Intelligent Demand Generation / eTrigue Corporation

The world has gone on-line, but many companies haven’t grasped the fact that for most of your potential customers, the front door to your company isn’t the one you walk in every morning–it’s your web site! You wouldn’t ignore a customer to your physical office, so why do companies fail to engage with potential customers that come to through their online front door?

I initiated this discussion at dinner the other night. A…B…C… Always Be Closing… I asked how many of the seven companies represented were actually tracking web activity down to the email address of the visitor. Only two of seven were using an automated marketing solution to track prospects and automatically follow up. They were instantly the best salesperson a guy could have. Even better, one was already a customer using eTrigue.

And while we take an educational approach to the sales process here at eTrigue, these marketing automation “converts” took a completely different approach. FEAR! “If you’re not tracking who is on your website and following up immediately, your competition is going to win the business” “No ifs ands or buts about it” It was actually fun to watch as these two street wise marketers, after a couple of drinks, school their colleges on the realities of marketing in down economy.

It gave me a new perspective on the nature of our current economy and how the strong/smart will survive. It’s becoming a competitive imperative that companies understand who is walking in their on-line front door, and more importantly following up with relevant communications. 85% of all B2B buyers use the web to research their buying decision. If your competition is reaching out to their saleable market with emails and tracking every move the recipient makes on their website and you’re not… Well, yes you do stand a good chance of losing. They know more about that prospective customer and are likely calling them within minutes of their web activity. The odds of contacting a lead in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes after a prospect engages with your company drops by 100 times according to an MIT lead management study.

Are you losing customers by not engaging with them as they tour your web site?

I had the opportunity to attend the Salesforce.com, Cloudforce event last week.  Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff was in tune as usual with all the energy of a first-grader after a second bowl of Count Chocula.  And while Mark’s keynote carried the standard theme’s;  Software as a Service,  10th anniversary,  and metrics of customer success with Salesforce:

• 52% increase in leads
• 34% boost in revenues
• 23% decrease in service and support costs
• 30% improvement in customer retention
• 80% reduction in application development effort

What was most interesting was the change in the tone of the attendees.  Fast forward six months from Dreamforce when cloud computing was defiantly a known entity but not a fait accompli for most visitors to today where it was a matter of fact: Customers, attendees and the press talked as if every application was running in the cloud and organizations no longer bothered with buying servers, software installs and service contracts. 

Granted the Cloudforce events are a microcosm, but unlike many technologies that take years to gestate and then even longer to move to emotional acceptance, the vision of centralized computing is back in vogue…. And for good reason.  As Kraig Swensrud, Salesforce’s senior director of product marketing put it “The vision of the company from Day 1 has been that it should be as easy to use a business application as it is easy to buy a book on Amazon.com”

Probably one of the most exciting things to me is seeing someone achieve success with your company’s product. It doesn’t really matter what type of product or even how it’s used. It makes you proud of your team, your partners and of course your customer. Delivering on your promise and seeing measurable results makes anyone feel like a proud papa.

And while we see customer success on a daily basis it is especially rewarding when it is also recognized by others. This week, Cisco Systems was awarded the DemandGen Report’s Sales & Marketing Alignment Award for the Enterprise category. See Story

Linda Fassig-Knauer, Cisco marketing programs manager in the US Theater, credited 3Marketeers and the eTrigue solution for helping Cisco increase appointments with SMB prospects by 25%

“eTrigue Intelligent lead scoring helps us determine which technology or offer the prospect is most interested in discussing with our sales teams and enables us to funnel those leads in a timely manner to our call center, who ultimately sends to our channel partners,” says Fassig-Knauer, “The information in eTrigue lead scoring gives us three times the information so our call center agents are much more prepared before a call. It also greatly increases the number of prospects we can identify as being interested in a solution because the system does not require the customer/prospect to register.”

While the tool is important, kudos obviously go to Linda and her team at Cisco and The 3Marketeers for successfully developing and executing a successful closed demand generation program. And of course, thanks to the folks at the DemandGen Report for recognizing success and the tools that help make things happen!

“The first tool I step on turned into a weapon” –Robert Frost

At a recent industry event I heard campaign horror stories ranging from emails without a single functional link to messaging that wouldn’t sell ice in August.  The one that really caught my attention was from a marketing manager who had run a variety of simple email marketing campaigns over the past year with good results. Using the website tracking information she gathered over several months, she segmented her database in an effort to send more targeted email messages. With four unique product offerings she was sure she would accelerate her company’s lead-flow with more focused emails and end up with a BIG pat on the back!

Unfortunately, when campaigns cross in the night, it can spell disaster.

The company she works for, which will remain nameless, as well as the marketing solution she used (not eTrigue), sells very high-end equipment. The value of each customer is substantial. Over the past few years they had built some really good relationships starting with their email nurturing program. In fact, a majority of their marketing budget was now focused on email.

And now for the CATASTROPHE!

Running multiple campaigns at once is commonplace. In this case, a slight oversight had a dramatic impact on this company’s ability to market to many of its high priority prospects. The combination of auto-response emails from landing pages, automated follow-up emails from downloaded content, and a slight miscalculation in the design of her newly created email campaigns, resulted in some prospects receiving as many as four emails in one week. And of course — opt-outs! She had just “turned-off” a large number of viable customers. Her VP of Sales panicked and in her words; her CEO was within nanoseconds of turning-off her paycheck.

As this a good example of how Demand Generation platforms, like any other tool, can be dangerous if used improperly or with inadequate attention to detail. The impact can often be huge given the power to email to hundreds of thousands for prospects with the click of a mouse.

Here are some simple points to consider when building your campaigns to help prevent catastrophe:

• Make sure you understand the logic of all campaigns that are currently running. Your platform should give you a view of all active campaigns.
• Include protections just in case you miss something. eTrigue includes the ability to restrict outbound email campaigns by the number of days since the last email, or a specific date range. eTrigue will also allow you to email, or prevent a mailing based on the subject of an email.
• Decide in advance whether it is “o.k.” for a prospect to get a thank you email as the result of an action, i.e. download, “in addition” to your other email campaigns.
• Use more small campaigns vs. complex large ones. It’s often easier to sort out the logic if you break your marketing up into modules.

Happy Marketing!

Despite economic doom and gloom, 2009 looks to be a banner year for Marketing Automation solutions. As organizations look corporate-wide for opportunities to trim budgets, marketing executives are re-thinking their marketing strategies to demonstrate measurable results – and of course, hold on to their budgets. According to the Aberdeen Group, in their recent report “Lead Nurturing: The Secret to Successful Lead Generation”, B2B marketing organizations expect to increase spending by 50% on lead nurturing and customer retention programs in 2009.

Just as Henry Ford used automation to produce an affordable car with increased efficiency of manufacture, Marketing Automation platforms are changing the way marketers drive demand with fewer resources. Solutions that automatically engage, manage, and qualify prospects have cleared the Gartner “Trough of Disillusionment,” and, with an additional push from a down economy, are rapidly finding a home in even the most non-analytic marketing organizations. E-mail and online marketing programs can be launched quickly, are cost effective, and provide immediate feedback. Whether you’re tracking responses to an email campaign or tracking each page a prospect touches on your web site, these programs are measurable and can be used to automatically trigger future more targeted messages the close more sales. Automation is key to constant and repeatable results.

Ford did not invent the concept of an assembly line, but he did perfect it. Before Ford, skilled craftsman built cars as a team, custom fitting parts and assembling them in place until each vehicle was complete. Automation reversed the process. Instead of workers going to the car, the car came to the worker who performed the same task of assembly over and over again. Ford reduced the assembly time of a Model T from 12 1/2 hours to less than 6 hours.

Marketing is one of the last business functions to embrace technology, automation, and true measurability. With internal competition for budget dollars and external competition for fewer customer dollars, the time to automate and follow the lead of Henry Ford has come.

Competition is the keen cutting edge of business, always shaving away at costs. -Henry Ford

Walking away from a week at Moscone Center with the theme of “Cloud Computing” firmly planted in my subconscience, what struck me as truly inspirational was the enthusiasm salesforce.com customers had for the future of their businesses. Not to diminish Benioff’s keynote, but the real story was the attendees and how many were planning to use new tools to cope with tougher economic times and fewer resources vs. just retrenching and weathering the storm.

Given the audience, I guess this shouldn’t be a surprise with over 60% of SMBs attributing “lower expense rates” and “increases in productivity” as the driving factors for embracing Software-as-a-Service.  Automating and working smarter is a company’s best defense.

Ultimately, the many conversations I had with attendees highlighted three key points that were top-of-mind:

• Companies are trying to do more with less
  Across the board, we are all under pressure to increase sales despite fewer resources.
• Sales and Marketing Automation is a priority
  Generating more qualified leads is a top priority, and providing information to sales in real-time is a must have.
• Turning economic challenges into an opportunity is high on the list
  The changing economic climate is altering company strategies to focus on sales effectiveness.

It was clear that companies attending the event were thinking ahead. And given the predisposition Saleforce.com users have to embracing solutions based on SaaS and Cloud Computing to automate their businesses, it’s my bet they will fare far better than most.

I received a call from a somewhat flustered friend the other day. He is with a well-run start-up that has a working product and is showing good revenue growth—All is well in the world, or should be. Unfortunately he just ended his monthly board meeting on a sour note.

After launching a very successful demand generation program that’s generating more qualified leads than Sales can address, this board meeting should have been an easy one. The program was organized and aligned with the sales department—everyone was happy, even the CEO.

In the presentation’s home stretch, after he showed qualified lead growth, a reduction in the cost per lead, and enthusiastic comments from the VP of Sales, one simple question took the wind out of his sails. “Why aren’t you marketing to your Served Available Market?” He said he took a step back, felt flushed, and knew that it was a good question that he didn’t have an answer to. “I was so focused on the success of our newly launched demand generation initiative that I didn’t even think to go back and consider if the 70K leads I have in my marketing database actually covered my market.”

Several board members chimed in on the opportunity to provide a quick tutorial. “It was more than painful; it was downright embarrassing.” And rather than just give instructions to go off and figure out his SAM, list acquisition strategy, etc., they all joined in with a chalk-talk. As it turns out, his total available market is roughly 300K businesses, which serve about one fourth of the market, or 75K businesses―not far off from the 70K leads in his database. This would be fine except marketing databases aren’t even close to 100% on target, and his sale is moderately complex—typically with three decision makers at each company. If you add to the mix that B2B databases are continually in flux with 25% of contacts changing companies, functions, emails, every year, what started out as an enthusiastic board update ground down into one simple question: “Given the effectiveness of your program, why on earth are you targeting only a small part of your market?”

Are you marketing to your SAM?