Act-On Software recently presented a webinar titled SMBs: Crossing the Chasm with Marketing Automation, in which Ian Michiels of Gleanster discussed what happens when small to medium businesses outgrow email marketing.

Challenges of Marketing in the Digital Age

In his webinar, Michiels presented a number of challenges faced by small business marketers including:

• Lack of resources to develop content
• Lack of skilled staff
• Fragmented sales and marketing processes
• Contrasting data
• Poor marketing processes

These challenges are further magnified by changes in today’s marketplace. Buyers increasingly do their own research, and typically don’t engage with a vendor until much later in the sales cycle. These prospects get inundated with information from a variety of channels as they progress along the buyer’s journey. Unfortunately, particularly when it comes to SMBs, the messages delivered over those multiple channels are often inconsistent, uncoordinated, or fragmented.

That’s where marketing automation comes in. Michiels defines marketing automation as “tools that automate customer engagement across two or more channels.” Email creation and deployment, landing page creation and hosting, web analytics, list segmentation, CRM integration, lead scoring, campaign execution and social media integration are all features of marketing automation that allow marketers to more easily communicate coherent, coordinated messaging to  prospective customers.

Email Marketing Vs. Marketing Automation

Michiels went on to explain that email marketing and marketing automation offer many of the same benefits. Marketing automation, however, delivers a number of benefits not provided by email marketing alone.

As one example, multi-channel nurture campaigns created using marketing automation allow marketers to stay in front of prospects that aren’t ready to buy yet. Marketing automation also allows SMBs to pre-qualify sales opportunities, thus saving money by focusing sales resources on the prospects most likely to buy soonest.

With marketing automation, companies can also centralize all prospect activity. This allows for improved marketing messaging, and better forecasting. And when a CRM system such as Salesforce is integrated with the marketing automation platform, sales and marketing can align around the insights gained through visibility into marketing activities and prospect behavior.

In the end, email marketing is just one piece of the marketing puzzle, and a good place to begin. But sooner or later, a growing SMB will need to cross the chasm to reap the greater benefits of marketing automation.

Ready to make the leap into marketing automation? Join us in one of our weekly live demos or request a one-on-one demo.

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With the Thanksgiving weekend behind us, the holiday celebrations have begun. And boy, do we have a lot to celebrate! Not only did Act-On Software have a record Q3 (we added 164 new customers and experienced 400% year-over-year growth!), but we’re also pleased to announce that we’ve exceeded the 500th customer mark in record time.

So who was the customer that allowed us to reach this exciting milestone? We are pleased to announce that Fleet One—which offers fuel and maintenance purchasing controls, detailed reporting, online account management and other money-saving services for fleets of vehicles—takes the spot as our 500th customer.

While we’re excited to acknowledge Fleet One as our 500th customer, we also realize that we couldn’t have reached 500 customers without all the awesome companies that make up Act-On’s extended family. Act-On’s customers include companies of all sizes who chose us for their marketing automation solution. Each of these customers has a unique success story, such as HA Advantage, a web-based technology company that matches shipments with carriers to move freight efficiently. “From the beginning it’s been clear that Act-On is a partner in our success; they listen to us and continue to focus on improving their already best-in-class platform,” said Aaron Bolshaw, director of marketing and inside sales for HA Advantage. “Ultimately, my job is to get people to raise their hands, and with Act-On I’m able to effectively do this.”

To celebrate the 500th customer milestone, we decided to give back in honor of the companies that have given us so much to be thankful for. Last week we provided 500 Thanksgiving meals to those in need through the Blanchet House of Hospitality in Portland, Oregon, and an additional 500 meals in honor of each of our first 500 customers. Fleet One has generously agreed to match Act-On’s donation, so together our two companies will be providing a total of 2000 meals to people in need during the holiday season.

To our customers who helped us reach this milestone, thank you for your business. To all those who have yet to find out how Act-On can help accelerate the execution of multi-channel online marketing campaigns, please contact us. We hope to have you as a part of our next historic milestone!

With the right system in place, you can let sales know which leads are genuinely interested in your product, and when those leads are most likely to be actively considering a purchase. Capturing a lead’s digital footprint enables marketing to segment and nurture prospects based on behaviors. It also helps sales foster a meaningful engagement with prospects – and focus that engagement at the most opportune time. Here are our ten favorite tips to help you deliver leads that sales is eager to call:

1.  Provide lead activity history.
Your reps will know exactly how to follow up with each lead when you provide full lead activity history. This lets sales know which emails were opened, what web pages were visited, how many times the lead has visited, and when.

2.  Earn your sales team’s trust.
Create legitimacy for marketing-delivered leads by sending only those leads that are “sales-ready.” Determine the criteria to score leads based on behavioral activity and other factors, then automatically route those leads to sales when the score reaches a certain threshold and the time is right.

3.  Agree on marketing and sales reporting.
What needs to be measured? Discuss it with sales, then report those metrics regularly. Useful reports include those that track:

• Number of leads converted to meetings
• Number of leads moving to proposal stage
• Number of new “sales-ready” leads

4.  Guarantee pipeline accuracy and reporting.
Through predictable and verifiable reporting, you will be able to build trust with your sales team so they believe your numbers and your view of the pipeline.

5.  Increase overall revenue per lead.
Before you can increase your revenue per lead, you have to have a way to measure it. With a measurement process in place, you can document the return on your marketing dollars. This is the holy grail of closed-loop marketing.

6.  Shorten sales cycles with timely and relevant follow-up.
According to a recent Harvard Business Review, companies who use the “5-minute contact rule” increase lead qualification rates by seven times over waiting even an hour, and over 60 times compared to waiting 24 hours or more to make an initial contact.

7.  Decrease the number of low-quality leads passed to sales.
A web visitor may demonstrate interest by their actions, but they still might not be a quality lead due to job title or other demographics. Filtering leads based on this type of data can reduce lesser quality leads.

8.  Increase the number of high-quality leads passed to sales.
Identify qualified leads that display purchase intent based on their behavior. Often it’s a combination of frequency, page visits, and specific pages which indicates a buying sign. These are highly desirable leads.

9.  Eliminate tire-kickers from the qualification cycle.
Learn to distinguish the tire-kickers from real buyers. Track which leads convert to sales and which do not. This will allow you to refine your qualification process, weeding out the tire-kickers so sales doesn’t waste time with them.

10.  Reduce the number of stale leads.
Many prospects are legitimate buyers… just not right now. These leads can go stale if you don’t offer them a way to stay engaged at their own pace. Set up a lead nurturing program, and they’ll think of you when the time is right.

Want to learn more about how you can get the critical lead information that Sales will want to act on? Join us in one of our weekly live demos, request a one-on-one demo, or register to view the 33-minute So Why Should I Call This Guy? on-demand webinar from our How to Market to Win Summer Webinar Series.

The right website visitor tracking and social media tools, coupled with the ability to build prospect profiles built on behaviors will enable you to not only create visibility, but take the critical next step of engaging and converting prospects effectively. Here are our ten ten tips to help you build online relationships and make the most of social and website engagements.

1. Your prospects are checking you out and you don’t even know it
Know what prospects are saying, how they’re finding you, and what their interests are. Conversations and searches get old – it’s all about real-time intelligence. If they’re on your website, they’re there for a reason. Shed light on exactly who they are and give sales a chance to engage.

2. Grab their attention
Just like the perfect outfit, your website can make the difference between getting noticed, and being ignored. Understand which web pages draw the most traffic and which don’t. Adjust as necessary. Give visitors a reason to move beyond just checking you out to interacting by providing multiple calls to action.

3. Be approachable and personable
Don’t be a wallflower. Let your company’s unique personality and expertise shine through. Put a name and face on your company with your website, as well as the social conversations you spark. Respond with warmth and immediacy.

4. They’re talking about you – are you listening?
Bring the voice of your future customers directly into your business and hear what they’re saying about your competitors, your industry, and issues that are important to them. Pay attention to your website; know who visited, what they searched for, and how they found you.

5. Be where the action is
Know where your prospects are hanging out and make sure you’re a part of it. Broadcast key messages across multiple social media channels such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc., and provide web content that is so compelling that you’re the center of attention.

6. Be the perfect conversationalist
You wouldn’t walk into the middle of a dinner party and start shouting about things that only you want to discuss. Follow the conversation, engage, and add value – but don’t be that annoying guest that talks too much about nothing.

7. Make new friends
If a person chooses to engage with you using social media, respond to them. You wouldn’t walk away from someone who was trying to talk to you at a party, would you? This is common courtesy, and a good way to build your network.

8. Give your sales team something to talk about
Engaging in social media conversations and with website visitors is one thing. Giving your sales team an arsenal of prospect data that sheds light on interests and levels of engagement is the real power in helping them take the relationship to the next level.

9. Lean on your friends to help you out
Encourage partner participation to increase your overall ecosystem, and bring additional points of view to your message and traffic to your site. Identify digital influencers and partner with them to generate positive word-of-mouth about your brand.

10. Manage your social calendar effectively
Manage social media in conjunction with other existing campaigns. This will really show you the value of this tool by illustrating that social media combined with other marketing tactics can create a whole outcome far greater than the sum of its parts.

Want to learn more about how you can uncover hot prospects visiting your website and in social media conversations? Join us in one of our weekly live demos, request a one-on-one demo, or register to view the 33-minute There’s a Party Going On and You’re Not There on-demand webinar from our How to Market to Win Summer Webinar Series.

Recently, Act-On Software presented a webinar titled Increase Lead Cycle Velocity and Close More Deals. Act-On Software CEO Raghu Raghavan and InsideSales.com CEO Dave Elkington discussed the measurable success gained when marketing and sales work together, and provided actionable insights about sales/marketing alignment.

Marketing Today Must be High Velocity and Low Friction

According to Raghu Raghavan, marketing today must be agile and nimble, and do more with less. The trend is towards small marketing teams (SMTs) using enterprise class software that allows them to get up and running quickly – creating campaigns, producing content for all available marketing channels, and utilizing real-time business intelligence – right out of the box.

To be successful, marketing must also be fully integrated with sales and prospects must be handled dynamically. When a lead is handed to sales, it needs to contain information about all of the touches and engagement points associated with that lead. The right software helps marketing share that information with sales, in real time, enhancing the opportunity to close.

The Sales Revolution

Dave Elkington discussed the accelerated sales model and the sales revolution, saying that SaaS technologies are enabling organizations to make use of marketing-generated intelligence and analysis. This in turn increases sales velocity and allows sales to make its numbers.

Elkington provided key insights using InsideSales.com’s own internal process, including an illustration of how sales manages leads that are driven from different sources by marketing.

Elkington also revealed that, while we know that contact rates significantly drop off after 5 minutes, the average response time for companies is almost 50 hours. Responding quickly to a web inquiry does more than increase your contact rate – it increases your closed sales. 78% of sales go to the first company to respond. This means that marketing and sales must work closely together to know when a lead engages, and follow up appropriately. Technology plays a critical role in the process.
There’s much more to learn in this fact-filled webinar – watch the entire session at your own pace.

Want to learn more about how marketing automation can benefit your company?

Mark your calendars for our next webinar:
SMBs: Crossing the Chasm to Marketing Automation
Ian Michiels, Principal Analyst at Gleanster Research, will discuss what happens when an SMB outgrows its current email marketing technologies, and the benefits and trade-offs of adopting marketing automation tools.

November 17th, 2011, 11:00 am Pacific. To find out more and register for this webinar, please visit upcoming webinars page.

For over a decade, email marketing has been the de facto channel for outbound marketing. An estimated 250 billion plus emails are sent each day and, of those, over 90% are spam. Buyers have become complacent to inbox clutter. As a result, relevance drives revenue for today’s top performing organizations. It’s truly about the right message, at the right time, in the right place. But, the “place” seems to evolve every year, as buyers connect and share experiences on digital, mobile, and social channels. Email hasn’t become any less relevant than it was 10 years ago, but the way business incorporates email into the multi-channel engagement strategy has changed. Customers have increasing influence and control over the buying cycle. Small business marketers (defined as organizations with 1-250 employees) need to take stock of these changing dynamics, in order to grow revenue and extend customer reach.

No matter how much people like to talk about how critical it is to manage the pipeline, generate leads, and qualify prospects, the reality is, most small businesses struggle to do these effectively. This is, in part, a byproduct of relying on legacy marketing tactics that frankly still generate modest results. With limited resources, why would a small business change what seems to be working? But, it’s also a byproduct of a lack of education about the actual best practices that are emerging for customer engagement in 2011 and beyond. Here are a few stats that set the stage for the real question at hand:

• Research from Gleanster* shows that 89% of small businesses (1-250 employees) engage in outbound email marketing
• Top Performing** companies are 3x more likely to leverage a marketing automation tool
• 4% of small businesses leverage a marketing automation tool
• 78% of small businesses “have used social media” for marketing campaigns and/or lead generation

*Q3 ’11 Marketing Automation Survey, n= 285 Survey Respondents & Q4’11 Lead Prioritization Survey, n= 303
**Top Performers = Respondents that achieved Top Quartile performance in revenue, click-through rates, and return on marketing investments.

While target audiences have evolved, many SMB marketers still primarily rely on traditional email marketing tactics. But, Top Performers reveal there might actually be something to this whole “marketing automation” thing. So, it makes sense to explore the tradeoffs between email marketing and marketing automation. Standalone email marketing tools might be more than sufficient for some organizations – but when do you know when your organization is ready to take it to the next level?

• Is there a point where SMBs outgrow traditional email marketing tools? Are there diminishing returns on email marketing technologies?
• Is there a right time to invest in more robust marketing capabilities?
• How do Top Performing organizations maximize the value of marketing technology investments and consistently outperform peers?

When you hire a plumber to fix a leaky pipe under your sink, you assume the person will show up with the tools to do the job and the skills to know how to use the tools effectively. And while there are probably a half dozen different ways to fix a leaky pipe, there are probably only a few that will get the job done adequately. For small businesses, there’s a point at which you need better tools to engage with prospects and customers, but you also need the skills to use those tools appropriately. We can actually rely on research to extrapolate the people, process, and technology skills required to maximize the value from a marketing automation investment.

That’s exactly what we will explore in the upcoming webinar “SMBs: Crossing the Chasm to Marketing Automation” on November 17th at 11am PST. Register today and join me for a deeper look at the key capabilities that differentiate email marketing and marketing automation.

About Our Guest Author
Ian Michiels is a seasoned research analyst, strategic consultant, and business executive with a strong background in analytical and creative marketing. He has held management roles at such Fortune 500 technology companies as Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, Applied Materials and Oracle/Hyperion. He is currently a director in the Enterprise Marketing practice at MarketSphere Consulting.

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We all like to make new friends, but that doesn’t mean that we should neglect the old, or worse, intentionally alienate them without due cause. However, that’s exactly what happens when leads – which marketing has spent time, money, and resources to generate – are ignored once they enter the pipeline.

Don’t waste leads! Learn how to make new friends while still keeping the old, with these ten tips…

1.  Don’t waste campaign dollars
Maximize your lead gen dollars by making every lead (both new and old) count through targeted lead nurture programs.

2.  Validate your company’s value
Increase positive brand perception by providing valuable content, thought-leadership, and proof of market penetration.

3.  Push leads effectively through the sales cycle to deliver leads when they’re “sales ready”
Shorten time-to-buy based on positive brand association, proof of effectiveness, and consistent communications. Deliver to sales at the most opportune time –when the lead is showing signs of active engagement.

4.  Leverage customer successes
Highlight your customer successes as sales tool to attract new customers via case studies, references, social media, and webinars.

5.  Nurture from the sales and target-audience
Design email marketing efforts to be consistent with how sales communicates and engages with leads – typically short and to the point – with minimal graphics to ensure maximum interaction with the campaign.

6.  Shake up communications and validations
Provide different points of reference by interspersing consistent drip mailers from sales with relevant product or company news from the Executive Suite (CEO, VP level).

7.  Don’t alienate your prospects
Balance the timing of nurture emails to align with how sales typically engages with leads, and balance with how frequently the target audience would appreciate being contacted. Every other day is usually too often. Every 5-9 days is more likely to appeal to your leads.

8.  Don’t alienate your sales team—empower them
Engage sales from the onset. You nurture process should match the sales style of engagement and processes, provide sales the ability to enter/exit prospects into campaigns, and provide a holistic and real-time view of lead attributes and activity behaviors.

9.  Give your nurture initiatives a fighting chance—put the right tools in place
Make sure your marketing tools are flexible enough to quickly set up campaigns based on your preferences; easily monitor performance; and provide indicators of a lead’s momentum based on activity, e.g. lead scoring and sales alerts.

10.  Keep customers informed and coming back for more
Keep your customers happy, informed, and connected; nurture, up-sell, and cross sell opportunities by consistently providing product updates, news, and success stories.

Don’t forget or alienate old leads that you’ve worked hard to generate. With the right processes, content, and system, you can turn wasted leads (that translate into wasted campaign dollars) into new opportunities and increase ROI.

Want to learn more about how to nurture your leads beyond top of funnel activities, and maximize conversions?  Join us in one of our weekly live demos, request a one-on-one demo, or register to view the 33-minute Spray & Pray on-demand webinar from our How to Market to Win Summer Webinar Series.

As many marketers and business owners have already discovered, “batch blasting” doesn’t work so well anymore for email marketing. That said, email is still a very effective tool for lead generation – when you use it well.

Here are our ten favorite tips for making sure your email works as hard as you do…

1.  It’s all about deliverability, verifiability and bounce reduction.
Permission-based lists and clean data have the best chance of getting response.  Make sure your email solution has high deliverability rates, and can track message activity (deliveries, bounces, click-thrus), or you’re just wasting marketing dollars.

2.  You better aim before you shoot.
Segment your lists based on prospect attributes (e.g. location, industry) and behaviors (e.g., attending a webinar).  Aim your messages and content to the known needs/ interests of the list segments to capture attention and enhance response.

3. Create a marketing ecosystem that walks, talks and works together.
Your email campaigns, website, social media channels and sales team all need to have the same key messages and value propositions.  Give your prospects an easy way to respond to your offer, wherever and however they find it.

4. Give your lists a fighting chance.
Build trust-based relationships: shore up opt-in, permissions, delivery preferences and privacy. Use relevant subject lines, and short, to-the-point messages with value for the reader. Avoid spam-trigger words: “Free,” “Discount,” or “Click.” Test before launching.

5. Don’t ignore post-click engagements and opportunities to improve conversions.
After they’ve paid attention to your uber-compelling email content, engage them post-click. Make sure your landing page mirrors the email look, feel and offer. Keep your call to action clear. Analyze where drop off occurs and adjust in real time.

6. Email haiku – You’ve got 3 seconds to make an impression.
Can you answer these three questions: “What am I asking them to do?”,  “Why should they care, or do it?” and “Am I making it easy for them to act?” Have just one objective in an email, and make your call to action clear and easy to respond to.

7. Be human.
Give your email a “voice,” so it reads like one end of a great conversation. Ask their opinions, and present content that takes these interactions into account. It’s best if the email comes from a real person with an authentic interest in the conversation.

8. Avoid the dreaded “Big X” – How to beat the preview pane.
Don’t make prospects click “download image” to even understand what you’re offering. Focus attention on the message and call to action; downsize your banner and make it clickable. Shorten horizontal graphics, move up a promotional message, or add a Johnson Box to increases response rates.

9. If you aren’t tracking behaviors and metrics you’re missing the boat.
Demographics, psychographics, online and offline interactions, transactions and responses deepen customer profiles and should be used to drive personalized, relevant, and timely communications, as well as sales engagement.

10. Drive conversions through social media.
Integrate socially; create a microsite or landing page with social site sharing. Track when a prospect shares the offer or content to gain knowledge about which campaigns or messages are attracting click-thrus, visits or referrals.

Want to learn more about how to amplify your email efforts and create better conversions and engagements with prospects?  Join us in one of our weekly live Act-On Integrated Marketing Platform demos, request a one-on-one demo, or register to view the 33-minute Spray & Pray on-demand webinar from our How to Market to Win Summer Webinar Series.

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