Dennis Dayman, Chief Privacy and Deliverability Officer at Eloqua discusses how email has changed, and best practice for marketers looking to use email marketing in a targeted and compliant manner.
Webtrends Facebook analytics tools work with Eloqua marketing automation.
NIIT is a global talent management company. Its U.S. unit, the Enterprise Learning Solutions business, created its first e-mail marketing campaign in January 2008. The company began by using e-mail marketing software but, looking to expand its lead-generation capability, thought leadership and brand awareness in a more automated manner, it switched to marketing automation provider Eloqua a few months later. Soon after that, NIIT's ELS marketing department, which supports four different brands, expanded its reach into international markets.
Since the advent of email marketing in the mid-1990s, companies have embraced the misconception that email is virtually "free" as a marketing medium. This false impression often leads to over-communication -- which, in turn, triggers diminished response rates, spam complaints, and unsubscribes. Even marketers who are sensitive to email recklessness sometimes face internal pressures, such as end-of-year revenue numbers, to send "one last blast to the entire database" with the justification that "it doesn't cost us anything."
The rapid pace at which email has developed means that criminals and spammers are constantly looking for new ways to make money and bypass the law. Consequently, email technology and regulators are being forced to keep up. In the past, the threats posed by spam were prevented using fairly basic measures that would block untargeted emails. Content filters were set up to protect inboxes from messages that contained certain keywords.
When email was first developed, it was primarily used as a channel to exchange research between universities, the government and to share military information with targeted parties. Today the landscape is quite different, and email is now a fully-fledged method of communication. As is typical however, as its popularity has grown, so has its appeal to criminals. This has created both a challenge in terms of how to prevent this criminal activity, as well as an opportunity, particularly for marketing services companies who strive to support organisations that dispatch targeted emails as part of their marketing communications activities.
Say something interesting -- or nothing at all. This is a hallmark of successful digital conversations. To participate, brands must have something to say. However, it's not a trivial task to create all that content for all those landing pages, Webinars, blogs, newsletters, Web sites, white papers, tweets, social network fan pages, forums, and newsgroups.
Eloqua has always been a top o’ the heap kind of marketing automation solution - in my thinking the best of them for a while - formerly very expensive, now better priced than they were.However, for 2010, to make it onto this list, you have to be in line with where the market is going and social marketing integration is one of the key places it is going.
The marketing team saved an entire workday and, since May, has accumulated twice as many qualified leads for the sales team as it did during the whole of 2008. That's the situation Waltham, Mass.-based ZoomInfo finds itself in after implementing an automated lead-nurturing and customer-retention solution. Amanda Halle , a marketing associate for the online service "that extracts information about people and companies from millions of published resources," says it was time for ZoomInfo to integrate and automate its programs, using the option offered by marketing automation solution provider Eloqua of Vienna, Va. The ZoomInfo marketing team had been manually inputting the information—work that consumed several hours a week.
Marketing automation provider Eloqua has launched a new tool to integrate social media sharing and tracking with existing forms of outbound marketing. The Social Sharing and Reporting toolset is available worldwide and allows marketers to pull online conversations into their promotions. It is claimed to improve lead generation, lead nurturing and lead scoring in three steps.
The panel this morning started to talk about the impact of social marketing on email marketing ROI, but turned into a discussion of what metrics are actually important. Turns out that very few of us (at least among the audience here) are doing a great job of measuring and optimizing email marketing based on the data we have now — opens/renders, clicks and conversions. As a contribution to overall revenue, social marketing seems to just add depth and breadth to those metrics, rather than having to introduce brand new measures.
I recently finished up a darn good book on B2B marketing called Digital Body Language: Deciphering Customer Intentions in an Online World. It was written by Steven Woods, who co-founded the ‘marketing automation platform’ vendor, Eloqua, in 1999. ’m going to attempt to summarize, review, and add some commentary as it pertains to how we at FutureNow use this concept of ‘digital body language’ to increase the marketing effectiveness of lead generation sites.
Andrew Buckley, vice president of global marketing and strategy at American Express, doesn't shy away from a challenge. Having taken the decision a couple of years ago to 'globalise' marketing in the organisation, he's now working on the company-wide implementation of Eloqua's lead nurturing software – and the concomitant upskilling of staff in the organisation.
The Email Experience Council regularly asks thought leaders in the email marketing space to explain the latest and greatest ways to create relevant email communications with today's buyers
James W. Obermayer, executive director of the Sales Lead Management Association has announced the results of the voting for the Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management in 2009. A total of 1604 people cast votes. Steven Woods is third on the list which is ordered by the number of votes received by each individual.
Yesterday afternoon I had the pleasure of doing my first Google Voice Podcast with Steven Woods, CTO of Eloqua and author of Digital Body Language. Google Voice allows you to record your incoming calls (press 4 to start and stop recording) and then places them directly in your Google Voice inbox. I thought this was a great way to begin doing audio on the site!
Austin-based CoreTrace went to market in the first quarter of 2008. A startup in the competitive IT security sector, the company’s marketing team had to quickly figure out its desired target and create a database of marketable prospects. At the beginning of 2009, CoreTrace partnered with Eloqua, utilizing their Best Practice Template Library.
One of the most commonly cited benefits of implementing a marketing automation system is the opportunity to improve your organization’s ability to analyze marketing effectiveness. This is indeed possible, and provides a powerful advantage to organizations who are successful. However the final outcome of great marketing dashboards rests on a strong foundation of data. Ensuring that the data you need is available, cleansed, and normalized is critical to generating the analysis you need.
There is no way to determine with 100% accuracy where an individual buyer is in their buying process. This leads to a difficult marketing conundrum when looking at targeting marketing efforts based on a best possible approximation of where that buyer is likely to be in his or her buying process; in a broad enough population, there will always be some response to a marketing campaign, regardless of what buyer stage it was targeted at.
One of the biggest challenges b2b marketers face is what to do with all of those "names" that come into your system that aren't really "leads" yet; contacts collected from white paper downloads, webinar registrations, trade shows and other activities. How do you separate hot leads from long-term leads from tire-kickers? How can you efficiently nurture those long-term prospects, learning more about their interests in the process, until they are really ready to engage with sales?
Joe Payne CEO of ELOQUA, speaks at an Ernst & Young CEO Breakfast in Sydney Australia in February 2009. This video 1 of 4 - Marketing in Transition - what are CEO's doing with marketing budgets and why?
As I read Steven Woods' latest book Digital Body Language, I kept nodding in agreement and taking copious notes. The fact is, Steven's ideas should be at the very forefront of every marketer's arsenal - no matter what the size of the company - no matter what the target market.
In recognition of the impact of customer service in any growth strategy, Frost & Sullivan's Customer Service Innovation Award is presented annually to an individual or organization that has demonstrated significant excellence in this field. This year's award recipient is Mr. Steve Woods, Chief Technical Officer (CTO) and co-founder of marketing automation company Eloqua.
To support its more aggressive marketing and sales initiatives for the Correspondent Banking division, Fifth Third Bank selected Eloqua for the automation and management of marketing programs. “Eloqua is able to deliver valuable insight on our client base’s Digital Body Language, providing us with additional ways to help drive revenue even in a challenging economy,” Terry Lyons, VP, Fifth Third Bank’s Correspondent Banking Services.
For too long businesses have been pouring their marketing dollars into the “black hole” of creative marketing that has not been able to tie directly to ROI. Creative is still important, but more scientific marketers with backgrounds in statistics and information technology can better connect the dots between their actions and sales results.
Recognised as one of the top influencers in the CRM field, Eloqua's Steve Woods distills his insights into the challenges and opportunities faced by today's marketers into a framework for thinking about their audience, and their role, in a new way.
Marketing automation firm Eloqua is launching Prospect Profiler, a tool for CRM systems that presents a simple view of a prospect's online activity. It simplifies the trove of data collected by marketing automation systems and presents a graphical view of any given prospect's website visits, form data, email response and search activity.
Eloqua Prospect Profiler, a CRM-based sales intelligence tool provides an intuitive graphical summary of prospects' online activities and behaviors that sales professionals can use to focus conversations on topics that resonate with buyers.
Prospect Profiler provides a glimpse into what we see as the next generation of marketing automation. It combines an intuitive, user-centric design with intelligent behavioral data that provides greater insight into buyer intent,” says Joe Payne, CEO, Eloqua. “Whether you are a first-time buyer of marketing automation or a long-time Eloqua client, you have got to see Eloqua Prospect Profiler. Nobody else has anything like it.
When marketing delivers a new batch of leads, sales wants to know quickly which have the most potential. In my research, I show how top marketers build practices that score leads numerically, route top-scoring leads to sales, and – more often – use visual tools to engage with sales. This is where many marketing automation vendors are heading and Eloqua has taken a major step in this direction with its announcement of Prospect Profiler today.
...marketers have all realized that today’s buyers have fundamentally changed; they use Google, various online sources, and social media to find their information, rather than interacting with a sales person....As we’ve helped these marketers, we’ve had a great opportunity to dig deep into what it takes to be successful, and the mistakes you can easily avoid as you evolve your marketing organization.
The effort today is not so much at the top of the funnel, bringing in raw leads, but rather in nurturing and relationship management with current prospects," said Brian Kardon, CMO at demand generation and lead management company Eloqua. "A lot of marketers pride themselves on how many leads they generate each quarter, but they already have a ton of prospects in the pipeline. The focus now is on closing the business.
Marketing is undergoing a major shift that has been brought on by the change in the way people find and consume information. Whether it is Google’s ability to make the information resources of the Internet searchable or social media’s ability to connect people with peers for credible opinions on products and services, the way in which we access information and search for products has fundamentally changed.
The answer is yes according to Joe Payne, CEO of Eloqua, a marketing automation software vendor (far left in photo, below). Approximately 30% of the Eloqua marketing team's pay is contingent on Eloqua achieving its revenue objectives.
...the Philadelphia Flyers fan engagement program is by far the single most well thought out and successful CRM strategy and program Ive seen to date in professional sports. Bar none - including my beloved New York teams. Shame on the Rangers.
Using a combination of salesforce.com, marketing ubër-application Eloqua, and a stored value program ... [the Philadelphia Flyers] ... are able to capture the kind of information about a fan that lets them know fan behaviors from the time they walk out the door to the time they leave the stadium.
In the past, all interactions were largely face to face or by telephone and the sales professional was able to read the subtle clues and nuances - the forward-leaning posture, the raised eyebrows, the tone of voice, and more.
Can that same level of interaction and interpretation be achieved in the digital world? Can marketers define and read a "digital body language" that offers consistently predictive clues and insights into buyer behavior?
Steven Woods in Digital Body Language: Deciphering Customer Intentions in an Online World (2009: New Year Publishing) argues that just as it used to be critical for a salesperson to be able to read a prospect’s body language in order to be able to successfully move them to make a positive decision to purchase, it is now equally critical—and possible—to read a prospect’s “digital” body language via their use and movements through the company’s internet resources.
Laura Ramos reviews Steve Woods' new book "Digital Body Language".
The art of lead scoring is evolving as marketers better understand today's buyers. Originally, scoring models were borrowed from database marketing and mainly looked at demographics and firmographics. Is it the right level of executive? Are they in the right industry? Does the company have the right level of revenue? This information, although valuable, did not indicate anything about whether the buyer was ready to buy.
The Funnelholic interviews Steve Woods on B2B marketing trends in 2009.
With threats from inbox overload, spam and image blocking, how must email evolve to retain its place as the key B2B marketing medium? And how should it be used to maximise its effectiveness? Lucy Fisher reports
According to Eloqua’s report, on average B2B organisations convert fewer than 60 per cent of marketing leads into sales leads. By integrating sales and marketing databases and employing lead management and routing processes to improve lead handoff, businesses can boost this rate significantly.
Bob Thompson interviews Eloqua co-founder and CTO Steve Woods about his new book, "Digital Body Language".
Partnering with Eloqua, Weather Trends International collects information about its customers (and the employees at those companies who receive the email)…. Prior to last summer WTI experienced a typical email open rate of 2 to 4 percent. Today, Bill Martin, WTI's vice president of marketing, says, he typically sees double digits for both open and click-through rates. "For a small company of less than 30 people and less than $10 million a year in revenue, the fact that we can use the same tools as a Fortune 500 company and see these kinds of results is great."
The ecomonic downturn has led to a 30% cut in marketing budgets and the transfer of marketing dollars to digital, according to Joseph Payne, CEO of Eloqua.
Eloqua CTO Steve Woods reports on the importance and insight gleaned through digital body language.
Steven Woods, CTO of Eloqua, explains key concepts from his new book Digital Body Language.
I’m not sure if I like the term Digital Body Language, but Steve Woods’ book with that title I like very much. It clearly shows how the role of marketing in the complex sales has changed, and gives lots of detailed suggestions on how marketing teams can cope with this change, by using smart demand generation strategies.
Sourcefire recognized the need identify likely buyers and has utilized Eloqua to create an advanced lead-scoring program. The program allows Sourcefire to evaluate and adjust the quality and quantity of its leads based on feedback from the company’s sales organization. The lead scoring system has been able to show a 25% increase in sales productivity.
Dennis Dayman, chief privacy and deliverability officer at Eloqua, provides expert commentary on how today's marketers can solve some of their biggest deliverability issues using the latest tools, technologies, and processes.
Giving stuff away in order to secure sales meetings can be a costly endeavor. Brown and his colleagues knew there would be plenty of people who had no real interest in TriNet but would agree to a meeting just to get the gifts. To minimize that, TriNet sought help from Vienna, VA-based lead generation company Eloqua....Brown said the Eloqua-based process has worked well, resulting in many more sit-downs and a 20 percent increase in conversions.
According to an Eloqua-sponsored survey, more than 60 percent of B2B marketers plan to shift away from sending out scads of paper in the form of brochures and other collateral and are moving instead to digital activities. This trend inspired Eloqua to hold a “paperless” conference, using technology from iCentera and nTAG.
With the knowledge that most people chuck much of the physical materials received at a conference before leaving the hotel, Eloqua decided to make their annual user conference a green experience and do a way with paper all together. Brian Kardon, chief marketing officer at Eloqua, talks about how his company pulled off the paperless conference and provides tips for those looking to do the same.
According to a recent Eloqua survey of 150 B2B marketing managers, marketers have the best intentions at heart and want a greener approach to marketing. In the next 12-to-18 months, 60 per cent of respondents said they will move away from traditional marketing activities such as direct mailers and brochures and look to digital activities to be more 'green'. Sixty per cent also said that ‘green' marketing can provide them with a competitive advantage.
An effective lead-nurturing campaign starts with bringing leads into the funnel, no matter what the source—webinars, search marketing, banner ads, offline or events. The key is to combine explicit data about a prospect with implicit behavior, such as e-mail opens rates, Web site visits and white paper downloads, said Steve Gershik, VP-marketing innovation at lead generation and management vendor Eloqua Corp.
Recognizing the benefits of going green, marketers of late have expressed a greater interest in eco-friendly communication materials, according to a new study by Eloqua. The firm interviewed 150 marketers for its Green Marketing survey and found that 90% of the marketing industry wants to be more environmentally friendly... Eloqua recently adopted this approach at its Experience '08 Conference in Las Vegas. The conference featured an online portal where attendees could access the latest panel and speaker information, bypassing paper agendas. Also, instead of disposable name badges, attendees were given electronic devices with built-in digital networking capabilities.
Steve Woods, chief technology officer of Eloqua -- which just last week was named a Leader in the Marketing Automation category in CRM magazine’s 2008 Market Awards -- says this release addresses the problem that many companies face when marketing and sales are unable to integrate disparate systems. Eloqua's Web services API, he says, will help bring the two groups together, doing away with the traditional method of what he calls merely “handing a fishbowl of business cards over the wall.” With this integration, he says, “marketing and sales can now get on the same page.”
As part of the Eloqua Experience 2008 conference here this week, one presentation -- "Turning the Social Technology Groundswell to Your Advantage", by Charlene Li, former Forrester Research analyst, co-author of the book Groundswell, and now founder of the new consultancy The Altimeter Group -- explained that social media isn't about the technology at all; rather, it's a focus on the relationships you want to build with your prospects, customers, and employees.
The second annual Markies Awards were handed out in Las Vegas this week, recognizing innovative and visionary marketers in the field of demand generation. The awards were presented to winners in nine categories at Eloqua Experience ’08, with specific nods to ground-breaking campaigns and programs for sales and marketing effectiveness, lead scoring, lead management and campaign management.
Marketing automation service provider Eloqua held its first user conference this week in a very sunny Las Vegas. Visit the Experience Web page and you’ll find that the show was “sold out” … With over 430 attendees, and an impressive list of sponsors, from tech vendors to research firms, Eloqua certainly did well on its first try. It also didn’t hurt that, according to its end-of-the-conference poll, 96 percent of remaining attendees voted in favor of Eloqua hosting another event next year.
In another sign that the marketing automation category has arrived, more than 430 attendees turned out in Las Vegas this week for Eloqua’s inaugural user conference. Eloqua Experience 08 drew over 300 customers to hear best practice presentations from power users as well as marketing experts and industry analysts. CEO Joe Payne kicked off the event by spotlighting the company’s growth rate, recently exceeding 500 customers and 10,000 users and expanding globally into EMEA and Asia.
Eloqua, a vendor of automated demand generation applications and expertise for business-to-business marketers, has announced it has been selected as one of Oracle's (News - Alert) Elite 8, a designation given to partners which have demonstrated products and customer integrations with Oracle CRM On Demand.
Eloqua, a vendor of demand generation products for business-to-business (B2B) marketers, has announced the Eloqua Web Services Application Programming Interface, a Web Services API for marketing automation. This release extends the reach of Eloqua's demand generation applications, company officials believe, since by using the product "organizations can integrate any application, service or non-standard Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system with their Eloqua product."
Eloqua, a vendor of demand generation products for business-to-business marketers, has announced the Eloqua Web Services Application Programming Interface, a Web Services API for marketing automation.
In addition, Hungerford said the company’s database of prospects grew so substantially with Eloqua that Sybase began using its own data management solution to do trend and effectiveness analysis. While Hungerford declined to specify the size of the Sybase database integrated with the Eloqua system, he would say it has increased by at least “tenfold” since implementing Eloqua Conversion Suite four years ago.
GETTING TO KNOW ME From a marketer's perspective, such individual attention should be a welcome change for consumers, as it reduces the number of unwanted advertisements that don't relate to their wants and needs. Steven Woods, co-founder and chief technology officer of Eloqua, a marketing platform company, says consumers don't seem to mind targeted advertising if they know their data is being collected. "If a person has let you know what they are interested in, then generally consumers see that as being responsive to their needs," Woods says. "If they are not expecting that you will end up with their data then that would be a problem for them."
Should there be an online version of the National Do Not Call Registry? At first blush, this might seem like a dire proposition for marketers. But, in fact, it would be a good thing. By Steven Woods, Co-founder & Chief Technology Officer, Eloqua
Eloqua, which provides lead-generation and marketing automation software specifically for b-to-b marketers, continues to post strong revenue growth. Under Payne's direction, it achieved its best quarterly performance ever in the fourth quarter last year. He also oversaw several new initiatives to support Eloqua customers, including the inaugural Customer Advisory Board and the first Eloqua Marketing Awards, which recognized the most innovative and effective marketing campaigns developed by Eloqua customers.
RSS feeds in e-mail newsletters are helping Forex Capital Markets (FXCM) push relevant information to currency speculators in foreign exchange markets, boosting clickthroughs and page views. FXCM has worked with Eloqua on its RSS and e-mail initiatives for about a year and a half. The newsletters are part of an integrated marketing plan which also includes online banner ads, a sales team and direct mail campaigns inviting prospects to sign up for a demo where they can trade using play money, says Ross Soodoosingh, e-mail marketing manager of the Dallas-based company
One trend that is pretty fascinating is the use of lead-generation systems like Eloqua. They provide an additional level of detail and information beyond what a standard CRM system provides. It allows you to get down the road more quickly than batch-and-blast marketing. We’re in the process of finishing up an implementation with Eloqua. We’re building out capabilities now. It’s giving us site activity information that we haven’t had before. Because Eloqua and other [similar] systems integrate very well with salesforce.com, there are a lot of choices you need to make, and you need to understand your business to make them work effectively.
It used to be that when you were interested in buying, say, a computer, you'd go to the local electronic store and talk to a salesman. That salesman would be able to tailor his pitch based on your reactions to the merchandise. He'd be able to accurately gauge whether you were intrigued, skeptical or disinterested, and then adjust his pitch accordingly.
I spoke with a company called Eloqua that recently relocated its headquarters from Toronto to McLean, Va. Eloqua helps online vendors read the "digital body language" of potential customers.
A new survey from Eloqua shows that marketing and sales are, in fact, becoming more closely aligned. Although 86 percent of those marketers surveyed felt that the pressure on them to account for results has increased, 68 percent reported that they are now measuring the quantifiable results of marketing to the bottom line. Also, the survey uncovered that 64 percent of marketers feel that their marketing programs are more effective today versus three years ago. Due to this fact, more than 90 percent rated the relationship between their sales and marketing departments as "okay" or "excellent." "The rumors of the death of the sales/marketing relationship are greatly exaggerated," Eloqua CTO and founder Steve Woods told me. "With the move to online, both sales and marketing have a greater ability to dig deep and get richer information; they can see what pages Customer X looked at, what he looked at before and after visiting their site, whether or not they downloaded the video, and so on." The concurrent loss of the "reading the customer's body language" factor is thus obviated, Woods says, "by reading this 'digital' body language. There's an increasingly renewed relationship between sales and marketing, a better spirit of cooperation." Historically, he says, "Marketing considered a business card a lead, while sales felt a real lead was when somebody was ready to buy. Now the relationship is being crystallized a lot more based on common currency and that digital body language. We're now seeing more love between the two groups."
Recently I saw a preview of Eloqua’s spring release and it got me thinking about the role lead scoring plays in determining campaign effectiveness. I hadn’t seen the product in a while and was impressed with the UI improvements the Eloqua team has produced.
A Canadian company, which helps marketers and their sales teams to reach out to prospects, using e-mail, direct mail, and other channels will support three new ones in its product offering: RSS feeds, speech-to-text, and fax. Eloqua's move comes as consumers and businesses alike continue to change where and how they buy products.
'Sure, online social networking is all the rage. But remember good old-fashioned in-person events, where human beings interacted face to face instead of Facebook to Facebook? Crossbeam Systems does. And it's using them — coupled with a multitouch e-mail strategy — to spur interest from prospects and established customers.'
'Although ZoomInfo’s business information search engine helped corporations like Adobe and Bullhorn identify sales opportunities and build sales pipeline, the company was challenged with its own process to help its sales team navigate and prioritize through a heavy volume of leads.'
'Steven Woods — Eloqua Corp. Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Products: One of Eloqua's co-founders, Woods has combined his software-engineering know-how with an incisive sense of what sales and marketing people actually need frrom a solution. The result has been products like the Eloqua Express, Team and Enterprise family of marketing-automation tools, which include capabilities like lead scoring and lead nurturing. This year, the company introduced a module for drawing CRM information into the process of creating direct-mail accounts, one of CRM's somewhat forgotten channels.'
Sales and marketing have always been strapped by the lack of coordination that plagues the opportunity management process. Many people figured CRM would solve that, but it hasn't--which has left an opening for solutions to address this dilemma. Eloqua, recently named a "Cool Vendor" by Gartner in CRM marketing and analytics, is one of those firms looking to broker a ceasefire in the information war between sales and marketing.
Since the rollout of the new integrated system last spring, Sybase has seen an 85 percent reduction in the cost of acquiring customers and "growth at the top of the funnel," Kiley says. Credit goes to the increased visibility that the integrated system delivers. "When you're focused on a thing and you watch it and it works for you, great. If you see that it's not working, you can change it," Kiley says. "Now we can see exactly what's going on. In our old world, we couldn't."
Three years since taking over as director of demand generation at Endeca Technologies Inc., there's one thing Will Pringle no longer hears from his Sales department: "These leads suck!" That's thanks in large part to Marketing and Sales getting together to implement a lead scoring system using Salesforce.com, Eloqua and D&B business information. Rather than guesses or hunches about Marketing's contribution to the bottom line, there's a pretty clear understanding of what's working.
'NetSimplicity, an office administration software company, needed to increase leads in order to keep its three new sales representatives busy and productive. Unfortunately, the marketing budget wasn’t there.“We needed to increase leads by 60% for the additional salespeople without significantly increasing the demand-generation budget,” said John Stockton, senior director of marketing at NetSimplicity.'
'To get the best insurance coverage, you have to be well informed. Insurers need information too — about their customers' demographics, businesses and activities. For Aon Corp., that meant putting automated processes in place to better track prospects and generate qualified leads for sales reps.'
John Stockton, senior director of marketing at NetSimplicity, which markets office administration software products, is a big believer in Web analytics. No small wonder, as he has been able to increase qualified leads by 100% over the past year—with the same budget—using Eloqua's Web analytics product.
An automated lead management suite from Eloqua is helping Group 1 make the most of prospects gathered through efforts like an e-newsletter and Webinars. Prior to using the Eloqua system, Group 1 used postcards to promote the Webinars, typically resulting in a 1% hit. E-mail promotion is faring better, with responses in the 5% to 10% range.
Eloqua is particularly comfortable with the software-as-a-service model, of course, because that's how it sells its own wares, too. It makes business-to-business marketing automation software that helps measure the process of lead generation, and accelerate sales cycles.
Never before have business-to-business (B2B) marketers faced such enormous pressure in their jobs. With competition intensifying and prospective customers becoming increasingly elusive, companies are demanding that marketers deliver measurable results. Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) are now expected to demonstrate the impact of their actions and the return on their investments. The failure of so many marketing executives to rigorously and successfully defend their decisions partly explains why the average tenure of top CMOs is now less than 23 months.
By joining marketing and sales more tightly, the company has been able to cut the cost to convert leads by 85 percent. Sybase has increased its marketing database by 25 percent, which has in part led to a rise in attendance at marketing events of 50 percent.
“I think we may see a major resurgence of traditional channels that were abandoned for e-mail, like direct mail and telesales,” Joe Payne said. “These old channels will work in conjunction with the new marketing channels of e-mail, Web properties, hyper sites and Webinars to touch customers in an integrated fashion in a manner not possible before.”
Mark Organ, CEO of Eloqua writes about the many factors that affect response rates; and the techniques for improving them that are often overlooked.
"Typically, in marketing, people talk about sweepstakes and they say they give you lousy leads," says David Kreitzer, the company's director of inside sales. "We have found the opposite to be true - as long as you pick the right leads." By focusing only on the strongest prospects, Bella Pictures has increased its number of face-to-face meetings some 75 percent.
Eloqua is shaking things up postsolstice with its release of the Summer 2006 Conversion Suite, which will be available to customers on July 31. ... This move marks a turn away from the company's presence as a marketing tool provider toward becoming a marketing automation provider with a strong platform base.
In many ways, social networking is tailor-made for the B2B sale, with its longer sales cycles, considered purchase and multiple stakeholders. The old cliché, "It's not what you know, but who you know" is truer than ever. Time-starved business leaders are subject to a constant bombardment of marketing messages, making the personal referral the gold standard in lead generation.
"I felt they understood what our needs were, and it didn’t make sense for me to look elsewhere because they already had it” - Stacey Fruitman, Tridel’s director of corporate marketing.
It is increasingly obvious that the competitive battle for customers is being won or lost at the top of the sales funnel. So, how does a firm make itself stand out from the rest? It all ties back to effective communication. Here are the five components of an effective sales and marketing communication strategy...
'Your marketing department has mastered entry-level e-mail marketing. Now if only you could increase the scale of your e-mail marketing and integrate it more tightly with your overall marketing campaigns, you could realize even greater revenue growth.'
'If CMOs want to get into the boardroom, they need to adopt the language of finance, sales, and production. Successful marketers quantify their value in terms familiar to the other corporate executives, such as increased revenue, market share, customer loyalty, and return on investment.'
The information revolution has made sales leads much easier to gather and has raised the bar for handling them fast, precisely and with maximum impact on final sales. This revolution is sweeping through all stages of lead management, starting with the simplest step – finding new prospects.
'"The value proposition shifts from execution to analysis, measurement and automation", Mark Organ, CEO, Eloqua Corp.'
'"From the first campaign, sales had great visibility immediately", Andrea Soltysiak, Vice President of Marketing for Procuri.'
'The consistent use of salespeople is one of the major differences between B2B and B2C sales, says Mark Organ, CEO and co-founder of Eloqua Corp.'
'"The customer will lead the way by dictating who can and cannot communicate with them," - Deirdre Baird, Pivotal Veracity'
'"We're enthused about the diverse line-up of companies participating in the Summit's first Solutions Showcase," said Donovan Neale-May, Executive Director of the CMO Council.'
'Planalytics launched its first e-mail newsletter, Flashweather, in 2002. "Flashweather in the retail industry has become a house hold term."'
'An excerpt from Culture Clash: The collision between sales and marketing can be jarring. Here's how to avoid whiplash.'
