Intelligent Demand Generation / eTrigue Corporation

One valid question is, how can they afford NOT to use marketing automation, when managing email campaigns manually is so time consuming and costly in terms of manpower, of inevitable mistakes, and especially in terms of losing prospects because you were unable to give them what they were looking for – timely, relevant messages?

Having said that, we are very aware of the fact that the economy is still recovering, and that marketing organizations in smaller companies may have a hard time getting the budget they need to purchase a full-fledged marketing automation system such as eTrigue Professional.

That’s why we came up with our unique sales enablement solution, eTrigue SalesPro. The idea is to give sales organizations everything they need to effectively communicate with prospects, without forcing companies to invest in fully automating their marketing. We wanted a sales enablement tool that unlike others on the market is not just an add-on to an existing marketing automation system, forcing you to pay the full price tag for marketing automation before your sales rep can enjoy the sales enablement benefits.

Creating a separate sales acceleration system makes automation easy for companies, because the cost is so affordable. Later on, it’s easy to upgrade to a full marketing automation system. So we’ve essentially lowered the entry level for sales acceleration and have enabled smaller companies, and smaller organizations within larger companies, to enjoy its benefits.

The benefits are many.

Sales acceleration in general achieves two important goals: better communication within the company between sales and marketing organizations (also known as marketing and sales alignment); and better communication between sales reps and prospects. Both significantly improve the performance of your sales organization.

SalesPro in particular, despite its affordability, is extremely useful to sales reps. It presents them with a very detailed view of potential leads. Unlike other Sales Enablement tools on the market, eTrigue SalesPro doesn’t just capture website visitors, then email their info to Sales. SalesPro can score and qualify leads, then send out email alerts to sales reps when a lead meets a minimum threshold that was previously determined by marketing and sales. The alerts are full of useful information, including the scores and the reasons behind them, and account and buyer activity. All this information is presented in an easy-to-read format, enabling the sales rep to make an informed decision and to follow up with the prospect, if appropriate, from within Salesforce.com.

IDC defines sales enablement as “The delivery of the right information to the right person at the right time and in the right place, to assist in moving a specific sales opportunity forward.” A pretty basic idea, yet mostly unattainable without automation, and – up until eTrigue salesPro – only attainable when paying the hefty price tag of a full marketing automation system.

We live in the era of the Internet and social media, and whether we like it or not, we as marketers need to adjust. The era of social media has changed the rules of the marketing game dramatically. This is true not just for the B2B space but for every space and for every type of business relationship.

In the era of the Internet, people and businesses no longer rely on companies’ sales representatives to provide them with information. I don’t know about you, but as a consumer, I do all my research – certainly the initial phases – online. Whenever I am faced with a buying decision, the last thing I am going to trust is some promotional email or a brochure from a company. I certainly don’t want a sales person to pressure me to reach a buying decision before I am ready. I am much more comfortable taking my time, carefully researching my options, sometimes waiting for a while before I am ready to make up my mind and part with my money.

In the era of the Internet, B2C and B2B are not that different. I doubt if they ever were that different – after all, when you sell to a business, people are the ones who make the buying decisions, so you are always dealing with people and their reactions and preferences. Now more than ever, the people who make the buying decisions in the B2B space act just the way I act as a consumer – they want to go at their own pace, do their own research online, gather as much info as they can, and take their time before they make a decision.

While your prospects are taking their time and researching, what you want to be doing is not pressuring them to decide with email blasts and painfully obvious promotional content. You want to take a gentle yet effective approach, to always be there in the background, making yourself available to answer questions and to provide truly valuable information. In the era of social media, you want to take it slowly and build a relationship with your prospects, to keep the connection going without pressuring.

However, doing that is very difficult. When you have a fairly large database, how can you possibly keep everyone engaged, provide them with the content they are looking for, answer their specific questions, never become generic or impersonal, and still be in a position where you can pounce and make the sale – at the exact point where your prospect is ready to buy?

The best way – probably the only way – to efficiently manage today’s complex marketing campaigns and to keep the conversation going with each of your prospects is to automate your marketing. Marketing automation works by allowing you to keep in touch with each prospect in a way that makes your communications with them helpful rather than annoying. While doing so manually – segmenting prospects, identifying their needs and responding to them individually – would be too time consuming, marketing automation systems allow you to develop a relationship with each of your prospects and to keep your communications with them helpful and to the point, gently leading them to the sale while allowing them to stay in control.

I loved watching this funny commercial, right before the 2009 holidays, that showed examples of the lamest gift-giving one can possibly come up with. Things like giving hard candy to a toothless elderly man, or a set of shampoo and conditioner to a bald guy. We all do these things once in a while – give someone something that shows complete and utter thoughtlessness. Me? I once gave a Starbucks gift card to a colleague that told me, a few months before, that he hates coffee.

What does this have to do with B2B marketing? Well, in the examples above, the messages you send to the prospects in your database are like the gifts people give to each other during the holidays. If you’re not careful about keeping lists and really listening to people, you will likely end up either giving a generic gift, or giving a completely inappropriate gift. These will leave the recipient cold and indifferent (best case scenario) or will be a major turnoff for them and damage the relationship (worst case scenario).

The same is true for a B2B company’s prospects. You’ve got this big list of prospects in your database, and it might seem easiest to just blast them occasionally with a generic mass email that tells them how great your company is. But if you stop and think for a moment, maybe put yourself in their shoes, you will realize that these generic emails would be a miserable waste of time. Best case scenario, your prospects will just delete them. Worst case, they will opt out and move on to your competitor.

Generic email marketing is just like giving generic gifts. It shows a level of disengagement, even disrespect. Why would prospects become engaged if you’re not giving them anything worthwhile?

Of course, giving truly great gifts requires careful list keeping throughout the year and truly listening to each recipient, trying to identify what their needs are and to answer them. When it comes to the B2B space, doing so manually – keeping your database up to date and tailoring your messages to each prospect according to their specific needs and their level of readiness is nearly impossible. This is why marketing automation systems are such an integral part of a successful B2B marketing campaign. Automating your email marketing enables you to get to know your prospects better, to know exactly what they need at each step of the complex sales process.

Knowing who your prospects are and what they need enables you to create messages that your prospects are actually interested in receiving – just like a great gift where the recipient says, surprised and delighted, “Wow! This is exactly what I was hoping for!” Imagine being able to get this response, instead of an annoyed “another email from these guys!” whenever you email a prospect. If this isn’t going to translate into more sales, then I don’t know what is.

The benefits of fully automating your marketing are clear. Marketing automation solutions enable you to market – and to sell – more efficiently and effectively. You can automate your email campaigns, personalize them, tailor them to each prospect’s pain points, level of interest and readiness, and have sales follow up with prospects that are ready to buy – and only with them.

In the B2B space, where highly informed buyers set a leisurely pace for their buying process, NOT automating your marketing efforts is time-consuming, expensive, and can result in serious, costly marketing mistakes.

But what if you’re a young company with a tight budget and simply can’t afford to fully automate your marketing at this point? Since we know that full Marketing Automation can be difficult for early-stage startups, we came up with an affordable package that doesn’t require the deployment of a full Marketing Automation platform and helps sales reps identify and prioritize prospects and close more deals – all from within Salesforce CRM.

SalesPro is a unique stand-alone sales acceleration tool. It’s easy, fast and affordable, yet it gives sales pros everything they need to identify and focus on the prospects that are ready to buy.

Trackable emails
SalesPro enables sales reps to send unlimited trackable emails from Salesforce CRM. They can choose from pre-defined templates, add personalization, and of course track who’s opening the emails and clicking on the links.

Web tracking
SalesPro enables sales reps to know which prospects visit your site and what they’re reading, and to track prospects’ visits’ frequency and duration. This is one of the best ways to identify which prospects are ready to buy.

Real-time lead alerts
Real-time lead alerts are sent to sale reps whenever a prospect visits the web site or opens an email. Sales reps can quickly glance at the prospect’s web activity history and scoring and, where appropriate, immediately follow up with them.

The ultimate goal of sales acceleration tools is to give sales reps the information they need about prospects, so that they can avoid wasting their time and energy on cold calls, and focus instead on “warm” calls to interested prospects.

While fully automating your marketing will bring you a significant, measurable return on your investment, we developed SalesPro to make automation more accessible to smaller organizations with tight budgets. The beauty of SalesPro lies in its accessibility, its affordability and in the fact that it gives sales pros exactly what they need to sell intelligently without wasting their time chasing unqualified prospects.

eTrigue SalesPro is ideal for companies who need the powerful email and web tracking, real-time Lead Alerts and sales intelligence of a marketing automation platform, but lack the resources to launch a full online marketing program. When your company is ready to take your demand generation program to the next level, eTrigue SalesPro is fully compatible with our Marketing Automation solution, eTrigue Professional^TM.