All posts in Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation 101: What B2B Marketers Need to Know About Marketing Automation

What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation (MA) is the use of technology to manage and automate the process of nurturing prospects based on their interests until they are ready to buy, then passing the most qualified leads over to sales. Marketing automation streamlines sales and marketing organizations by replacing high-touch, repetitive manual processes with automated solutions. Marketing automation solutions create sophisticated and engaging campaigns that automatically respond to prospect/customer behaviours and lifecycle segments. This technology typically works in connection with CRM systems like Salesforce, and is most effective when integrated with a comprehensive inbound marketing strategy. A simple analogy would be to think of marketing automation software as an all-in-one integrated solution (integrated marketing) for automating and managing marketing campaigns and processes. Marketing automation brings together all of your online marketing channels into one execution platform with centralized reporting and analytics (email, website analytics, web forms/landing pages, document downlads, webinars, etc.)  It if offered by software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers such as Eloqua, Marketo, Aprimo and HubSpot.

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What Does Marketing Automation Mean to You?

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We’ve outlined some key words that come to mind when we think about marketing automation.

What does marketing automation mean to you?

If you currently use marketing automation, what impact does it have on your e-mail and cross-channel marketing efforts?

Send us your thoughts.

We’d love to hear from you!

Five Important Key Performance Indicators for Chief Marketing Officers

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Lead Scoring

One of the most essential Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for marketers is the generation of high-quality leads. High-quality leads are leads that are sales-ready as a result of passing through various lead nurturing campaigns in order to get to the sales-ready point. Lead scoring is used by marketers to designate the stage of a lead in the sales cycle. There are 5 categories within the sales cycle:

1. Inquiries
2. Marketing Qualified Leads
3. Sales Accepted Leads
4. Sales Qualified Leads, and;
5. Won Business.

Moving down these categories into the closing stages of the sales cycle means a lead is gaining a higher score and becomes more sales-ready.

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Boost your Demand Generation Efforts

BoostYourDemandGenEfforts

The lifeline of your business is dependent on your ability to acquire new customers. Demand generation is the marketing and sales process when coupled with the right technology and expertise can yield significant results. For example, businesses can make valuable connections to generate revenue and impact ROI with email marketing campaigns, relevant drip marketing campaigns, engagement using social channels, optimized landing pages, site analytics, digital body language tracking, and more. According to a study by the Aberdeen Group, 87% of companies who used best practices in demand generation improved annual growth in customer acquisition revenue while average performance increase was 23%.

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Four Benefits of System Deployment

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1. Transforms Your Entire Business

It is important to understand that a systems deployment will change the entire face of your organization. All your business processes, all your data standards, and key performance indicators are going to take new effect – this is exactly what you want to accomplish. With the right system deployment you can leverage the power of new standards in every nook and cranny of your organizational process.

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