The Hidden Costs of Multiple Marketing Tools The number and variety of tools marketers have to reach potential prospects has grown exponentially, and many of them work exceedingly well. That s the good news. The systems? How do you use them to know where a prospect is in the sales cycle, and effectively share that information an automated marketing platform. Oh, the opportunities! Today digital media such as email, websites, social media (in all its many splendors), webinars, search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) ads, website visitor tracking, and a host of other channels are all critical tactics in the marketer s tool chest. They provide highly flexible and effective methods for finding and engaging prospects, extending the brand, and driving revenue. However, using multiple tools makes for a complicated technology environment and where there s complication, there s cost. Actively managing multiple tools can be time-consuming, and it s easy for messaging to get out of step. Data continuity suffers. And it can be hard to see the big picture when the little ones don t relate to each other. Reconciling critical information across multiple tools can be difficult and frustrating, encouraging error and data loss. Marketers can spend as much time managing their systems as managing their campaigns. This is especially true in smaller organizations where IT resources are at a premium. Analysis may be the foundation for marketing in our networked age, but integrating the tools that collect, coordinate, slice, and report data poses a significant challenge. And it s all complicated by internal Copyright 2011 Act-On Software. All Rights Reserved. 1
pressures: marketers are being evaluated in new ways, which are driven by new metrics and ways to measure ROI. Campaign Management Tools Based on a recent Act-On Marketing Survey, 50% of marketers have no or just some systems for automating the marketing process. Another big challenge is also an outgrowth of moving campaigns to online media real-time execution. As soon as a button is pushed, a form filled out, or information downloaded, an action has been taken that requires well-timed follow-up by a sales rep in order to harvest the most value out of that interaction. Striking when the iron is hot requires the marketer to have a way to read the temperature of the iron. It s hard, and often impossible, to coordinate readings from disparate tools to identify or profile prospects, or to know just who is downloading or viewing what. It s also difficult to create a real-time situational awareness of what s happening on a website or with your information assets. How marketers are currently coping All CRM Email Tool Marketing Automation None Some Spread Sheets Web Analytics In a recent survey conducted by Act-On Software of 1200 marketers from organizations spanning from 1 to 500 employees, over 50% of all respondents said that they had no or just some systems for managing their campaigns. The balance used different options including spreadsheets, CRM systems, email systems, web analytics, and marketing automation. Generally, there were no clear strategies for implementation. There was also little actual use of technology to help marketers ensure that they were executing campaigns well and harvesting the data for reporting and analysis. Free and paid tools have existed for several years to analyze web traffic. These programs work by placing code snippets on each web page and planting a cookie into visitors browsers. The apps track a visitor s general activity and behavior while the visitor is on the site. Copyright 2011 Act-On Software. All Rights Reserved. 2
They also track where visitors were prior to jumping to your site, and where they go after they leave. Act-On has enabled us to close the loop on our marketing activities. Before we had separate databases for emails campaigns, training classes, seminars, etc. Now we know which users are visiting what pages on our website, what emails they are opening, what events they are attending. We have a complete activity history across channels and can score individuals based on behavior, segment based on that. I could go on and on. Steve Michener, Digital Marketing Manager Drilling Info, Inc. These reporting applications provide valuable information, highlighting pages that attract the most visitors and how much time visitors spend on them. The apps also report if a web page is a bounce page, and to what degree. This highlights where more compelling content might increase overall time spent on the site and traffic to particular pages. This is especially helpful if you want to drive traffic to critical business pages such as product pages, pricing pages, customer references, etc. Done correctly, a website tracking system can help you fine-tune your site to encourage more meaningful interactions between your visitors and your content. It can also allow you to deliver dynamic content based on which pages the visitor has spent time on, how long they were on those pages, and even where they were prior to coming to your site. Let s look at two popular applications as examples: is free, and in wide use across organizations of all sizes. The program provides a rudimentary overview of how people find your site, what they do when they re there, and where they go when they leave. Unfortunately, it does nothing to help you tie that activity back to a specific marketing action. For example, Marketing drops a direct mail. There s a subsequent spike in web traffic. While you can certainly make the assumption that the spike is a direct outgrowth of your email, it s hard to trace the subsequent browsing pattern that emerges from each visitor specifically to that mailer. More importantly, unless that individual registers on the site for a specific piece of content, it s virtually impossible to trace that person s specific interest (perhaps among various products) to the mailer. Google Analytics also provides only a bare minimum of visitor identification; the best you can expect is a high-level IP domain listing of different visitors. Copyright 2011 Act-On Software. All Rights Reserved. 3
a paid application delivers slightly more explicit data about the individuals browsing your site. It provides IP address recognition for organizations based on their domain addresses, and tracks more granular behavior once a visitor is on your site. Taking that information and then cross-referencing it with third-party content sources (such as JigSaw or LinkedIn) can help narrow down the list of possible suspects who may be spending time on your site, and enable you to engage them individually with targeted follow-up. However, you ve now brought in additional tools to try and decipher the raw data you ve been presented with, and it s a labor-intensive manual process. In all cases, however, there is no single cumulative record of all the pages that the IP address in question spent time on. And since multiple individuals can share the same domain address, it becomes virtually impossible to make sure you re tracking the behavior of a unique visitor across your site. In addition, neither Google Analytics nor LeadLander feeds into a more comprehensive behavior scoring system. This means that inferring intention, based on the visitor s other activities on the site or interactions with the organization, is guesswork. Linking to a behavior tracking system is critical With Act-On a single view of real-time behavioral activity allows for immediate and effective follow-up by marketing and sales. When website tracking does feed into a behavior scoring system, here s an example of how it works: when a prospect responds to an email, downloads a specific piece of content, and then browses the site. The system can assign various numeric values to each behavior. This is lead scoring, and it reveals how interested that prospect may be, and which marketing action spurred the interest. With this behavioral information stored in the prospect s profile, a marketer can proactively serve up appropriate content that s likely to interest that individual. This demonstrated a deeper understanding and creates another opportunity for interaction. Copyright 2011 Act-On Software. All Rights Reserved. 4
While some of this unique behavioral information could conceivably be isolated manually based on the output of tools such as Google Analytics or LeadLander, you can t realize its full value until it s incorporated into a broader behavioral context with other related activities. When individual website behavior data is integrated with the data resulting from email campaigns, webinars, social media, advertising, SEO/PPC, content consumption, and other factors, the marketer has a fully developed real-time situation analysis and a dynamic visualization of the sales cycle. Such integration and analysis is done most efficiently and effectively with an automated marketing platform. SaaS as part of the multiple online data silos no automated ability to correlate data data manipulation takes time away from campaign development and execution SaaS can be part of the problem The Software as a Service (SaaS) model is emerging as the infrastructures of choice for many growing organizations. As companies increasingly use SaaS solutions for CRM, ERP, backoffice processing, accounting, self-service tech support, and various other business-critical functions including marketing, they are also developing multiple on-line data silos. Trying to move data across vendors to inform other processes is without special agreement between those vendors, and requires more manual processes. This typically requires generating reports, converting them and then uploading into other applications. For those systems, needing access to the same data, means multiple uploads with the same or slightly modified data to ensure accurate results. For marketers who need to focus on campaign development and execution, these mundane tasks require expertise they may not have and create a black hole of lost time. A review of the most popular marketing channels According to the Act-On Marketing Software survey, email remains the most popular channel for marketing messages. Commonly email response drives traffic to a landing page, and is a good starting point for capturing contact information. Copyright 2011 Act-On Software. All Rights Reserved. 5
Social media participation continues to skyrocket. It offers a key benefit: responses can be measured based on immediate comments or responses to your content. It also offers some challenges: not everyone wishes to contribute to the dialog, preferring to remain anonymous and interfering with your ability to gauge their interest, and it is notoriously difficult to track back to a real person. To encourage them to interact with your organization you ll need a further call to action, perhaps leading to a landing page, a download, or other information. Tradeshows and webinars create their own challenges: attendee information is always divorced from any centralized lead/contact management system. Webinars are a terrific way to host a forum to share content and potentially foster discussion among participants. But as previously mentioned, SaaS systems are not typically integrated with any larger marketing system. In both of these instances, attendee information may (or may not be) available as some type of list, requiring leads and attendee information to be manually copied into a marketing or sales system for follow-up, opening the door for errors and delays getting hot leads into the system with the concurrent fear that they ll cool by the time someone gets to them for follow-up. Tying it all together Marketers need a way to consolidate all the various tools they use, and they need real-time situational awareness of what s happening on their website, in campaigns, and with events. Implementing an automated marketing platform is one very effective solution. Such a platform integrates prospect and lead data and provides content and campaign management. This delivers a common operating picture that lets marketers visualize prospect status and take appropriate action at pre-determined points. Based on Act-On s recent survey, more than half of respondents said they only some or no tools to assist them in campaign management. Given the benefits that an automated marketing Copyright 2011 Act-On Software. All Rights Reserved. 6
platform may bring, why has adoption been less than enthusiastic among a majority of marketers? Dedicated Marketing Operations Resource Based on a recent Act-On Marketing Survey, there is a 50/50 split between those that do and do not have a dedicated marketing operations staff. Yes No Part of the problem lies in the inherent confusion that always attends emerging technologies. One vendor s automated marketing program may look much like another vendor s lead management system; the field s vocabulary is not standardized and neither are the offerings, making an apples-to-apples comparison tricky. Another problem is that many of the vendors have roots in the world of enterprise resource planning (ERP). This raises the cost, complicates the process of re-engineering, and extends the time to implementation all factors that bust budgets and bulldoze timelines. A third issue: When surveyed as to whether there was a dedicated marketing operations person on staff to manage metrics and overall infrastructure, the answer was a 50 percent split between marketing departments that do have one and those that don t. Larger organizations were more likely to have someone in this position; 60 percent of smaller organizations do not have a dedicated person. Given tight budgets and shrinking head counts, it s no surprise that marketers are hesitant to use critical program dollars for a new and dramatically different way of doing things. Using automated campaign functions, online campaigns can be implemented that integrate real-time prospect behavior with automated workflow to route data directly and immediately to the appropriate sales rep for follow-up. From basic drip to on-going nurture programs, most automated marketing systems provide a centralized console for creating and managing elements associated with a campaign, including emails, landing pages, and forms. Several vendor systems include webinar campaign management, integrating directly with WebEx or other popular web meeting technologies. In addition, many of these systems provide the ability to monitor social media sites such as Twitter to discover what target groups are discussing, and uncover potential prospects who could be influenced to learn more about a company s offerings. Many can track website visitors and report a prospect s behavior. Learning what a visitor prioritizes and which content assets the visitor downloads provides a basis for a targeted and effective response. All automated marketing Copyright 2011 Act-On Software. All Rights Reserved. 7
platforms report analytics, giving marketers a clear understanding as as to how well their campaigns are performing and supporting a gradual streamlining of the tools marketers are currently relying on. The complexity of multiple meaningful picture of prospect behavior is marketing credibility and sales immediacy is impeded no comprehensive, realtime view of campaign execution and results Conclusions Given the challenges facing marketers in the networked age, the complexity of using multiple tools is decidedly unwelcome. Time cycles are too short, and information is too important. An automated marketing platform is the best way to ensure that critical information is effectively captured and applied to create a meaningful picture of a prospect s interaction. A marketing automation system gives marketing credibility and sales immediacy; maximizes the attention paid to most-likely buyers, and delivers measurable results. The resulting two-way feedback fosters process and infrastructure improvements. Most importantly, it helps simplify marketers environments and lets them focus on what s truly important their campaigns. By providing real-time situational awareness and metrics surrounding prospect behavior, campaign execution and results, both marketing and sales can be more effective in the pursuit of the primary goal: revenue. By embracing change, marketers can be the catalyst for significant improvements to the bottom line, ensuring that they can continue to build the company s profile and extend it s reach. Copyright 2011 Act-On Software. All Rights Reserved. 8
About Act-On Software Act-On Software s cloud-based integrated marketing platform is rapidly becoming the foundation for successful marketing departments in organizations of all sizes. Act-On s highly intuitive user interface, Instant-On database, and complete online marketing tool set, have enabled the accelerated adoption of marketing automation technologies by smaller marketing teams without dedicated database maintenance, process analysis or IT support. Built around a third-generation email marketing system, and featuring forms, landing pages, drip programs, social media prospecting, webinar management and the ability to automate critical marketing tasks, the Act-On Integrated Marketing Platform generates rich analytics in real-time for your multi-channel online marketing campaigns. An adaptive behavioral scoring capability and a deep integration with Salesforce.com and SugarCRM enable Act- On to push only the most promising, sales-ready leads to your sales representatives. Our customers tell us that Act-On enables them to keep their focus on their campaign objectives rather than on the underlying technology, and that they feel free to create and manage the marketing processes that best align with their corporate culture, skill sets and reporting requirements, thereby maximizing their effectiveness and ensuring positive outcomes. Contact Us @ www.actonsoftware.com +1 877 530 1555 The Act-On Integrated Marketing Platform can be implemented in a matter of hours rather than days and weeks. Contrary to general industry practices, all contracts regardless of size are month-tomonth, with prices starting at $500. Check us out and see for yourself why well-established companies like Motorola and Siemens, as well as rising stars like HAAdvantage, BreakingPoint and Jobscience, count themselves among our 300+ happy customers. Copyright 2011 Act-On Software. All Rights Reserved. 9