"Truly" sophisticated marketing automation

You hear a lot in the marketing automation industry around sophisticated marketing. I guess the question is "what really is sophisticated marketing"? Marketbright's new campaign flow designer is a perfect example of sophistication. As marketing and sales guru Mike Pilcher says: "making the complicated simple". Yet even by simplifying the infrastructure for building campaigns with an easy drag and drop tool, you still have to put some thought power into marketing strategy and nurture flow layouts. Sophisticated marketing requires a comprehensive marketing solution that was designed by marketers for marketers. Some vendors claim to be sophisticated, yet at the same time they make claims such as “get up and running in less than one day”. This may only seem obvious to the truly sophisticated marketers, but getting up and running in one day is not sophistication. Let’s get that straight. I would consider sophistication the following:

a. Global approach to ensure message consistency, branding and empower local teams to run programs for specific vertical, geographic and target markets.
b. Consistent data ensuring a 360 degree view of the prospect and drive accurately targeted messages.
c.Common processes from a template-based system driving common processes across all marketing groups, increasing marketing velocity and consistency.
d. Accurate measurement of all marketing metrics providing insight into the prospect lifecycle providing the platform for better decision-making, optimal targeting and improved response rates.
e. Ease of use and powerfully rich functionality from drawing lists to creating and managing campaigns.
f. Simple CRM integration for example, Salesforce.com.

In order to deliver a truly sophisticated solution it requires careful assessment and guidance on best practices. Training and implementation are keys to success, and in order to truly reach sophistication... one day roll-outs are going to end up in disaster.

Reaching Top Executives with Marketing Automation

Most enterprise selling reps are familiar with "Selling to Vito". The concept of reaching top executives and decision makers by delivering tailored information that matches a companies business objectives. This is not a new concept, and it has been proven successful over and over again by sales reps. Yet it requires spending many hours of research and development in messaging. Instead, wouldn't you rather that your sales reps focus on qualified opportunities with decision makers?

With marketing automation eveything changes. Bringing the budget holders into the conversation and developing an ongoing relationship with them is no longer the role of Sales, it is the role of Marketing through effective nurturing. Marketers are faced with the challenge of capturing the attention of the busiest executives and keeping their interest until they are ready to buy so that Sales can move faster through the selling process.

Marketbright is hosting a best practice webinar to discuss the topic of nurturing to C-Level executives. In this session we will raise discussion on the following:

- How to get the attention of a C-Level executive and keep it.
- How to automate the nurturing process to reduce time and resources.
- How to align Sales and Marketing to quicken the selling process to convert contacts to customers.

Join us on Thursday, July 16th 2009 9:00am (PT). Sign up here

Social Media helping the sales process in online conversation. Great article by Mike Pilcher on CustomerThink.

What exactly is social selling? There are a variety of worthy descriptions and explanations, but I think this one describes it best: Social selling is the promotion of your products and services using social tools to converse and collaborate with people.

Read the rest of the article at CustomerThink

Contact Marketing

Special Blog Guest, Mike Pilcher. Author of ProSultative Selling, and VP WW of Sales at Marketbright.

Contact Marketing is the phase in which a person continues the nurturing of a prospect. The Contact Marketing person guides the prospect toward the most probable contact point that would move them to engage in an interactive dialogue. This phase is characterized by a high volume of contacts, usually requiring multiple contacts to move the conversation forward. Using qualification criteria to target a prospect, the Contact Marketing team’s role is to make outbound contact to a prospect who has no expectation of agreed next steps. When the prospect agrees to active next steps with the prospect expected to expend resources, the interaction moves from Passive Contact to Active Contact.

Metrics must drive the process rules defining the frequency and content of these contacts, constantly monitoring the optimal blend of low-cost Passive Contacts, e.g. press and mail, with higher-cost touches such as advertising and Contact Marketing. Use tools to refine accurately the messaging presented to these prospects and thereby enhance the results of this activity. Tools designed to initiate contact include LinkedIn, InsideView, Jigsaw, etc. Ensure the message is pertinent and specific to the target prospect.

I once asked a customer, the CIO at Barings, to monitor the number of in-bound calls he received a day. After monitoring his voice mail for a month, the CIO found he was receiving an average of 18 unsolicited vendor calls each day. This did not include emails, direct mail, or other messaging. With this level of incoming static, the best way to break through the noise and gain sufficient interest is to make the message pertinent to the individual buyer.

Intelligent Contact Marketing is targeted at the right prospect at the right time with the right message and further nurtures the relationship. As with the consultative nature of the sales process, it is important to demonstrate an understanding of the prospect even in the Passive Contact phase. As there is no Active Contact interaction during this phase, Contact Marketing offers an initial perception of listening to the prospect by demonstrating an understanding of information about the prospect’s business, the prospect’s individual needs and the functionality of the product. Nurturing involves feeding a prospect with information to increase their awareness of a product and enhance this knowledge to the point where it meets a prospect requirement. Once the prospect understands this match and is ready to engage, they are ready to move to the Active Contact phase.

The Contact Marketing team must be available to make initial contact, take in-bound telephone contact, and follow-up on contacts made through other methods until the prospect becomes a qualified lead, agrees to next steps and passes to Internal or External Sales.

For clarity, and to ensure clean metrics are gathered, delineate between Contact Marketing’s Passive Contact and Internal/External Sales’ Active Contact. When the Contact Marketing team tries to interact and close business, the metrics will no longer be clean data. Clean data is at the core of the success or failure of ProSultative sales. The increased volume of interactions is only supportable with automation and constant refinement of the interaction. It is essential to connect the interactions and form patterns, understanding where proactive sales can replace consultative sales and where automation can replace manual intervention.

ROI of Nurture Marketing

Every marketer struggles to make the most of their lead generation and marketing budget. Several factors go into how your return on investment will be determined: potential prospects are often lost or have gone stale during the sales process, man power was wasted on campaign execution and inaccurate reporting can lower your ROI.

Nurture Marketing is a proven process to help maximize your investment in lead generation. Nurturing the leads you already have will establish an ongoing relationship with your prospects and increase the chance of converting them to customers.

Join Mike Pilcher, the author of ProSultative Selling and the VP of Sales at Marketbright as he breaks down ways to maximize ROI through Nurture Marketing.

IN THIS WEBINAR YOU WILL LEARN:

• How to improve your ROI by 25% - 35% through Nurture Marketing
• How Nurture Marketing helps align Sales and Marketing
• How to automate the nurture marketing process to reduce man power
• How to trace your leads from the first point of contact for accurate reporting

Sign up here for free: ROI for Nurture Marketing

Come visit me at the Cloudforce Tour in Chicago and Minneapolis

Marketbright will be sponsoring the upcoming salesforce.com Cloudforce events in Chicago on May 4th and Minneapolis on May 6th. Stop by Marketbright's booth to get a demo of our solution.

Marketbright is the leading On-Demand marketing solution, providing a platform to easily move all of your demand generation activities onto one solution. With Marketbright, you get a highly automated system that will help your company increase sales. Learn why over 50,000 users and companies like VMware, SAP, Seagate and AVID Technology utilize Marketbright.

Recent Marketbright and salesforce.com news:

Marketbright Expands Capabilities for Salesforce CRM

Cheers,

Jon

jon.ross@marketbright.com

Marketbright Partners with Cloudweaver

Marketbright partnered with CLOUDWEAVER to Serve Oracle On-Demand CRM Customers. This is great step to focusing on fulfilling the on-demand CRM marketplace. Marketbright has the ability to integrate with multiple CRM systems out-of-the-box; including salesforce.com, Oracle On-Demand, MS Dynamics, NetSuite and SalesLogix.

Marketbright Enterprise gives marketers a powerful system at their fingertips. Marketers need a system to measure results consistently, and at the same time quickly roll out campains efficiently. The system allows marketers and sales to measure top marketing campaign influences on top sales opportunities. It also allows marketers to score and nurture those leads not yet ready to be converted to top opportunities. Marketbright's integration with on-demand CRM systems allows marketers to execute and analyze real-time results.

CLOUDWEAVER is looking forward to connecting valuable prospects to a mission-critical marketing automation system like Marketbright.

Contact Jerry Leto at CLOUDWEAVER for more information on the partnership (phone 408-556-9706, email jerry.leto@cloudweaver.net).