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1 The 2011 Focus Experts Guide to Marketing Automation 2010 Focus Research

The 2011 Focus Experts Guide toMarketing Automation

Focus ResearchNovember 2010

Lead Expert:David RaabContributing Experts:Carlos HidalgoAdam Needles


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Section 1: IntroductionCustomers are the lifeblood of every company, and its the job of the marketing department to find newcustomers and expand existing relationships. Marketing automation systems help marketers treat thesetasks as a systematic process that is efficient, predictable and measurable. This Focus Experts Guide will

explore the features of marketing automation systems, help you to pick the best system for your needsand offer advice for a successful deployment. It is organized into the following sections:

Section 2: Meet the ExpertsThe names and brief bios of all Experts contributing to the Guide and a brief description ofthe Focus Expert Network ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 3Section 3: EssentialsA brief overview of the marketing automation market and solution types covered in this Guideand the key things to know before you begin your search ....................................................................................................... 4Section 4: The MarketA summary of current market conditions, trends and a list of key vendors .............................................................. 8Section 5: Your NeedsKnowing your requirements and using them to determine your Buyer Type in order to drivesolution choices .................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 10Section 6: How to Buy: Key Solution, Cost and Vendor ConsiderationsIncluding checklists, ROI and total cost of ownership (TCO) considerations and advice on how tocompare candidate solutions and suppliers ............................................................................................................................................ 11Section 7: The Focus Short ListThe top solutions and vendors for each Buyer Type, as determined by the Focus Experts

contributing to this Guide .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 16Section 8: ConclusionsFinal recommendations and suggested next steps ......................................................................................................................... 18


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Section 2: Meet the ExpertsThe analysis and recommendations in this Guide are based upon the opinions and experience of a groupof Experts selected from the Focus Expert Network. More than 5,000 business experts contributequestions, answers, Focus Briefs and other content to Focus.com, expertise freely available to all. More

information about the Focus Expert Network is available atwww.focus.com. Below are brief biographiesof the Focus Experts who contributed to this Guide.

Lead Expert:David RaabDavid M. Raab is a Principal at Raab Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in marketingtechnology and analysis. David advises major consumer and business marketers on marketing processes,technology and service vendors. His firm specializes in marketing process analysis, needs definition,vendor selection and customer management system deployment. Raab Associates also consults onrelated issues with industry vendors including service bureaus, software developers and ad agencies.

David is the author of Marketing Performance Measurement Toolkit(Racom Books, 2009) and the Guideto Demand Generation Systems. He has written hundreds of articles for publications including InformationManagement, DM Reviewand DM News. Additional research appears regularly on hisblog.

David holds a bachelors degree from Columbia University and MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Contributing Expert:Carlos HidalgoCarlos Hidalgo is President of The Annuitas Group, a leading provider of sales and marketing processconsulting services for B2B technology, financial and manufacturing companies. In his role, Carlos hashelped clients identify over $500 million of potential revenue by developing and implementing leadmanagement sales and marketing processes.

Carlos is known as a thought leader in the B2B marketing industry for his keen insights about thedevelopment and implementation of the lead management process, and he is a recognized expert in

marketing automation. He is a frequent speaker, blogger and writer of many articles on B2B marketing.

Contributing Expert:Adam NeedlesAdam Needles (Twitter:@abneedles) heads demand generation strategy at Silicon Valley-basedLeftBrain Marketing, a leading demand generation strategy agency, serving some of the largest and best-known enterprise brands. The agency helps marketing organizations develop and grow successfuldemand generation programs. Its approach leverages a proprietary demand generation process model The Left Brain ModelTM powered by marketing automation technology. The agency delivers a full set ofservices that span strategy, production, analytics and optimization for demand generation programs.

Adam is a passionate marketing change agent, helping companies develop buyer-centric demandgeneration programs that drive revenue and build their brands in a bottom-up fashion. He has workedwith dozens of clients over the past two decades. He was most recently B2B Marketing Evangelist andDirector of Field Marketing for Silverpop, one of the largest email marketing and marketing automationvendors in the world.

Adam holds a bachelors degree from Georgetown Universitys School of Foreign Service in Science andTechnology in International Affairs. He also holds a masters from the Wisconsin School of Business inBrand and Product Management.
http://www.focus.com/http://www.focus.com/http://www.focus.com/http://www.focus.com/profiles/david-raab/public/http://www.focus.com/profiles/david-raab/public/http://www.focus.com/profiles/david-raab/public/http://customerexperiencematrix.blogspot.com/http://customerexperiencematrix.blogspot.com/http://customerexperiencematrix.blogspot.com/http://www.focus.com/profiles/carlos-hidalgo/public/http://www.focus.com/profiles/carlos-hidalgo/public/http://www.focus.com/profiles/carlos-hidalgo/public/http://www.focus.com/profiles/adam-needles/public/http://www.focus.com/profiles/adam-needles/public/http://www.focus.com/profiles/adam-needles/public/http://twitter.com/abneedleshttp://twitter.com/abneedleshttp://twitter.com/abneedleshttp://www.leftbrainmarketing.com/http://www.leftbrainmarketing.com/http://www.leftbrainmarketing.com/http://www.leftbrainmarketing.com/http://www.leftbrainmarketing.com/http://www.leftbrainmarketing.com/http://www.leftbrainmarketing.com/http://twitter.com/abneedleshttp://www.focus.com/profiles/adam-needles/public/http://www.focus.com/profiles/carlos-hidalgo/public/http://customerexperiencematrix.blogspot.com/http://www.focus.com/profiles/david-raab/public/http://www.focus.com/


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Section 3: Essentials

What Is Marketing Automation?Marketing automation is the use of technology to manage the processes to acquire and expand buyer

relationships. Treating these tasks as parts of a unified process rather than disconnected activities iscentral to the value of marketing automation. It is what allows automation systems to improve results byilluminating connections among marketing projects. Without understanding these connections, marketerscannot measure the true business impacts of their efforts.

Specific functions provided by most marketing automation systems include: Program definition: A central repository of all types of marketing programs, including budgets,

dates and expected results; this provides an overview of marketing activities and expendituresand provides a basis for reporting and analysis.

Program execution: Features to execute selected marketing programs directly; nearly allmarketing automation products can send emails and serve Web landing pages and forms.These are often combined into automated multi-step campaigns that use rules to send different

treatments to different people. Some systems offer additional capabilities such as Web sitemanagement, blogging and paid search campaign management. The systems also providesupporting functions for execution, such as editors to create email messages and libraries tostore them for reuse.

Marketing database: A marketing database includes profiles of customers and prospects,marketing messages sent, responses and other behaviors, and other information such aspurchases. Some of this data, such as a history of system-generated emails, originates in themarketing automation system itself; other data is imported from external systems such as Websites, sales automation and accounting.

Lead scoring and sales automation integration: Companies that sell through a sales forceoften have a sales automation or CRM (customer relationship management) system that isseparate from marketing automation. In these situations, the marketing automation systemfrequently provides a lead scoring mechanism to identify prospects that are ready for salescontacts. They also provide integration to transfer those leads directly into the sales automationsystem and to update both systems when additional data is captured in either system. In somecases, the marketing automation system itself provides sales automation and CRM functions.

Reporting and analysis: Typical reports include program costs, execution activities (such asnumber of emails sent) and responses (such as emails opened and forms completed). Somesystems also import revenue information from CRM or accounting systems, match this tocustomer and prospect records, and calculate return on marketing investments.

Although nearly all marketing automation systems provide some features in each category listed above,the details vary widely depending on the target buyers. Section 6 of this Guide will describe key features

for each Buyer Type.

Nearly all marketing automation systems are offered as Software as a Service (SaaS). SaaS systems arehosted from the vendors servers, and clients pay a monthly fee to access the system rather thanpurchasing the software up front. This type of solution is ideal as it allows for a quick roll-out and areduced need for IT support on the clients side. Some systems, particularly those targeted at largeenterprises, are still sold as traditional on-premise licensed software.


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What Isnt Marketing Automation?Marketing automation isnt the only type of system offered to marketers. Other classes of products thatoverlap with marketing automation include:

Execution systems: These systems support a single purpose such as sending emails,managing keyword search advertising, running Webinars or serving Web pages. Some maycombine a few functions, such as sending emails and creating landing pages to receive emailresponses. The clearest dividing line between such systems and marketing automation is thatexecution systems typically do not maintain a central marketing database that combinesinformation from multiple sources, including other execution systems. Examples includeExactTarget, Google AdWords and WebEx.

CRM systems: CRM systems are designed to manage a human agents interactions withindividual customers and prospects, for example by a salesperson, order taker or customerservice operator. The focus of these systems is on helping the agent work as efficiently aspossible. Some CRM systems also offer marketing automation features, but these are oftenextremely limited compared with dedicated marketing automation products. In particular, CRMsystems can rarely execute complex multi-step campaigns that automatically send different

treatments to different buyer segments. Examples include Oracle Siebel CRM On Demand,Pegasystems and Salesforce.com.

Enterprise marketing management: These systems provide integrated marketingmanagement, execution and analysis. They include marketing automation features but alsoextend to Web analytics, social media monitoring, predictive modeling and real-timerecommendations for call center and Web interactions. Compared with the marketingautomation systems described in this Guide, these products are generally targeted at largerfirms and business-to-consumer marketing. Examples include Alterian, IBM/Unica,Infor/Epiphany.

Small business marketing: These are targeted at very small businesses, typically having fewerthan 10 employees. Marketing in such firms is typically handled by the owner or a salesperson.These systems provide basic marketing automation features including outbound and drip

marketing emails, landing pages and customer/prospect databases. But they also offer simpleversions of other functions including CRM, order processing and Web site management.Examples include HubSpot, Infusionsoft and OfficeAutoPilot.

Top Reasons Why Businesses BuyBroadly speaking, businesses buy marketing automation systems because they want to do a better job ofmarketing. Specific objectives commonly include:

Generate more revenue: Marketing automation systems provide an overview of all marketingactivities and link those activities to a central database. This allows marketers to see beyond theimmediate results of a program (such as how many people clicked on an email link), andmeasure its ultimate influence on purchases. This long-term view allows marketers to increase

investment in programs having the greatest revenue impact and to identify other programsrequiring improvement.

Improve pipeline management: Marketing automation can track buyers as they move throughstages of the purchase process. This provides visibility into the current inventory of future buyersand can be combined with past results to predict how many will ultimately purchase and whenthey will buy. Such forecasts help to illustrate the value generated by marketing programs andgive other departments information to plan their own activities. Marketers can also use changes


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in pipeline behaviors to estimate the long-term impact of marketing programs without waiting forthe final results.

Create more effective programs: Marketing automation makes it easier for marketers to setup and execute their programs. This lets them create more complex programs, so treatmentscan be tailored more precisely to different segments and they can run more tests to compareresults. The result is a continuous improvement cycle that increases effectiveness over time.

10 Things You Need To Know1. Systems vary widely. Marketing automation systems have broadly similar functions, but they actually

vary widely in terms of their sophistication, target users, pricing and support resources. You mustchoose carefully to find the right match.2. Your requirements matter. The only way to find the right system is to define your requirements andlook for a system that meets them. This is a lot more work than selecting the vendor with the largestmarket share or most features or best marketing program. Define some sample marketing programsand have each vendor show how theyd execute them. Then youll really understand what youregetting into before you sign that contract.3. Process is critical. The core benefit of a marketing automation system is its ability to managemarketing as a process. This process includes multiple campaigns that move buyers through thepipeline: seeing it as a process means seeing how the campaigns connect with one another toproduce the final result. Youll also need to treat internal marketing activities as a process, so you canset up, execute and evaluate large numbers of programs without the marketing department fallinginto complete chaos.4. Change is required. Deploying a marketing automation system will mean major changes in how yourun your marketing department. Specialists who operated independently will need to cooperate torun cross-channel programs. Processes that were set up for manual activities will need to berevamped to run on the new system. New processes will be needed for tasks that were managedinformally or not done at all.5. Sales alignment takes work. If your marketing automation system will feed leads to your salesdepartment, youll need to ensure the sales department is ready as well. Youll need to define

processes to move leads from marketing to sales, quality measures and scoring rules to ensureyoure delivering acceptable leads, service levels to ensure the leads are treated properly, and dataflows to associate revenue with your efforts. Youll also want a mechanism to send leads back fromsales to marketing when sales decides theyre not yet ready to pursue.6. Expect data issues. Your marketing automation system will rely on external feeds such as rentedlists, Web forms and your CRM system. Those sources have very different rules for data quality andformatting than the marketing automation requires. Be sure to review your inputs carefully and todetermine in advance what sorts of processing will be needed to convert the data into valuablemarketing information. Dont be surprised if you need significant manual effort to do the initialcleansing, and that you may need to request changes in the other systems to avoid additional manualcleansing after that.7. Deployment isnt easy. No matter what the salesperson says, its real work to put a new marketingautomation system in place. Set a realistic schedule and budget that allows for designing newprograms, developing new materials, working on data quality, training your staff and coordinating withother departments while still getting the day-to-day marketing work done as well.


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8. Training never ends. Your deployment plan will certainly include some initial training, but dont stopthere. Setting up those first few programs just scratches the surface of what a marketing automationsystem can do. As you get more experienced and more ambitious, youll need additional training inadvanced features to gain the full return on your investment. Youll also need training to keep up withchanges as the vendor introduces them. The good news: Training classes are a great way to gainnew marketing ideas from your instructors and fellow students.9. Youll need support. Actually, youll need two kinds of support: technical assistance when theres aproblem or you just have a question, and marketing advice on setting up programs and analyzing theresults. Find out in advance who will provide this support; it could be the vendor, a reseller, an agencyor some combination thereof. Then do your homework to be sure youll get the kind of support yourequire at a price you can afford. If this looks like a big problem, consider a different vendor.10.Measurement is tough. Your marketing automation system will gather the data you need tomeasure results. But its still tough to convert that raw information into credible, actionable marketingmeasurements. Be prepared to spend some time with your vendor and other experts in deciding howto set up your measurement process to link purchases to leads to marketing programs, to measurethe incremental impact of different programs, and to assess the combined impact of multipleprograms on final results. Remember that sound measurement is essential to improving your results

without it, you simply wont learn from your experience.Bonus WisdomNothing is forever. Your needs will change over time as your business, the marketing environmentand marketing automation systems themselves evolve. Recognize that your system must be flexibleenough to handle these changes, but also remember that you may ultimately need to changesystems if you outgrow your original choice. One of the advantages of todays marketing automationsystems is that many of them are rented as online services rather than purchased as on-premisesoftware. This makes it easier to move from one system to another, although its still not a transitionto make lightly.


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Section 4: The Market

Marketing automation has evolved on many fronts, and it continues to grow and change as traditionalmarketing automation capabilities bleed into other marketing platforms. The trend toward drag-and-dropinterfaces and increased platform scalability has brought a new level of sophistication the market, and the

space is quickly repositioning itself from marketing management to revenue management.

Key Trends among Marketing Automation VendorsBlurring of the lines: One of the key things that can be seen in the current environment is an increasedblurring of the lines between native marketing automation (platforms that are about the combining ofcontent-based nurturing with lead management systems, typified by decade-old early entrants Eloquaand Silverpop, formerly known as Vtrenz) and a host of other marketing platforms, including Email ServiceProviders, Lead Management Platforms and Enterprise Marketing Management.

What might have been described as Lead Management Platforms two years ago (such as Marketo andPardot), are increasingly robust; today they are full-fledged marketing automation. The major Email

Service Providers (particularly Exact Target and Silverpop) are making marketing automation increasinglypervasive in their platforms (and Silverpop has combined its email marketing and marketing automationplatforms). And the leading Enterprise Marketing Management platforms (particularly Aprimo, Neolaneand Unica) have combined project/resource management with complex execution. So today we see abroad range of options when it comes to marketing automation, which means there are plenty ofplatforms available for various use cases.

Upgrades to interfaces and horsepower: Many of the recent announcements from marketingautomation vendors have related to upgrades to their interfaces (as they move to more of a drag-and-drop approach for complex campaign building) and improvements to their horsepower (their underlyingprocessing, throughput and scalability of the platforms). These are important developments because first-generation marketing automation platforms did not perform either well.

On the interface front, imagine that building a marketing automation campaign draws upon a diverse setof components (content, campaign logic, routing logic, scoring and so forth) and diverse data inputs(CRM data, behavioral data, Web-form submissions, and more). Putting it all together can be a nightmare,given the complex set of campaign flows and lead-stage interactions youre trying to model. So thesimpler the better, and this has been at the heart of several recent interface upgrades. Four platformsthat have made great strides on this front are Eloqua, Neolane, Pardot and Silverpop.

The other unspoken truth of first-generation marketing automation is that as your campaigns, databasesand email throughput increased in size/scope, the systems became more sluggish and unstable. Why isthis? As opposed to a traditional email platform, which is pretty much batch and blast, there are multiplepoints of semantic processing that must occur to score, route, customize and send a marketing

automation email. This requires much more computing power. And so one of the critical developmentsweve seen in the past year has been several of the major vendors rebuilding their underlyingarchitectures to give them more computing horsepower and thus greater scalability.


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Shift from marketing management to revenue management: Perhaps the biggest story being drivenby Eloqua and Marketo is the repositioning of marketing automation from marketing management torevenue management. The evolution was inevitable. The greatest pain point that marketers face isjustifying their programs in terms of impact on revenue. The good news is that, by tying campaign activityto revenue outcomes reported in CRM, marketing automation is in a great position to manage and

analyze the connection between the two. So the opportunity is there for marketing automation to drive ashift in perspective from managing activity to optimizing the outcomes of marketing.

Vendor LandscapeThe market is primarily segmented by the size of the organizations that each vendor serves.

Enterprise marketers: The following vendors target marketers operating within environments that havecomplex CRM realities, many layers of demand centers, field marketing groups, marketing operationsteams, multiple and differentiated product groups and multidimensional sales forces across regions.These are organizations that also have more robust budgets and realize that services will be a majorcomponent of implementation. A handful of marketing platforms are best positioned to deliver in this

environment. They include: Aprimo Eloqua Neolane Oracle CRM On Demand Marketing (formerly Market2Lead) Unica

Growth-stage companies: The following vendors often target marketing organizations that are trying togrow quickly, have massive demand generation needs, yet have limited budgets. These are typicallycompanies that are also buying CRM for the first time and often select Salesforce.com. They also have amedium-size sales force from 20 to 50 total and fewer business lines (which means fewer campaignvariants).

Manticore Marketbright Marketo Silverpop

Small businesses: These are platforms for marketers on a budget with lower-volume, more efficientdemand generation needs. Often there is a CRM system involved, but some of these orgs will not haveCRM.

ActiveConversion Genius.com LoopFuse Pardot


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Section 5: Your NeedsMany companies make the mistake of rushing to make an automation purchase before taking the time todefine their internal requirements, i.e. what will they need from the automation solution. Once you knowyour needs, you can use your requirements to drive your solution choice. While individual organizational

requirements will vary from company to company, its always best to approach this in a cross-functionalmanner that encompasses groups beyond marketing including sales, operations, customer service andfinance. As mentioned in the vendor landscape, the size of your organization is one way to think aboutwhich marketing automation product is best for your company. Another useful framework is to askyourself a few key questions to determine whether youre a buyer with Basic or Advanced requirements.

Key Difference(s) between Basic and Advanced BuyersThe key differentiator between a Basic Buyer and Advanced Buyer is the complexity of its marketing andsales environment. This includes both how the organization engages with its buyers and the nature of itsinternal operations.

Determining Your Buyer Type: 6 Questions to AskHere are six questions an organization should ask itself to determine if it is a Basic or Advanced Buyer:

1. Is there an internal lead management process that manages every stage of the buyer journeyfrom initial response through to customer life-cycle?

2. Is the organization global and does it serve various geographies and regions? Does it need asolution that provides multilingual support?

3. Does the organization have multiple products and business units that will be dependent on thissystem?

4. Does the organization have the personnel resources that will be dedicated to the operation andexecution of this solution?

5. Does the organization have a complex and long sales cycle?6. Does the organization have complex data sets that will require the integration of multiple

databases and systems into the marketing automation solution?

Advanced buyers will have answered yes to nearly all of the questions above, while basic buyers willhave most often answered no.


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Section 6: How to Buy:

Key Solution, Cost and Vendor Considerations

1. Ease of implementation quick start packages

Feature/Solution Considerations10 Features for Basic Buyers:

2. Ease of use (development of landing pages, lead scoring, design and so forth)3. Available training from the vendor4. Support options (most basic users will need more hands-on support)5. Outbound email capabilities6. Basic/out-of-the-box CRM integration7. SaaS model delivery8. Ability to upgrade to more advanced features with increased maturity9. Available templates for email, Web, landing pages10.

Simple lead scoring

10 Features for Advanced Buyers:1. Advanced CRM integration (ability to support custom objects, unlimited custom fields)2. Support for multiple scoring models3. Available partners to assist in implementation and process development4. Asset management and content management capabilities5. Level of support6. Event planning and management7. Planning and budgeting8. Multi-user security9. Data segmentation capabilities10. Multi-channel support

Other considerations that both basic and advanced buyers should look at before purchasing theirsolutions are:

A vendors time in the market. Is this a new solution or a company that has vast experience? A vendors participation in the market. Is the vendor a thought leader in this space and do they

understand the changing world of B2B marketing? What features will be used consistently versus what features are nice to have? How customizable is the solution to meet an organizations specific needs?


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1. Basic pricing primer: Pricing is simple, but marketing automation salespeople often make itcomplicated. Marketing automation pricing formulas are a combination of three majorcomponents: database size, email sending volume and non-email add-ons. Marketing

automation vendors have tried for years to get pricing more value-based, and the best proxieshave been database size (how many unique records you are storing in marketing automation)and email volume (how many emails you send per month) as a starting place for pricing basicemail-based automation. Then most vendors charge extra for other pieces. Sometimes CRMintegration costs extra. Non-email channels, such as SMS, almost always cost extra.

Cost Considerations

What should you expect to pay? Small business users should expect to pay between $5,000and $20,000 per year for marketing automation. Growth-stage companies should expect topay$20,000 to $80,000 per year for marketing automation. And enterprises should expect topay $80,000 or more per year. In fact, a few of the enterprise-grade platforms wont strike a dealfor less than $100,000.

Also, dont spend the least amount possible just because youre trying to save a buck. Get thesystem you need, and youll have better results, even if it costs a little more.

2. What else to budget for: Small business-focused marketing automation platforms are relativelyeasy to use, and while you should expect to spend a little bit on front-end services, it wont be alot. In the growth-stage to enterprise tier, you should absolutely expect to pay for process-engineering and integration support from a combination of a technology integrator, a strategyconsultancy or a demand generation agency. Successful marketing automation is mostly aboutprocess, and only a little bit about technology. So you must invest in the processes if you want tobe successful (and today only one in four adopters of marketing automation is successful). Theleading services firms are there to help you be successful, but you need to expect to pay for theirservices as part of your total cost. In the growth-stage to enterprise tier, you should budget four

to eight times what you plan to spend on license fees on services.

Also consider that no one owns marketing automation by itself, and if you havent already boughtCRM, youll need it. You might also need an analytics program such as Good Data or an inboundmarketing platform such as HubSpot or a cloud connector such as Boomi or CastIron to helplink everything together. So success with marketing automation will require other systems inplace that you may or may not have budgeted for.

3. Approaching ROI: First, ROI from marketing automation should not be about reducing cost perlead. Marketing automation is most successful when youre nurturing, which is middle of thefunnel and assumes you already have the lead. So be careful about spurious metrics. Second,youre really talking about taking hold of your demand generation program and making it more

efficient. So think about the outputs. Increasing conversion rates downstream at Sales QualifiedLevel or Sales Opportunity Level is one thing to look at. So is tuning mid-funnel conversion (thedead zone). Increasing net total number of leads ready to go to sales is another. And then thereis the all-in net present value (NPV) of marketing activities. So this is really about maximizing thereturn on acquired leads i.e., once youve paid via a demand creation activity to get someonesname, email address, etc., its about making the most out of that chance. Thats where marketingautomation really shines.


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Implementation: Vendors targeting small and midsize businesses often provide freeimplementation, although this is usually limited to a few hours of telephone support to configurethe system, set up synchronization with a CRM system, and provide basic training in system

operations. Advanced training, marketing planning and program design cost extra. Severalvendors offer standard quick start packages that are structured to cover all the technical,process and organizational issues needed for a successful deployment.

Vendor ConsiderationsStability: Many marketing automation vendors are small companies, often privately held with a shorthistory. One of these firms may offer the best solution for your needs, so you shouldnt limit yourconsideration to a handful of market leaders. But you do want to ensure your vendor is likely to remain in

business and to continue investing in its product and support staff. Key items to consider include numberand size of clients, growth rate, employee count, profitability, financing sources and managementbackground.

References: Youll also want to talk to references to gain insight into the reliability of the system andquality of support. Ask the vendor to provide references that are similar to you in size, sophistication andindustry; if there are none, the vendor may be a poor fit for your needs.

Services and support: You can expect a marketing automation vendor to provide the following services:

Product upgrades: These are typically delivered to all clients as the vendor releases them. Thisis simplified by the SaaS model, since the vendor is actually running the software and can easilydeploy changes that are then available to all clients.

Technical support: Most vendors offer free standard telephone and online support to answertechnical questions, with additional charges for priority response, extended hours and dedicatedsupport staff. Special services such as configuration and custom reporting are usually additional.

Marketing services: Free papers on best practices and sample programs are often available inonline libraries. Assistance beyond casual advice is nearly always billed separately.

Account management: Many vendors assign each client a customer success manager whoperiodically reviews how the client is using the system and makes suggestions forimprovements. For small clients, the customer success manager typically doubles as the accountexecutive, while the roles are often separated for larger installations.

Because marketing automation is new to many buyers, vendors have recognized that technical andmarketing support are key requirements for client success. Vendors in different market segments haveadopted different strategies to meet these requirements:

Vendors targeting small businesses stress self-service support that minimizes expense. Thisapplies in particular to training and technical questions, where the best vendors offer extensiveon-demand tutorials and user guides. In addition, many provide user forums where their clientscan help one another at minimal cost to the company. Marketing support is often morepersonal, because the vendors realize that their clients need advice on how to use the systems

effectively. Such support is typically provided by telephone and online conferencing. Mostvendors include some marketing support as part of their basic services and charge for moreextensive assistance. Extended services often include developing creative materials, deployingcampaigns and analyzing results. The vendors may offer marketing support directly or throughbusiness partners.


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Vendors targeting midsize and large businesses offer more extensive personal supportservices. These include telephone and online technical support, including advanced technicalassistance such as custom integration with external systems and custom report development.Many vendors have developed standard training classes that are offered online, at vendorlocations and on-site at the client. Marketing support is sometimes provided by the vendor, butmore often is available through business partners that may be full-service marketing agenciesor more limited consultancies. Several vendors also provide large libraries of predesignedcampaigns and marketing materials that clients can use as models for their own programs.

Channel partner ecosystems: Most marketing automation vendors rely heavily on channel partners tohelp support their clients. Many partners are marketing agencies or consultants that bundle themarketing automation system with their other services. In these situations, the partner would provideinitial technical support for the client or often even operate the marketing automation system on theclients behalf. Other partners provide advanced technical and training services, particularly for largeimplementations. Many channel partners have relationships with multiple marketing automation vendors,allowing them to pick the system that is most appropriate for a particular client.

If the channel partner will be your main source of technical and marketing support, selecting the partnermay be more important than selecting the marketing automation system itself. Look for a partner withexisting clients similar to your own firm, in terms of size, sophistication and industry. Check referencescarefully. Understand the scope of services the partner will provide and how you will be billed for them. Ifthe partner is a large firm, make sure you meet and feel comfortable with the people who will service youraccount.

Checklist: 10 Key Questions to Ask Every Candidate Supplier1. Can I speak with reference clients that have installations similar to what mine would be?2. How many paying clients are currently on your system?3. What factors (database size, email volume, number of users, specific modules, etc.) determine the

price Id pay for your system?

4. Which system features are used by more than 80 percent of your clients? Which are used by fewerthan half?

5. How many hours of training will it take for my staff to become proficient in basic system functions? Inadvanced functions? What training resources are available?

6. How is technical support delivered (email, telephone, online forum) during what hours? What is youraverage time to respond to support requests?

7. What kinds of technical and marketing support are provided without additional charges? What areyour fees for additional support? Who provides advanced technical and marketing support: your ownstaff, channel partners or both?

8. What security, fail-over, backup and disaster recovery arrangements are in place? Aredocumentation, audit and past incident reports available?

9. How many hours of scheduled and unscheduled downtime have you had in the past year? Howmany hours of reduced service levels (i.e., slow system response or limited availability)?

10. What was your companys profit or loss last year? What is the current run rate? If your company isnot profitable, what funding is available and when do you expect to become profitable?


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Section 7: The Focus Short ListThe Focus Experts who created this Guide recommend the following specific vendors for Basic andAdvanced Buyers of marketing automation systems.

Focus.com Marketing Automation Recommendations for Basic BuyersRECOMMENDATIONS EXPERT COMMENTSGenius.com Raab: Range of modules from simple email to full marketing automation.

Particularly easy to deploy and integrate with Salesforce.com. Limited freeedition available.

Needles: A great option for small to midsize companies with strongfunctionality.

Hidalgo: Easy to deploy and provides basic functionality. Limited use freeversion available. For smaller companies running Salesforce.com this is a

good option.

Loopfuse Raab: Low cost option with basic capabilities. Free version available.Hidalgo: Recently added features for social media tracking, contentmarketing. Inbound capabilities are beyond most marketing automationproducts.

Manticore Technology Raab: Small but well-established vendor with solid features and strong clientsupport.

Needles: Awesome mid-tier platform with a great team behind it. All therequisite functionality and a strong customer track record. They are a quietone, but what they have is solid, and their customers seem to be loyal.

Hidalgo: Good track record with good clients. Has great SFDC integrationsand delivers additional value via its channel partners.

Marketo Raab: Rapidly growing in both client base and sophistication. Exceptionalease of use.Needles: Great lead management tool that is going upmarket and becoming moreof a complete marketing automation platform every day. Rapidly growing andsizeable customer base. Remaining challenges when it comes to email deliverability

and enterprise scalability, but given the size of its customer base, there are clearly alot of marketing organizations being successful with Marketo.

Hidalgo: Focus on ease of use and implementation. Rapidly growingcustomer base and expanding its footprint quickly, A market leader in thisspace and although solution is easy to use, it is quite robust.

Pardot Raab: Squarely targeted at small to midsize businesses, with pricing andbusiness model to match. Excellent value for the money.

Needles: Wow. What a robust platform at an awesome price. Its latestreleases are impressive. Small businesses using this platform which hasincredible progressive profiling, ease of use, social media integration and

strong analytics integration will make enterprises jealous. Also, it integrateswith SugarCRMs Sugar Open Source, which is a great option for Sugarcustomers.

Hidalgo: Strong customer base as evidence by its recent user conference.Increasing in awareness and a strong bet for smaller companies looking todeploy automation.
http://www.genius.com/solutions/MarketingAutomation.phphttp://www.genius.com/solutions/MarketingAutomation.phphttp://www.loopfuse.com/http://www.loopfuse.com/http://www.manticoretechnology.com/default.asphttp://www.manticoretechnology.com/default.asphttp://www.marketo.com/http://www.marketo.com/http://www.pardot.com/http://www.pardot.com/http://www.pardot.com/http://www.marketo.com/http://www.manticoretechnology.com/default.asphttp://www.loopfuse.com/http://www.genius.com/solutions/MarketingAutomation.php


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Focus.com Marketing Automation Recommendations for Advanced BuyersRECOMMENDATIONS EXPERT COMMENTSAprimo Raab: An established enterprise marketing automation vendor with a new product. Marketing

Studio On Demand provides sophisticated capabilities including complex segmentation, real-

time interactions, rule-driven content for email and Web pages, precise control over CRM

synchronization, extensive project management, detailed assignment of user rights, and a fullyextensible data model.

Hidalgo: An enterprise player with many robust features for advanced users. Supportsmultiple/complex data sets.

Eloqua Raab: Thought leader in marketing automation with a large client base and broad set offeatures. New interface improves usability over earlier versions.

Needles: Strongest long-term vision in the marketplace for enterprise-grade demandgeneration. Steve Woods and Brian Kardon have really set the bar for vision around revenue

management, and theyre doing a great job of integrating that into the platform. Eloqua 10 is agreat upgrade with a great new visual interface. Very excited about the ability to do complexthings on this platform in a very simple manner. Also, it has been proven to work with just about

any CRM out there, so lots of options.

Hidalgo: Industry leader and with launch of Eloqua 10 have made the solution easier to useoverall. Large customer base ranging from the mid-market to the large enterprise. Hard to gowrong with Eloqua.

Neolane Raab: Highly customizable system with particular strengths in complex email campaigns.Strong base in consumer marketing.

Needles: Great, enterprise-grade platform. Very robust with great visual interface. Particularlystrong on massive, multi-channel messaging and complex environments that have multipleCRMs involved. Also one of the strongest track records with enterprise clients in the space,

with very loyal customers. A top pick for enterprise use cases.

Hidalgo: Strong vendor although largely behind in market awareness from some of the moreknown players. Overall good and reliable system.

Silverpop Raab: Email vendor that purchased and integrated a leading business marketing automationsystem. Large range of features and innovative user interface.

Needles: Good hybrid model for the use case that requires mid-level marketing automationtogether with enterprise-grade email. Great visual drag-and-drop campaign creation interface,and enterprise-grade throughput/stability of the underlying platform. Great vision and

increasing integration of social media inputs, but currently has CRM integration only withSalesforce. Also, the current platform is the result of a recent merger of the two platforms, and

there are some bugs to be worked out, to be fair.

Hidalgo: Recently merged its email and B2B product. Have a road map of very robust featuresdue to come out in 2011. Great vision in the market place and very robust email platform.
http://www.aprimo.com/http://www.aprimo.com/http://www.eloqua.com/http://www.eloqua.com/http://www.neolane.com/usa/index.htmhttp://www.neolane.com/usa/index.htmhttp://www.silverpop.com/marketing-solutions/marketing-automation.htmlhttp://www.silverpop.com/marketing-solutions/marketing-automation.htmlhttp://www.silverpop.com/marketing-solutions/marketing-automation.htmlhttp://www.neolane.com/usa/index.htmhttp://www.eloqua.com/http://www.aprimo.com/


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Section 8: Conclusions

Marketing automation systems offer a powerful tool to help marketers improve their results. Here aresome additional suggestions to help you make pick the right solution and deploy it successfully:

Five Things to Do Before You Begin Your Solution Search1. Define the stages in your purchase cycle so you can map your marketing efforts against them.2. Create a framework for your lead management process to ensure leads move efficiently through the

system.3. Define quantitative objectives for your marketing automation system so you can measure success.4. Assess whether you have the right people in place to run the solution, and invest in whatever training

or recruitment is needed to add the necessary skills.5. Explore the quality of your existing customer and prospect databases and begin a data cleansing

process.

Five Things to Investigate about Candidate Solutions1. Email deliverability rates and services2. Multi-step campaigns with multiple branches within one campaign3. Lead scoring methods including multiple scores per person4. Data segmentation on lead attributes and behaviors5. Content libraries and sharing across campaignsFive Important Cost-Related Questions1. What features are included in different modules or editions of the system?2. What are typical training and implementation costs?3. What other costs should I expect, such as content and program development?4. Is an annual contract required?5. Are there additional charges for accessing my data via APIs or data export?Five (More) Critical Vendor Considerations1. System infrastructure and reliability including deliverability scores, up-time, backup, etc.2. Financial resources and profitability3. Breadth of channel partner network4. Reputation for reliability, ease of use, innovation, customer support, etc.5. Growth rate and customer churn


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Five Dos and Five Donts1. Plan ahead before you start your projectDo:2. Deploy in stages3.

Set and track realistic performance goals4. Spend time on aligning with the sales department

5. Build a firm understanding of your customers buying process

1. Buy a solution without testing it against your own scenariosDont2. Stop after youve achieved your first deployment stage3. Expect to deploy the solution without process and organizational change4. Think that technology alone with solve your problems5. Try to save money by skimping on training and external services


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About Focus Research

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