Marketing Interactions

Manticore Technology VII is All About Marketers

I've known the folks at Manticore Technology for quite a while. I've been watching their progress and I've been impressed by their interest in learning what's working and what's not for the companies who implement marketing automation.

Based on feedback from their customers, they've taken note that a one-size-fits-all mentality doesn't work for marketing, nor does it work for the technology that supports it. Bravo!

Manticore Technology's VII release has a really intuitive user interface that allows each marketer to customize their display so they have just the tools and reports they need in view. The drag and drop was so easy I wanted to wrestle the mouse away from Christopher Dolan, their VP of Marketing, when he was giving me a preview.

The other thing I like about the dashboard is that the top of the left navigation shows you all things you've recently used so you don't have to search for them.

In case you're wondering, Manticore Technology has had a really nice year. Their customer acquisition for 2009 is up 117% over 2008. Companies are obviously responding to their well-designed changes.

For example:

Program Trees: I'm not sure what they call them, but the planning tool for nurturing programs is one of my favorites. Manticore enables marketers to see the entire nurturing chain like a decision tree. You can view the whole thing instead of having to pull up different campaigns and try to visualize how they work together, or figure out where the gaps are that you overlooked.

Asset Folders: This is a very cool way to manage your marketing assets. Just like you create folders in MSFT Word, you can do so here, with hierarhy as you need it. Then you drag and drop assets into them so you can see at a glance everything being used by month, by campaign, by segment, or however you like.

The improved visibility is a boon for taking control of your marketing funnel, but the simplicity is what's really compelling. Marketers are busy. We've got so much on our plates that we certainly don't need to struggle with the technology that's supposed to be enabling - not aggravating.

I say, Good Job, Manticore! Go check it out for yourselves...there are a lot of other new things to see like the email wizard and drag and drop list building that makes segmentation a breeze!

Genoo Puts Microsite Marketing Automation on the Map

While I was in Minneapolis last week, I had the opportunity to see some of the latest developments for the upstart marketing automation company, Genoo. As of today, they're out of Beta in full public release with a growing roster of companies that are generating valuable business results.

Genoo has lead scoring, email marketing, salesforce.com integration, lead profiles, landing pages segmentation tools and auto responders, like many other marketing automation SAAS providers, but let's get to the uber cool stuff.

There are a couple of things that set Genoo apart:

Microsites: Being able to manage your online marketing content in real time is critical for B2B marketers. If you're stuck in the IT queue, it may be time to consider deploying a themed microsite (or two) that focuses strictly on sharing the educational and expertise information your buyers need to know. Genoo gives you the microsite and content management tools to make this happen. Yes, for business users.

Lead Sequences: Regular drip campaigns require marketers to put a stake in the ground and assign leads to a nurturing campaign or track. With Genoo, you can do this, but you can also create rules that allow for the system to assign them to additional tracks of interest or reassign them altogether based on the content they view at your microsite.

This way, if your leads' interests change from one problem scenario to another, they can get the information that's just right for them. That's pretty darned cool. It also puts a whole new spin on relevant follow-up.

Traveling Forms: (this is my name for them) Yes, you can create lead capture forms on the microsite in about any configuration imaginable with a few clicks. But your microsite is no longer just a marketing silo.

You won't want to forego the lead generation potential of your corporate website, or have separate form collection that's not integrated with your marketing efforts. Now you can also embed Genoo forms in the appropriate places on your corporate website and collect those leads into your Genoo lead database, inserting them into the appropriate lead sequence of communications. How's that for consolidating your marketing efforts?

Genoo also has some other cool developments in the works that will be coming soon. When I spoke with Kim Albee, President of Genoo (yes, she's my sister) she stated that most of the new functionality and tools for the Genoo platform are being co-developed with their clients. She wants to make sure that each new feature truly addresses customer needs and functions in the way that produces results for them. A good example of embracing the customer perspective as a way of developing the business.

But, don't take my word for it.

You can hear a customer interview with Kurt Theriault of Business Efficacy and download the case study about how Vision Solutions is using Genoo to share a serial eBook with their leads over time that's become their "number one lead generation vehicle from cost-per-lead and quality-of-lead standpoints," according to Ed Vesely, Sr. VP of Marketing.

And, the pricing is reasonable enough that you can do a whole lot more with a whole lot less than you thought. 

You can also read the review by Tom Pick at WebMarketCentral blog.

Lessons Learned from Using Marketing Automation

There's a new report out from Demand Gen Report, sponsored by Manticore Technology, that reveals the reflections of 53 marketing executives who are using marketing automation systems. As the use of these systems is estimated at only 10% of the overall B2B market, these insights from the trenches will help both vendors and customers prepare for the best outcomes.

The benefits from automating marketing programs can be many. In fact, given the role of the Internet in today's complex purchasing process, it's almost impossible to operate in a customer-centric fashion without it.

This said, technology is not the answer to better marketing. Technology is the enabler of a solid eMarketing strategy. Marketing automation systems enable the gathering of prospect intelligence and the delivery of content made more relevant when offered in parallel to those insights. Even better, the systems can help you generate online dialogue and interactions valuable to both your prospects and your company.

The report, Marketing Automation: Lessons from the Trenches, provides some interesting feedback from companies that have deployed these systems. The executives interviewed used a variety of solutions including; Active Conversion, Aprimo, Eloqua, eTrigue, LoopFuse, Manticore Technology, Marketo, Market2Lead, Pardot and Silverpop Engage B2B (formerly VTrenz).

Here are a couple of key insights:

“If you were to head up the rollout of a marketing automation system at another organization, what would [you] do differently,” 79.2% said they would “better prepare their organization by building proper processes and content offers to feed the automation system.”

"...usability is important over the long-term of the system’s lifespan, not just in the early stages of rollout. 36% of respondents said, “Just because a marketing automation solution has a slick interface does not mean it’s going to be easy to use and function how you expect...”

Satisfaction rides on meeting expectations:

Vendors should pay close attention to what causes diminishing satisfaction. There's quite an impact shown on satisfaction scores between customers who found the systems easy to use and enjoyed faster implementation times—and those who didn't.

Support and training are also highly critical to satisfaction. Technology vendors must remember that their systems are likely being used by business users, not IT professionals. Using the system is only one thing on a long list of deliverables for an already over-worked marketing department.

The fact that customers find they're "currently using 50% or less of their marketing automation system’s functionality" should also be a wake-up call for vendors to help their customers take advantage of the system's capabilities as they gain proficiency.

Customers need to consider:
Based on the findings from the survey, companies choosing to implement marketing automation need to think carefully about what they want to get out of the system and how their processes will shift from manual efforts to technology enabled efforts.

The whole purpose of marketing automation is to empower marketing to drive more qualified sales opportunities to the sales team. Without the knowledge about what your sales force considers a qualified opportunity, it's very difficult to construct an automation process that delivers prospects truly ready to actively consider becoming your customers.

To round out your decision to implement marketing automation, I'll leave you with this quote from the report:

“Nurture content is different than demand gen content – it’s doesn’t talk about ‘shiny new objects.’ It should deliver valuable content to the reader, based on their profile and behavior.”

Every company considering implementing marketing automation should read this report. In my opinion, marketing automation is one of the best decisions a company with a complex sale can choose to implement. But, it's important to be prepared for what's coming. Technology is an enabler - and a great one. Choose wisely and prepare to use it effectively.

Thanks to Manticore Technology for having the chops to sponsor this survey. It's great to see such high satisfaction levels as well as to help other companies learn from the experiences of early adopters. Well done!

Go Download the Report

Genius is Bringing GURLs to the Social Party

I had the privilege of speaking with the Genius folks today about the GURL^TMs and some cool new web analytics features they'll be rolling out this fall. For those of us who've been wondering how the heck to prove ROI is possible with social media, we may have found a way to do just that.

Tracking the impact your social participation can make on active pipeline has been a pretty nebulous challenge. But the GURLs change that. GURLs are these super-powered, shortened URLs similar to what you may have seen from services like budURL, bitly, and others.

I use budURLs to track many of my Twitter links. I can see clicks and a few other things, but they're a standalone metric. And there's no follow-thru visibility about someone who clicks on my budURL and then clicks on other links on my blog or website.

The GURLs could become one of the most popular tools at the social media party. What I like is how easy Genius has made social media support. Just take a look:

Step 1: copy and paste a URL into the tool. Label it for tracking purposes.

Step 2: Once you click the button "Create Trackable URL" you're presented with your GURL and the options to Tweet, post to LinkedIn or on facebook. When you make your selection, the link is embedded, you type your message around it and you're done.

Step 3: Measure your success. Now you can wait and watch to see how well received your links and messages are. But here's the kicker: Genius will track anonymous visitors until they identify themselves to you and then merge the history from their previous clicks with their identified profile. This means you'll have the ability over time to begin assigning contribution to social media efforts.

Here's an interesting tidbit. The Genius folks shared with me that what some of their customers are learning in Beta use of the tool is that the lead conversions they achieve through Twitter actually tend to become qualified leads at a faster rate. The early belief about why this is happening is because those leads have been actively researching solutions and looking for information.

This is good news for B2B marketers who have been looking for more proof points that social media pays off.

But, wait...there's more. Genius is also launching Visitor Intelligence for Sales which allows both sales and marketing to see which companies are visiting, but not yet identifying themselves. With a tie to LinkedIn, your sales reps or marketing people can take a look at who they know from those companies and replay the website visits to ensure they can communicate in relevant ways to help relationships grow right from the start.

The other thing that comes to mind is the ability to see when there's a potential interest from a new vertical or market segment you might not have been focusing on with past messaging. Let's say that, all of a sudden, pharmaceutical firms are visiting your website. Wouldn't that be great to know so you can get some content specific to them ready for prime time?

These are two great additions from Genius that show they're continually stretching to deliver tools that impact how marketing and sales can improve the ways they sell in relation to the way today's buyers are buying.

Read about Social Media Support

Check out CEO David Thompson's blog post

Learn more about Anonymous Visitor Tracking and Visitor Intelligence

Socialize B2B Customer Advocacy

I received a request to publicize a webinar this week from a company I'd not heard of before.  Their name is Zuberance. The email content interested me, so I went to check them out. Zuberance is in the business of helping companies mobilize customer advocacy programs.

That interested me. It sounded, at first, like something that was more suited to B2C, but the ideas started spinning. So I attended the webinar to find out more, and now I'm full of ideas about how B2B marketers can expand their reach through more effective engagement programs that inspire customers to include your company in their conversations.

But, before we get to that, here's a few things that might surprise you:

• 84% of buyers are influenced by word of mouth [WOM] - Forrester Research
  
• A study by Keller Fay found that executives have 118 WOM conversations a week [EVERY WEEK]
• That same study learned executives mention brands in conversation 102X per week.
• It's estimated that 40% of your customers are advocates - Zuberance research with B2B & B2C companies
  

So what's an advocate?

An advocate is a customer who goes out of their way to recommend your company's offerings.

The interesting thing to note is that advocates may not be your biggest spenders.

Another thing to note is that 1 in 5 of your customers are detractors. Even though they're still your customers. Seems like that's something companies should work on fixing, but that's another post.

How do you know who your advocates are?

According to Zuberance, you ask them this one question:
How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?

Those who score 9 - 10 are potential advocates.

You may be sitting there saying, yeah, well, we only have 100 customers, so how much can this be worth? Well, it's not the number of companies you have, it's the number of people within the companies. This can mean buyers, influencers, end users and other employees who's jobs have been positively impacted by your products or solutions.

You can see the multiplier implications on advocacy, right? And, out of that group, Zuberance says 25% of these advocates will become active. That means they'll recommend you to their network.

The trick is that once you identify your advocates, you need to mobilize them. That's what the Zuberance hosted platform enables. Plus, they track all the activity so you have visibility to the results of their influence. [think lead generation]

The platform enables advocates to post their content/recommendations to social networks and via direct emails and I'm sure lots of places they didn't cover in the webinar. Which is where the socialize part comes in. Think about the exposure and reach you'll gain within every active advocate's network.

Here's an example of a company's experience using Zuberance.

• They identified and activated 5,600 advocates.
• 59% of those advocates created content (recommendations).
• 48% sent offers (think "see this exclusive content" or "you should attend this webinar" type referrals for B2B)

And the results?

• 2,250 new leads generated
• 112 deals won
• $5.6M in additional revenue

Anyone not need that?

As a disclaimer, I have no further experience with this company, but I do have to say that this is compelling enough to start thinking about. Oh, and for those of you who say the B2B buyers aren't out socializing - consider that Forrester Research found 91% of tech buyers they interviewed were Spectators and 58% were Critics.

What's your take on this concept?

Marketo Sales Insights - A 6th-Sense Advantage for Sales Effectiveness

Those of you who read my blog know that I'm passionate about marketing automation. Last week, I was privileged to see a preview of Marketo's 2nd product, Sales Insight, released today. I liked what I saw and think this extension to Marketo Lead Management software can help marketing and sales begin closing that alignment gap.

Why? Well, because Sales Insights eliminates a lot of the guesswork about lead value. And, it's a native Salesforce.com application they've really tried to make intuitive to remove the barrier to adoption companies would have if they threw yet another tool at the sales team.

But the reason I really like it is because it enables sales to work more collaboratively with marketing in a natural and real-time manner.

Here are a few examples:

Interesting Moments: Marketing and Sales can work together to define interesting moments that help sales stay focused on lead behavior that indicates higher levels of interest. Let's face it, not all lead activity merits sales intervention.

With interesting moments, escalating amounts of data are distilled down to key factors that makes a difference by helping sales know just when to reach out and who to reach out to. They won't be wasting their time on leads who aren't displaying buying intentions.

I think this is a key to sales effectiveness. The better companies can distill the interesting moments into actionable intelligence, the more on-target their sales team will be. This will take effort over time as patterns are noted and the importance of those "moments" meanings defined. Nuance will be the factor of the future that helps us better serve our buyers and customers.

Best Bets: Best Bets are those "owned" by a sales rep. The stars indicate lead score and the flames indicate the rate of change of that score. The whole point is that we're now able to gather so much information that it can be overwhelming.

The flames and stars work together to help salespeople focus on what's important. And, they helped you create your lead scoring process, right? Best Bets helps them use that outcome more effectively without requiring them to dig through reams of data.

Actions: Salespeople now have the ability to take actions in regards to leads to work in concert with marketing to generate timely pipeline progression. They can assign a lead to a specific nurturing campaign, view it from the marketing side, add it to their watch list (leads they're interested in following but aren't yet assigned to them) and send them a trackable Marketo email, perhaps to invite a lead to attend a webinar on a subject they've shown interest in. 

And all of this is instantly updated for both the marketing and sales sides. Sales can also suspend marketing for a couple of weeks to eliminate cross messaging while they determine the lead's buying horizon.

The other tool that I think can become extremely beneficial for both sales and marketing is the Anonymous Web Activity tracker. Considering that the leads companies know about, who've opted in, are only a fraction of your website's visitors, this can be killer. Now you can see which companies are visiting your website and how many pages they've viewed. But what makes this helpful is the integration with Jigsaw, DemandBase and LinkedIn. Click any of those buttons to learn more about the contacts within that company you may be able to engage.

What's fascinating to me as a marketer is the potential for uncovering new market opportunities that might not be on a company's radar, as well as expanding lead generation efforts toward companies who've at least shown some interest in what you've got to offer already.

Marketo Sales Insights is sold on a per-seat basis as an extension to Marketo Lead Management software. I'd say it's definitely worth checking out. There's quite a bit more than what I've covered here.

Why B2B Salespeople Say they Win Software Sales

Take a look at the chart below, graciously provided by CSO Insights. If you're a B2B software marketer, this may not be inspiring. However, what's interesting to note is what  sales execs determine are the leading competitive reasons why their reps win deals.

Looking at this from the other end of the funnel and comparing the views of companies who win more than 60% of the deals they're after (blue) vs. those who don't shows some interesting differences.

I'd love to know if their customers agree with how these stack up, but that's another story.

Here are a few things I find deserving of attention for those of us looking at this process from the top end of the funnel:

Marketing Messaging is last on the list for those who win the most. Is this because marketing messaging is so bad or because it's not integrated across the sales process, so sales reps lack visibility into what's driving opportunities to them?

Existing Relationships and References hold the 2nd and 3rd spots for those who win more. This is a critical point and plays into how hard your company works to build relationships after customer acquisition, as well as nurture your customers along by providing new ideas and insights over the full course of the relationship. 

I also think it relates to your company's credibility and reputation in the marketplace.

What role is marketing playing here? Or is this a direct reflection of the relationships the sales reps have built. Shouldn't be heavily reliant on one or the other, but a shared responsibility of both sales and marketing.

Sales process is rated much higher by those who win more.

Contrast this to service and support which are rated higher by those who win less.

Interesting dichotomy, don't you think?

Finally, I find it good to know that both sides agree ROI is equally important from either view. What I fail to understand is why it's so far down the list for those who win more deals.

If ROI wasn't a factor, would your product be superior?

Would your customers still have relationships with you or provide references if they received a limited return on their investment with you? If there was no ROI, would it matter how good your sales process is?

If you, as a marketer, had to rate these factors for why your company wins deals, how would your choices differ from sales?

What other things do you see in this chart worth thinking about?

Marketo 3.0 Reinvents Marketing Automation (Again) in Support of Conversations

It’s hard to believe it’s only been a year since Marketo first came on the marketing automation scene. In that short amount of time they’ve gained 150 customers in 9 countries. Feedback from their customers and the company’s own experiences using their software have driven this robust, upgraded 3.0 release that includes 200+ new features.

Marketo software is designed by marketers, for marketers. I’ve had several lengthy conversations with Jon Miller, VP of Marketing, about how the company uses Marketo Lead Management to prove that marketing automation produces results by educating leads and building engaged relationships prior to sales activities.

And, what happens when salespeople call?

Leads recognize them and want to talk.

Conversation is the key to marketing and selling complex sales in a digital buying environment.

Marketo recognizes that not all online interactions with a prospect can be treated the same way. They use a cocktail party analogy to get their point across.

For example, when you go to a cocktail party, you can’t script what you’ll say because you don’t know who’ll be there or what they’ll talk about. If you try to approach this type of interaction with the same script for everyone, you’ll end up looking like an idiot to most.

To alleviate this pain, Marketo has upgraded segmentation to get really granular. They know that some prospect activity (or lack thereof) means a score should be decreased. They help marketers make sure that the message developed for a particular niche doesn’t get sent to people who won’t care.

Perhaps most importantly, they understand that the goal of sales is to be out selling. So they’ve freed salespeople to work hot leads from wherever they are by using real-time alerts to notify them instantly, via email or mobile device, when a lead takes action that indicates they could be an avid buyer.

Even though I’d love to cover all 200+ new features, I’m going to restrain myself to talk about some other key improvements that address issues I think provide a compelling advantage for their customers:

Progressive profiling: This means relieving your prospects from the pain of repeatedly filling out the same information time and again when they repeatedly download valuable content from your website.  It’s been proven that each additional field on a form increases the probability that leads won’t bother. Each field introduces friction and redirects their focus from getting your information to deciding how much of their own it may be worth.

With progressive profiling, the form fields the system knows are pre-filled, leaving only the new fields to be completed before they can get what they want. This approach enables marketers to gather insights beyond contact information and get more meaty clues about the buying stage, priority needs, related issues, etc. Marketers need to evaluate every field required on a form to make sure the pay off in insight is worth asking the lead to expend that additional effort.

Landing Pages: I’ve always been impressed with Marketo’s drag and drop interface, but the ability to alter you landing pages on the fly when you see an opportunity to improve them, including switching out your forms, means your campaigns can be more holistic and responsive to your leads. In fact, Marketo has specifically made landing pages simple to create to ensure that marketers make as many as they need for each niche market they target.

Anonymous Lead Tracking: The problem with website analytics is they track your website visitors in aggregate, regardless of who they are. It used to be that marketers would have to compare lead generation and management statistics against website analytics to determine how much of their traffic was actively engaged in the buying process.

With leads waiting longer to self-identify, this left marketers with a handicap.

Now, that’s not an issue. Marketo tracks everyone who visits. The software creates an ID for unidentified leads and then merges that record with new information once the lead proactively raises their hand.

This is HUGE. Now marketers don’t start from that identifying event, but can look back and know exactly how long the lead has been interacting with you, as well as what they’ve done to date. And so will your sales force. That’s where the human conversation comes in. Marketo has also tightly integrated with Salesforce.com to enable salespeople to see scores, what they call “interesting things,” activity and events.

They’ve not only removed the hassle for salespeople to know which leads need their devoted attention immediately, but they’ve given them the background to construct relevant conversations on par with the lead’s interests and experience with the company to date.

Reports: Marketo offers a slew of reports right out of the box. You can pretty much slice and dice your leads any way you need to, getting instant access to metrics and graphs that quantify marketing’s impact on downstream revenues. In an age where marketers have an executive mandate to prove ROMI and business value, Marketo has gone a long way to make sure you can.

I could go on, but it’d really be better if you go check it out for yourself. Here’s a link to the 3.0 demo.

Just one more thing. Marketo is on-demand. You can get a free trial, but you’ll also be up and running in hours. This means you’ll likely be able to prove value before your trial expires. Unlike other trials that take most of that period just to figure out how to set them up.

You can also go read John Gaffney's review over on the Demand Gen Report.

Genius.com Helps Marketing and Sales Create Dynamic Engagement

I had the privilege of reviewing the Genius Enterprise™ product Genius.com is launching  tomorrow. This new release expands from the capabilities of Genius Pro™ with lead nurturing, scoring and automation features that serve to closely align marketing and sales in pursuit of real-time, right-time information and service delivery.

The folks at Genius take a novel approach in the way they’ve developed marketing automation. Their roots stem from the sales side. Instead of looking at customer acquisition as a linear process from a marketing start that transitions to a sales finish, they’ve taken the initiative to create a holistic approach that allows either side to be involved instantly, depending on the prospect or customer’s need.

In a customer-driven environment, their approach has a lot going for it. But, what really impressed me is the increased visibility for sales into the marketing approach. I’ve written a lot about how marketing can empower salespeople, but Genius has actually provided intuitive tools that help accomplish this feat.

Genius refers to this as Dynamic Engagement—the ability to increase the understanding and collaboration needed between sales and marketing to more fully answer prospects’ needs in real time.

The interface of Genius Enterprise leverages drag and drop workflows to create automated nurturing programs based on lead behavior and characteristics. One thing I like a lot are the drop down choices mapped to match the fields in SalesForce.com.

To more closely align sales and marketing, they’ve harnessed one set of values to be used by both groups, eliminating confusion. In fact, it’s nearly impossible to mess up, given the directional point and click options.

Marketers can create a number of steps that match right-time information to a prospect’s online behavior. They can start a campaign by using explicit characteristics, like industry, and then target the prospect’s experience through refinements as they learn more from implicit interactions. For example, automatically shifting the content delivery to match specific interests or using other information collected progressively during online interactions.

Another compelling capability is the ability to specify "conversion events."

Many marketing automation systems allow the creation of drip marketing campaigns.

Consider this typical scenario:

• The prospect opts in by downloading a white paper and indicates they’re willing to hear more from your company.


• An auto-response welcome/thank you message is immediately sent with a link to the white paper.


• The automated schedule then says to wait one week before sending the next message…and so on.

But, consider if the prospect who opts in does a few other things while at the site that indicate a high degree of later-stage buying interest. Or even over the next few days, before that week is up.

In a scheduled drip campaign that dictates waiting a week for the next interaction the company may have a lag time in reacting to that interest.  For example, if an online demo is known to indicate a high-propensity for customer conversion, but doesn’t trigger the total score requirements for sales readiness, you could be losing an opportunity.

With conversion events, this won’t happen. Conversion triggers are set independently from regular campaigns based on events that indicate the prospect is displaying avid interest that should be followed up with quickly. When one of those specified events is “triggered,” sales is notified immediately and can take the right action because they have instant access to the prospect’s activity history and other information.

The ability for a prospect to, if you will, override the nurturing campaign schedule and receive relevant engagement at the right time could be termed the “no prospect left behind” program.

Even better, interactions can be initiated on the prospect's timeline, not the company's.

The Genius capability to instantly overlay a web promo on the web page the prospect is on to offer exclusive, related content downloads, or initiate a live chat session can help the company make a strong impression and build engagement that moves the prospect forward in their buying process.

Based on that interaction the salesperson can choose to update the lead's score. Enabling a human assessment to impact the scoring process can add to the quality of the process as long as those adjusting the score employ parameters so everyone knows what those adjustments mean. I can't help thinking that actively involving sales in the scoring process could drive better adoption rates.

Best of all, marketers never need to touch a lick of code. The proxy-based technology enables them to track prospect behavior, launch web promos and sales alerts or transfer prospects directly to sales without any IT intervention. It doesn’t get much simpler than that.

Although landing pages and form creation will be fast follow-ons and there are some limitations to functionality in comparison to several other marketing automation solutions, Genius Enterprise has captured the essence of merging marketing initiatives with sales activities to enable companies to meet their prospects online, when the time is right.

To learn more about how the system actually works, go read David Raab’s review.

Take a look at the reviews from Salesforce AppExchange customers and see what your peers are saying about Genius software. (click on the Reviews tab)

Welcome to the Revenue Revolution!

I had the extreme pleasure of a conversation with Jon Miller, VP of Marketing for Marketo, the other day and got an inside look at their new Lead Insight for Sales tools.

But, let me back up for a minute to this revolution bit. Marketo is convinced (kudos to them) that in order to recapture the $1 trillion annual loss that results from sales and marketing misalignment nothing short of a Revenue Revolution will bring success.

They've even taken a bold step and invited sales and marketing professionals to sign their Revenue Revolution Manifesto and put their own stake in the ground for alignment. In their words, "The Revenue Revolution occurs when marketing and sales stop pointing fingers, cease working within their own silos, and unite to create dramatic improvements in marketing ROI, sales productivity, and most importantly top-line growth."

Marketo has put their money where their manifesto is by launching Lead Insight for Sales to complement and extend their other marketing tools and focus both sales and marketing on the Revenue Cycle. The Revenue Cycle is a comprehensive look at how all the singular components of the marketing-to-sales process integrate to produce measurable revenue outcomes. 

It's also about ramping up collaboration to improve the coordination and contribution from all the separate components or steps that lead to revenue generation.

“When marketing and sales teams coordinate their activities as part of a unified revenue process, companies get better at properly identifying and prioritizing opportunities,” said Barry Trailer of CSO Insights and a strategic advisor to Marketo. “This is important since better quality leads result in easier and better quality sales cycles, with more wins and ultimately more revenue."

What I like about Lead Insight for Sales is that it's designed to work with salespeople, not make them adopt something else. We all know how tough that is. The beta version has an integration with both salesforce.com and Microsoft Outlook. But the Marketo system becomes the system of record for the lifetime of the lead.

Visibility is greatly enhanced across the entire process from lead generation to revenue, meaning everyone can see what's happening, regardless of where the interactions initiate. The ability to close the loop on this process plays a key role in unifying your marketing-to-sales efforts.

And finally, the drag and drop interface incorporated throughout drip campaigns, scoring and routing leads is intuitive and easy to use. There's not going to be a long ramp-up period before your company can see, as well as actively participate and collaborate, deep inside the revenue cycle. By putting the focus squarely on profiling the lead's interest, activity and progression throughout the cycle, the benefits of marketing and sales alignment should become glaringly obvious.

It doesn't hurt to also include some additional insights from a recent report, “BtoB Lead Generation: Marketing ROI & Performance Evaluation Study,” showcased in an article on Demand Gen Report. You can go read the article, but I'll leave you with this tidbit:

"Of the respondents who projected they would outgrow their competition, those sales organizations gave higher marks to their marketing team’s performance and the alignment of sales and marketing. In addition, comparing those who rate their marketing effective to those who rate their marketing less effective shows higher positive rating for quality of leads (56% vs. 20%) and for conditioning leads to create higher preference and conversion rates (46% vs. 13%)."

Go check out demos of Marketo's tools here. Take a spin for yourself and start thinking about how your Revenue Cycle can be improved.