Tag Archives: B2B Technology
How Marketing Automation Has Evolved in the Last 12 Months
- 3rd October 2012
Over the last several months, with my colleagues Jonathan Block and Jason Hekl, I have attended several dozen marketing automation platform (MAP) vendor briefings in preparation for SiriusDecisions’ consolidated report on the MAP market, which is due to be published later this year. Through these vendor briefings, plus inquiries with our client base and our benchmark surveys, we have identified how the marketing automation space has evolved during the last 12 months.
Continue Reading....Salesforce.com Launches Marketing Cloud
- 20th September 2012
Salesforce.com announced the launching of Marketing Cloud, on Wednesday, September 19, during the company’s Dreamforce 2012 event in San Francisco. This should really be called the “Social Marketing Cloud,” as it combines the two recent social acquisitions made by Salesforce.com – Radian6 and Buddy Media – to form a new social marketing software suite. The Marketing Cloud uses the Buddy Media interface for content publishing and the Radian6 tool for monitoring and measurement. How can this combined solution benefit b-to-b organizations?
Continue Reading....Technology Is Cool and All, But …
- 20th September 2012
The introduction of new technologies for b-to-b sales and marketing organizations is accelerating more and more each day. In fact, it’s accelerating to the point where buyers are having trouble discerning one vendor’s solution from another. Even technologies once considered advanced, such as predictive and text analytics, are finding themselves commoditized to a certain extent. Now more than ever, it’s often everything the vendor offers beyond the technology that buyers should focus on to determine true differentiation between providers. Despite offering strong functionality, we see many vendors fall short in helping customers execute. It’s critical for organizations to consider what we call “essential elements,” the ability of a vendor to deliver and implement its solution. Here are two key essential element categories.
Continue Reading....Determining Whether to Automate Marketing Processes
- 5th September 2012
B-to-b marketers, who've become more comfortable with procurement, implementation and use of automation technology, are increasingly interested in implementing tools that optimize processes and enable new marketing operations efficiencies. Many are identifying processes that are candidates for optimization and deciding whether marketing resource management (MRM) applications would be a good choice to improve operational performance. Here are three perspectives.
Continue Reading....The Sirius Directions in Technology Model
- 10th August 2012
SiriusDecisions has introduced a framework that devotees of b-to-b sales and marketing technology best practices should find useful: The Sirius Directions in Technology Model. Our model is a comprehensive representation of the major technology categories that b-to-b sales and marketing organizations must leverage to drive functional alignment and integration. More than just a catalog of different technologies, organizations need to understand the types of technologies available and how they can solve business issues related to specific sales and marketing activities (e.g. driving awareness, creating demand, measuring sales performance).
Continue Reading....Stay Away From Technology Islands
- 5th June 2012
Choosing a tool without considering its ability to integrate with existing enterprise systems to share data will not improve the visibility or measurability of sales or marketing. Just as important as understanding the different tools and their capabilities in individual categories is learning how they can work together to form a critical backbone that drives productivity and insight between sales and marketing and the rest of the organization.
Continue Reading....When Choosing a B-to-B Technology Vendor: Remember the Two V’s
- 30th April 2012
When choosing the most appropriate technology vendor, b-to-b organizations often become so focused on features and functionality that they overlook two critical components: viability and vision. Vendors that are more established and ambitious will be more capable of supporting advanced states of skills and process.
Continue Reading....The 10 Deadly Sins of Signature-Driven Emails
- 18th January 2012
A signature-driven email is a mass email that looks like an email sent directly to the recipient from an individual. This is accomplished by using an individual’s email address, sender name and signature details, and avoiding generic values (e.g. marketing@company.com). Signature-driven emails include the following elements:
Continue Reading....Content Marketing: Don’t Offer the Same Thing Twice
- 6th October 2011
Question: If someone goes to your Web site and downloads a white paper, what value is created by sending the same white paper to the same person one month later? ...
Continue Reading....Brace Yourself for a B2B Technology Implementation
- 29th June 2011
Getting C-level buy-in and deciding which vendor to go with for your marketing and sales technology tools is only half the battle; the next steps will be crucial to the ...
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