“We started as a Get Found App helping you get more visitors and convert leads,” said Brian Halligan, Hubspot CEO and Co-Founder. Now we need to convert those leads to customers which is the basis of our Marketing Suite.”

The first step in the process was the launch this week of an enhanced contact database, segmentation tool, and email marketing engine. This functionality was demonstrated by Chris O’Donnell, Director of Product Management who came to Hubspot as part of the Performable acquisition last year.

Contact Database
- Universal marketing database that is integrated with landing pages, email, and other features.
- Track your contact’s online browsing history, email history, form submissions, and social media information.

Segmentation
- Create static and dynamic lists (which automatically update) based on any contact field, previous list membership and form submission.

Email
- Salesforce integration allows the email to come from Lead Owner and will automatically track the campaign.
- Track overall opens and clicks and then drill down and to see the actions of each individual contact.
- Social network sharing.
- Email results update on your screen in real time.

Automated Workflows (Available Later this Year)
- Automated emails sent in sequence.
- Modify the Contact record, send email, change list status
- Lifecycle Stage is a drop down.

Social In Box (In Beta Test)
- This feature improves upon user experience of more established players like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite.
- Adds LinkedIn and Google alerts with SEO grade to Twitter and Facebook feeds.
- Information listed in relevance verus chronological order.
- Single versus multicolumn approach.
- It also includes Google Alerts. SEO Grade of Google Alert (NY Times or Blog).
- LinkedIn people can sort based on job title (CMO or Marketing). You can watch them.

Much of this functionality already exists in other marketing automation vendors but Hubspot is not concerned they are late to the party. “We see the market as largely untapped,” said Christopher O’Donnell. “We want to find the right features and really put together a user experience that is Apple easy. We are trying to set the design higher and create a modern application that feels as good as anything on the web.”

CTO and Co-Founder, Dharmesh Shaw, concluded the event with a vision of the future in his presentation, How to Make Marketing Automation Better.

Humanize

Make Marketing People Love. “I would like to see marketing become a noble profession,” said Shaw. “Create engagement, not an email list. Create a community of users. We want to create a relationship with all these customers in one platform.”

Simplify

“The industry kept adding knobs & dials. Most execs that have purchased marketing automation will admit behind closed doors that it has become glorified email marketing software. The recent innovation has been how to improve the workflow process. The real answer is that you should not need those things at all. The software should do all the work.”

“We need Intelligent Lead Scoring. Is the fact someone downloaded a white paper a higher value versus an eBook. 10% of lead base is not called because your point structure. The dream is to allow everything to be compared in the system. Every customer we add to the mix adds value to other customers.”

Integrate

Use the web as input. “Website crawlers that will identify email URL and take information from website like what industry, B2B or B2C.

Timing is money. “Optimize email sends based on when users past email activity or tweet times.

Write great headlines. Rule the world. “A/B Testing of subject lines that  will automatically send the better performing headline.”

Personalize the entire experience and increase happiness. “We know when a person visits a website and blog and it looks the same for each visitor. Why not have message pop up on a website when a specific person visits the site. Most blogs are chronological and that is not logical for all companies.”

All Hubspot employees are posted on wall in order of hire date.

“This stuff is only possible if everything is on the same platform. We love WordPress but it would take forever to make this happen,” said Shaw.

On average Hubspot customers get a 32% increase in leads per month and the company has over 7,000 customers with $28M in revenue in 2011. The first 3 years of growth came from small businesses with no marketing staff and 1 – 20 employees and has expanded to companies with 4 – 5 marketers and 20 – 200 people. The next target audience would be 200 – 2000 employees where Hubspot believes 70% of their needs are met on with the current Hubspot feature set.

“The ultimate goal is to grow an anchor company in Boston like amazon.com, salesforce.com, ebay, Google, Zappos,” said Halligan. A number of companies have tried to purchase Hubspot but Halligan has turned them down. “I want this company to stay in here for 100 years.”

Mantra that drives the Hubspot brand.

1. Varied Content and Distribution Channels.

Content may be king, but social media has given power back to the customer – and the customer is sick of the same old content. The incomprehensible wealth of content on the internet and the ever-shortening attention span of the average consumer require that B2B marketers explore content marketing beyond strictly emailing out white papers. Creative content (think infographics, promotional videos and animated ads) is no longer limited to B2C marketing. In 2012, B2B marketers are faced not only with the challenge of producing more diverse content, but with finding more creative ways to distribute this content as well.

What does this mean for marketing automation?

It will become increasingly important in 2012 that marketing automation systems integrate with a wide variety of social media channels. As new social media channels continue to crop up (look at the growth of Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest in late 2011 alone), brands need to interact with prospects and clients through a multitude of channels at once. Given that many businesses now maintain five or more separate social media channels, a marketing automation system that enables the marketer to both post to all outlets simultaneously and track activity on each outlet separately becomes invaluable. Marketing automation has evolved far past a tool geared strictly towards email marketing and will continue to evolve in 2012 to include integrations for all modes of communication.

2. Personalization.

The internet has become a personalized space in ways formerly unfathomable. As previously discussed, the trend of social media marketing that has exploded over the past several years has allowed consumers to interact with brands on a more intimate level than ever before. Take that one step further in 2012 with the advent of personalized searches on search engines (if you’re unfamiliar with this, check out Search, plus Your World) and dynamic content on websites. Consumers will come to expect access to information tailored perfectly to their needs, and fast.

What does this mean for marketing automation?

Marketers must produce marketing automation campaigns that are even more personalized, pertinent and timely. The good news is, this is a trend that is already progressing naturally. As marketers become better acquainted with their marketing automation systems, they are moving beyond basic use and digging into the powerful capabilities of advanced business rules. Using action-based triggers and creating a variety of different tracks, content like drip nurturing programs can be adjusted based on how an individual prospect prefers to interact, which channels they favor, the type of content they respond to and more. Tailoring marketing campaigns to a prospect’s preferences will drive more engagement and help speed up the sales cycle. When done correctly, recipients aren’t even aware of this behind-the-scenes personalization; they simply feel that the company has a deep understanding of their needs.This in-depth insight into prospects’ behaviors and preferences means that 2012 will see deeper list segmentation, more highly targeted email campaigns and an overall more personalized experience for prospects and clients.

3. More Sophisticated Metrics.

As reporting systems continue to advance, traditional metrics have become outdated.  Rather than measuring page views and click rates, marketers are starting to focus on numbers that relate directly to revenue – such as the number of MQLs generated, the percentage of MQLs that converted to opportunities and, ultimately, the dollar value of these opportunities. As 2012 progresses, marketers will be able able to see the value of their campaigns like never before, and gain insight to how marketing impacts revenue across the board.

What does this mean for marketing automation?

Over the course of 2012, many marketing automation systems will begin to offer more advanced reports than ever. Reports on funnel velocity inform marketers of how quickly leads are closing the deal and creating revenue, reports on funnel volume allow marketers to see how doubling leads would affect revenue overall and waterfall analysis reports provide insight into how leads are moving through various stages in the pipeline. Furthermore, users will begin to measure marketing-influenced leads – leads that may not have entered the sales cycle through a marketing campaign, but were influenced by marketing efforts at touchpoints along the way. As these high-level reports provide a better understanding of the successes and failures of marketing campaigns, marketing becomes less of a guessing game and more of a measurable science.

About the Author

Adam Blitzer is Co-founder and COO at Pardot.  He is responsible for product management, marketing, and operations. He is a frequent speaker at industry events such as Dreamforce, SugarCon, and American Marketing Association panels. In 2011 Adam was named to BtoB Magazine’s annual Who’s Who list.  Adam was previously a senior email marketing consultant for InterContinental Hotels Group, a consultant at Moxie Interactive, and spent four years in Japan at an advertising agency.  A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Adam holds a bachelor’s degree from Duke University and studied abroad at Waseda University.

Jason Kort on the definition of marketing automation and CRM – “CRM is an acronym for Customer Relationship Management which is really another way to say customer database management.  The goal of a CRM solution is to give a 360 degree view of the customer for everyone in a company.    This allows management, salespeople, customer service and others to access basic customer information, learn what products they have purchased, manage customer issues, and so on.  Some of the larger players include Salesforce.com, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP.

A marketing automation platform can be used by itself or integrate with a CRM to provide an entire marketing suite that helps manage a database of leads, prospects or customers.  Typical features offered by most marketing automation solutions are lead scoring, email marketing, landing page builders, visitor analytics, and reporting.

Because most CRMs don’t offer this kind of marketing functionality you typically see companies integrate their CRM with a marketing automation platform to get the combined benefits.”

David Raab on the role of marketing automation - ”A CRM system is typically used by individual sales people or customer service agents who are having one on one interactions with with individual customers.  They are focused on primarily existing customers and prospects.  A marketing automation system usually is used by the marketing department, versus sales and customer service.  In a business to business world it is focused on the first stage of the life cycle of how do I generate new leads and how do I nurture them before they are ready to be handed to the Sales team.”

Tony Tissot on integration of marketing automation and CRM –  ”We believe that marketing automation and CRM should be integrated together so that the sales team can see what is happening in real time.  We use marketing automation and CRM together quite successfully.  Sales folks can go into their CRM and evoke an action out of the marketing automation system to do something.”

Click here to view the webinar.

At Dreamforce 2011 we had a chance to catch up with Jeff Pedowitz, President and CEO of The Pedowitz Group.  Jeff has 20 years of experience leading successful B2C and B2B organizations and he frequently writes and speaks on a variety of topics related to demand generation, Web 2.0, and marketing.  Prior to founding The Pedowitz Group, Jeff served as vice president of professional services for Eloqua.

During our interview Jeff gave us his take on what makes The Pedowitz Group different and how a marketing automation organization must be staffed to achieve great results…

The Pedowitz Group is a Revenue Marketing Agency that helps companies connect marketing to revenue.  We do that buy successfully integrating people, process and technology.  There are five things that make us different:

1. Technology Agnostic.  We have expertise on a number of platforms, including Marketo, Oracle, Eloqua, Aprimo, Silverpop and Genius.
2. Experience.  We have worked with over 800 clients in the past 4 years, more than 2x our nearest competitor.
3. Pay for Performance and Service Guarantee.  We are the only Agency that offers a pay for performance program.  We stand by our work and guarantee results or you don’t pay.
4. Approach.  We manage all of our clients on the Revenue Marketing™ Journey, a path from Traditional Marketing to Revenue Marketing.  Our SAM™ methodology is unique in that all projects and engagements are managed to produce a monetary result.  We are a results-driven organization that works with our clients to monetize their revenue marketing programs.
5. Revenue Marketing Outsourcing.  We are the only Agency that outsources Revenue Marketing programs to produce a repeatable, predictable and sustainable revenue result.

The great thing about marketing automation is that the technology can be a catalyst for change in any company when you automate something that has been done manually.  However, false expectations can be created when companies think the platform alone will cause revenue to go through the roof.

In order for marketing automation to make a revenue impact, the marketing organization must transform into a Revenue Marketing department, responsible for connecting revenue back to marketing.  Here are the five positions with roles and responsibilities that must be staffed to become a high performance Revenue Marketing Department.

1)  VP of Revenue Marketing – “We need to drive more than brand and awareness.  Marketing must drive qualified leads and create synergy with Sales, which requires Executive sponsorship.”  This position will manage a lead funnel and will be able to envision effective campaigns with all of the necessary elements.  They must have a deep understanding of their market and their buyers.  The ability to read prospects online behavior and effectively create campaigns for pipeline and revenue impact are key competencies.

2)  Business Analyst – “Someone who consistently analyzes metrics and asks strategic questions about sales data and social media.”

3)  Content Manager – “This person manages all the content and develops processes to fully leverage white papers, webinars, campaigns, etc.

4)  Metrics Expert- “Their sole focus should be financial data.  How much have we spent on campaigns?  What is the return, lifetime value of the customer?  This data is pulled from the marketing automation system on weekly basis and forwarded to the VP of Revenue Marketing.”

5) Power User – “This person is an expert on using the marketing automation platform.”

For many companies this investment in human capital is a big commitment, which is often why clients hire The Pedowitz Group.  They get all five of these roles when we engage in a project.

A Revenue Marketing department can be built internally, but the key questions to ask are Is this part of your core competency? Do you feel like you can handle this?  Do you want to be good at this?  Can you be good at this? And finally, do you have the budget for this?

In a previous post we reported at Dreamforce 2011 that sources from multiple marketing automation companies indicated Salesforce.com had selected a marketing automation company to do their internal marketing automation.  According these sources it is a 2 year deal and numerous companies and organizations have signed NDAs to keep quiet.

“We have not selected a company to do internal marketing automation,” said Marc Benioff in press conference earlier this week.  “I would also note that any one technology we choose for our business does not make a central statement about future acquisitions.”

What is more interesting is who was not selected for the project.  Hubspot had received $100 million investment from Salesforce earlier this year and there are other partner that have provided more robust integration with Salesforce.

What is more interesting is who has not been asked to the dance.  The vendor is NOT expected or have investment by Salesforce (Hubspot).  The vendor needs to have high capacity for email volumes.

“No one vendor is material to our business,” said Benioff. “We have multiple vendors in multiple categories and will not select one vendor for our business needs.”

Even with the selection of Eloqua there is plenty of business and growth for other marketing automation companies.  One size does not fit all and each player can win by creating marketing ROI for their customers.

This may explain why Marc Benioff flatly denied any selection during today’s Dreamforce Q/A session. “We have not selected a company to do internal marketing automation,” said Benioff. “We are evaluating the marketing cloud and right now we think the biggest category is social monitoring.” Salesforce purchased social monitoring company, Radian 6, earlier this year and the product was featured and demoed during the opening keynote address.

“I would also note that any one technology we choose for our business does not make a central statement of future acquisitions.”

“No one vendor is material to our business,” said Benioff. “We have multiple vendors in multiple categories and will not select one vendor for our business needs.”

Here is what we know…
- The vendor has not received an investment by Salesforce.
- The vendor does not have close ties to Salesforce.
- The vendor has high capacity for large email volumes.

My guess is the company name will come out sooner or later at the show. In the meantime we will keep our ears open.

Given that we are providing live coverage of Saleforce.com’s Dreamforce convention this week, we thought it only appropriate to share the following article from David Raab’s blog, Customer Experience Matrix.

I’ve long believed that B2B marketing automation is just a passing phase: that, ultimately, B2B marketing automation systems will be absorbed into CRM systems instead of operating independently. It’s a view I discuss sparingly in public, since so many of my friends in the marketing automation industry have a vested interest to the contrary. But there are also a few vendors who have bet in favor of merged systems, so it wouldn’t be fair to ignore their view entirely. 

10 Strategies for Content Marketing, Events, and Marketing Automation Success - Wed, Aug 31 3:30 PM

Advanced Campaign Management: Lead Nurturing and Campaign ROI – Tue, Aug 30 3:30 PM

Death by Marketing Automation – Wed, Aug 31 2:00 PM

Email: Why Marketing Automation Can Not Survive Without It – Thu, Sep 1 3:30 PM

How a Marketing Automation Company Uses Marketing Automation – Tue, Aug 30 3:30 PM

Drive More Revenue – Be Everywhere Your Customers Are, All the Time! - Wed, Aug 31 12:30 PM

Why Integrated Marketing Automation with Salesforce Is a Must – Wed, Aug 31 2:00 PM

Driving Extraordinary Growth through Sales and Marketing Performance – Super Session with CEO Joe Payne on Wed. August 31st 12:30 – 1:30 pm

Accelerating the Revenue Engine: Driving Revenue With a Single View of the Buyer – Breakout session with CTO Steve Woods and Taleo CMO Heidi Melin on Thursday, Sept. 1st, 3:30 – 4:30 pm

If your session/event is not listed, please email info@marketingautomationtimes.com and we will get the list updated.