test nearly any type of content.
Additionally, Hubspot’s content management and publishing features are
speak to the needs of your audience.
Also, look for products that can dynamically
change content based on the characteristics
of the prospect viewing it. For example,
you could change the call to action on your
landing page based on the position a prospect
occupies in the sales funnel, or based on the
industry they work in.
If you’re a mid-market organization, chances
are your marketing team has grown with your
organization. Naturally, this increases your
reach, which increases the number of leads and
interactions.
Growth in reach and audience requires more
granular segmentation and personalization tools.
Your audience won’t grow the way you want it to
without isolating and emphasizing the interests of
each segment. In terms of marketing automation,
this means you should look for products that offer
powerful A/B, or split, testing tools and analytics.
You’ll need these features to better identify and
2. SOLUTIONS FOR MID-MARKET FIRMS
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Impulse Creative was looking for a way to scale
their business, increase the lifetime value of their
customers, and align their fragmented software
suite. Before selecting Hubspot, the ad agency
worked nearly exclusively on a per-project basis.
After vetting different solutions, Impulse went with
Hubspot to centralize their social, creative, and
business processes. The result was exceptional. Not
only did Impulse Creative grow its retainer base of
customers by 6X, they also increased revenue by
3X. The agency even developed new services that
they could monetize; they now offer consulting
on inbound marketing, training, and full-service
delivery.
“Hubspot has not only allowed our agency to
embrace the inbound experience, but it has also
opened up our agency to being able to transform the
way we report progress to our clients.”
-Remington Begg, Chief Remarkable Officer,
Impulse Creative
HUBSPOT PARDOT SALESFUSION
LEAD MANAGEMENT
Lead Scoring/Grading
Automatic Notifications
Lead Nuturing
Segmentation
COMPARABLE PRODUCTS
SOCIAL
Social Campaigns
Social Sharing
Paid Media Placement
CASE STUDY: HUBSPOT + IMPULSE CREATIVE3
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HUBSPOT PARDOT SALESFUSION
CONTENT MANAGEMENT
Email Builder/Campaigns
Dynamic Content
Landing Page/Form Builder
SEO Optimization
A/B Testing
Webinar/Event Management
ANALYTICS
Revenue Analytics
Social Analytics
Web Analytics
INTEGRATION
API
Data Import/Export
CRM
Social
CMS
MISC.
Resource Library
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3. SOLUTIONS FOR ENTERPRISEFor large corporations, the most important features to look in marketing automation software
will be reporting or analytics and integration. With the sheer amount of data being generated
by your marketing campaigns, website interactions, and social media efforts, enterprise-grade
reporting is necessary to justify marketing spend, calculate ROI, and predict necessary marketing
investments. And given the amount of data you’ll be managing, it’s vital to make sure your data is
easily transferred between all your systems.
model, allowing marketers to see every touch
point for leads throughout their lifecycle.
Additionally, Marketo makes it easy to copy
entire campaigns using its clone function. Even if
it’s something as complex as a trade show, users
can clone the event, replicating everything from
the social media campaign to event materials.
Marketo also integrates with a number of
enterprise-grade platforms, like SAP, Microsoft
Dynamics, and Salesforce. Also, Marketo comes
at a high price point, but that may not be as large
of a concern for enterprises.
> TOP SOLUTION: MARKETODesigned to meet the
needs of large enterprises,
Marketo supplies users
with a diverse feature set,
all accessible through drag-and-drop menus,
allowing easy navigation and quick campaign
creation, report generation, or automation rule-
building.
Instead of having to utilize a third-party tool like
Google Analytics to generate marketing reports,
Marketo provides baked-in analysis of marketing
performance and channel ROI. Marketo comes
with a number of report templates, and users
can drag-and-drop desired metrics to create
custom reports, and even custom dashboards.
Marketo even has a multi-touch attribution
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CASE STUDY: MARKETO + CITRIX4
Citrix, a company that needs no introduction, had
just obliterated its goal of $2 billion in revenue.
However, this multinational company was still using
an antiquated platform that relied exclusively on ad-
hoc reporting and was only utilized by their North
American team. To help the company reach its goal
of $5 billion in revenue, Citrix chose Marketo to
improve its lead management and nurturing.
“A centralized, global platform like Marketo provides
Citrix with a leveraged investment that dramatically
reduces the time and resources spent with third
parties to set up and execute marketing programs. The
result has been lower costs and a substantially higher
marketing ROI.”
-Eva Tsai, Director of Marketing Operations,
Citrix
After implementing Marketo, Citrix’s marketing
operations become significantly more agile,
responding to lead behavior on a day-to-day
basis rather than week-to-week. As a result,
the company realized a 23 percent increase in
marketing contacts and doubled their lead-to-
opportunity conversion rate.
MARKETO ELOQUA
LEAD MANAGEMENT
Lead Scoring/Grading
Automatic Notifications
Lead Nuturing
Segmentation
COMPARABLE PRODUCTS
SOCIAL
Social Campaigns
Social Sharing
Paid Media Placement
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MARKETO ELOQUA
CONTENT MANAGEMENT
Email Builder/Campaigns
Dynamic Content
Landing Page/Form Builder
SEO Optimization
A/B Testing
Webinar/Event Management
ANALYTICS
Revenue Analytics
Social Analytics
Web Analytics
INTEGRATION
API
Data Import/Export
CRM
Social
CMS
MISC.
Resource Library
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BROADER ADOPTIONDespite the surge of data and the increasing complexity of digital marketing, only an
estimated 16 percent of B2B businesses are using marketing automation as of 2014.
The lone industry where marketing automation has a solid foothold is Information and
Technology, which boasts an adoption rate of around 65 percent. In other industries,
the adoption rate is as low as 2 percent.
Although marketing automation is undoubtedly complex, it offers a number of
substantial benefits at reduced labor costs.
INDUSTRY TRENDS
MARKETING AUTOMATION BUYER’S GUIDE
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SOURCES1. “Only 16% of B2B Companies Use Marketing Automation: Study.” Ad Age. Last Modified May 27 2014. http://
adage.com/article/btob/16-b2b-companies-marketing-automation-study/293410/
2. “Be Our Guest: Better Leads Drive Bigger Revenue for CobbleStay Vacation Rentals.” Act-On. Accessed on December 12 2014. https://www.act-on.com/casestudy/cobblestay/
3. “Impulse Creative Scales Business and Increases Retainer Client Revenue 6x with Hubspot Partnership.” Hubspot. Accessed on December 11 2014. http://www.hubspot.com/customers/impulse_creative
4. “Case Study Citrix.” Marketo. Accessed on December 11 2014. https://www.marketo.com/customers/citrix
GUIDE PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS5. “Liberty Center” by Shane Gorski under CC BY / desaturated from original
6. “2009 Amgen Tour of California Prologue” by Richard Masoner used under CC BY / desaturated from original
7. “shoppers encased in amber.” by Michael Davis-Burchat used under CC BY / desaturated from original
8. “Cityworker1” by Yrhenwr used under CC BY / desaturated from original
9. “London” by Dave Collier used under CC BY / desaturated from original
10. “waiting for the lights” by Dave Young used under CC BY / desaturated from original
11. “Gear” by Sonny Abesamis used under CC BY / desaturated from original
12. “windy city” by Jo used under CC BY / desaturated from original