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Marketo Rockstar Tour – Seattle Stop

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Wednesday, September 21st, 2011

Marketo recently made their second pass in Seattle as a part of their 2011 “Rockstar” Tour.  Zephyr 47′s Brian Hansford attended this event and posts this review.  At Zephyr 47 we attend various vendor events and have also reviewed an Eloqua Customer Success Tour event in 2010.  

Driving the Business.

Revenue Marketing.

Decision Making Information.

These are the major takeaway messages for me.

This is the second Seattle Marketo event I have attended and as a service provider focused on marketing automation, I was impressed with Marketo’s focus on how a marketing team can directly impact revenue with technology, sales and marketing alignment, and business process.  Beyond the theory, real world examples and detailed analytics were provided.  This event isn’t for folks who are simply looking for a standard AMA chapter lovefest.  Bring your cranium. My interests lie more in how B2B marketers can have direct effect on revenue generation with best practices information on analytics.  Marketo delivers in this series.

Marketing automation vendors, solution providers and customers, bloggers and “experts” take note.  Marketo gets it.  (Full disclosure, Zephyr 47 is not a services or reseller partner with Marketo.)

I will be honest, the Marketo team is incredibly smart and even though elements of this program were repetitive to the spring tour stop, I felt as if I emerged from an MBA lecture on Revenue Performance Management.  In hindsight, the repetitive elements were very valuable because the revenue marketing message was reinforced with new high-value content.

Bottom line: I don’t care about platform features or cool infographics, tweets, or how vendors lecture press folks on op-ed pieces or the trendiest tradeshow exhibits.  When I see bottom-line, real-world information and analytics and customer case studies, I sit up in my chair.

Marketo’s new Chief Revenue Officer Paul Albright provided a detailed analysis on how marketers can rise above the traditional activity-based mode of marketing with data (and colorful) examples of best practices on how to focus people and money on the right effort.  Paul also showed concrete examples how marketers can find opportunities to align with sales, make course corrections, and use mathematical formulas to find what works and doesn’t when building a revenue pipeline.

After Paul Albright’s preso, a customer/sponsor panel discussed high level ideas on best practices.  Smart folks I respect, but I didn’t garner a lot from their discussion.

The customer presentation was excellent featuring Egencia, which is the corporate travel division for Expedia.  Both the director of marketing and sales director demonstrated the huge value and benefits of alignment.  I found incredible value how the described the alignment process with people across departments.  This is one of the most challenging exercises and Egencia pulled it off well.  Additionally, Egencia presented how they use technology to develop conversations and ultimately grow revenue with intelligent prospecting. Egencia is a model worth following for any B2B org.

The highlight for me was Marketo’s Maria Pergolino’s detailed and transparent presentation on how she approaches revenue marketing with her team.  A key takeaway was how Marketo looks at available content in campaigns and how leads and opportunities are influenced throughout a buying process.  If some content falls short in providing lift, make a course correction.  Test and retest.  The formulas and ratios were very detailed and sometimes complex in showing how the right mix of timing, segmentation, and content could dramatically impact revenue.  Especially important to me is how Maria showed marketers work through business analytics when asking for new headcount or additional budget.  More than ever, marketers need to demonstrate how investments will impact revenue and the formulas and approach presented by Marketo and Egencia were impressive.  If you get 10% more revenue, can you show the impact to the business?  If you can’t, you’re in trouble.

Regardless of where loyalties lie with marketing automation platforms or vendors, I highly recommend attending the Marketo Rockstar events.

Brian Hansford

Zephyr 47, LLC

 

 

 

 

Categories : Marketo
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How Will You Evolve Marketing Analytics in 2012 – Expert Guest Blog

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Tuesday, July 26th, 2011

Ed. Note: This installment of the Expert Blog Series is provided by Jon Miller, VP of Marketing & co-founder of Marketo, a leading marketing automation and revenue marketing platform provider.  Many thanks to Jon for this content!

More and more B2B marketers are missing opportunities for impacting lead generation and ultimately playing for a bigger piece of the pie when it comes to budgeting.  The reason for this is the dependency on traditional or manual processes to gather, analyze and report on B2B marketing data.

As we move towards 2012, it’s essential for marketers to evolve their thinking and their choices when it involves marketing analytics. Without this evolution, the possibility for reporting on the impact marketing has on the business will diminish and impact future marketing forecasts and company sales revenues.

To understand why it’s time to move beyond traditional methods, consider these reasons to evolve your marketing analytics in 2012:

  • Provide statistics to the c-suite – Obtaining sign-off from company executives on additional funding and additional campaigns is critical for any B2B marketing department. Although marketers can cite new technologies, social strategies and brainstorming ideas, without consistent and accurate data, they will meet a roadblock from the c-suite.To move forward and get that sign-off, prepare to evolve your marketing analytics for 2012 with a total solution that integrates with existing systems, gauges current and future trends and calculates the elements needed for a positive ROI.
  • Identify trends and forecast- Forecasting what future B2B marketing campaigns will garner isn’t guess work – it’s a calculated process. Marketers need to identify emerging trends, analyze existing data and gauge customer experience to predict the effectiveness of future campaigns.If marketers are still relying on spreadsheets and homegrown databases to forecast marketing outcomes, they may fall short in their predictions. In 2012, more marketers will evolve their approach to data mining and bringing out relevant data needed to produce consistent and effective marketing forecasts.
  • Identify inefficiencies and strengthen processes – Most marketing organizations may realize their processes have become flawed, but lack the data to pinpoint the flaws and strengthen them.  Marketers will want to identify these pain points, address them with revised or new processes and report back on the impact on results.Some resolutions to flawed processes may need a tighter alignment with sales to share ideas and strengthen processes or improve an ailing lead nurturing process with more engagement with prospective leads.

As you being to budget and plan for 2012, it is important to remember that to generate positive marketing ROI and increased funding opportunities, marketing analytics will play a larger role in the operations and strategies of B2B marketing teams.

Jon is VP Marketing and co-founder at Marketo. He explores everything from lead nurturing and social media to marketing ROI and revenue performance management in Marketo’s popular blog, Modern B2B Marketing, and was named a Top 10 CMO for companies under $250 million revenue by The CMO Institute. Jon graduated Magna Cum Laude in Physics from Harvard College and has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Categories : Jon Miller, Marketing Automation, Marketo, Revenue Marketing, Strategic Marketing
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Contact Cadence with Marketing Automation

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Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

Marketing automation with systems like Eloqua, Manticore Technology, Marketo, Pardot and others are like driving an amazing Ferrari, or even a powerful tractor trailer rig.  They offer fanstastic capabilites to develop new and profitable customer relationships and tools to measure marketing ROI.  With all of these capabilites comes great enthusiasm and one that must be tempered with discipline and planning.

Cadence:  “A recurrent rhythmical series”

Most parents wouldn’t let an inexperienced teenage driver at the wheel or a beautiful Italian sports car without some solid ground rules, policies, and training.  The same can be said for how organizations use marketing automation systems.  Contact Cadence is critical to make sure all of the power is used effectively and customer relationships and repuations are kept strong. (We discuss complementary Contact Governance in another blog post.)

Contact cadence is very important to measure and manage marketing campaigns throughout the course of a year.  Cadence starts with a strategic plan on implementing and using a marketing automation system.  A core component of this overall strategy is developing and managing a campaign calendar that plans contacts over the course of a year.  Who you are contacting with the right content and how often.  This helps build the proper cadence and keeps your database and relationships healthy.

Cadence Benefits: A well planned annual campaign calendar with the proper target audience lead to  increased conversion/response rates, better qualified opportunities with shorter sales cycles and strong credible relationships.  If you execute a well planned campaign schedule with high value content in measured sequences, not only will your campaigns increase in effectiveness, you may find your database contacts actually look forward to your contact.

Risks with Poor Cadence: With random, excessive and unplanned marketing campaign contact, an organization risks dramatically lowered campaign conversion rates and damaged perception.  Customer may perceive that you are simply “spamming” and not really providing high value content at the right time in their buying cycle. If you exceed  cadence with customers, they will disengage. Very simple.

Ideas for Developing Proper Cadence with Marketing Automation

  • Develop an annual campaign calendar and share with your entire organization and partner channel.
  • Segment your audience based on their needs and place in their buying cycle.  Provide the right content to the right audience at the right time.
  • Provide a balance of “free” content downloads and high value content where contacts fill out simple forms.
  • A well-planned marketing schedule allows your database “rest” to build anticipation and increase conversion rates with your next contact.

Contact cadence using a marketing automation system enables an organization to manage customer contacts and increase overall effectiveness and conversions.

Additional Resources

Categories : Eloqua, Manticore Technology, Marketing Automation, Marketing Campaigns, Marketing Operations
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