So, is there a disaster waiting to happen as marketing automation companies start mixing social media into their brew of features that automate everything from emails to voice messages, faxes and text messages?

In some situations this could get really dangerous and backfire for marketing automation companies and their customers.  But, the reality is that this unique blend of features could open up amazing opportunities for those who use it correctly.  Let’s discuss a few possibilities.

Let’s assume you send out an email broadcast to your list and you included share buttons for your audience to share your email with their social networks.  What if you could trigger a “thank you” email to people who actually share it?  What if you could track how many people shared your content, how many times it was viewed from social visitors, what content is most popular, and how many new opt-ins you got from social referrals?  Some marketing automation solutions are making this possible.

How about another scenario?  What if your marketing automation software were able to bring in Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ data into your prospect and customer records so you could see a more complete customer profile?  What if you could increase or decrease lead score based on pre-defined social activity?  What if you could automatically reach out to followers with a personal message if their discussions around your product, service, or industry start to increase?  Again, thanks to innovation in the marketing automation category these possibilities are becoming realities.

Let’s talk about what’s coming. I can imagine a day soon when your marketing automation system could scan your Facebook fans, your Twitter lists, and your Google Plus circles and “tag” those people to create specific segments.  Imagine being able to send very targeted emails (or Tweets, Facebook messages, etc.) only to people who are in a specific circle, list, or are fans of your Facebook page.  The possibilities get exciting.

The key to making all this work in a way that doesn’t turn people off is to automate communications based on people’s recent behavior.  If y

ou know someone has just attended your webinar on “home cooking basics”, it would make sense to send them a home cooking recipe book.  If you communicate with people based on their recent behaviors, you’re likely to be sending them things their interested in, things they want to receive.  Isn’t that the way we do it in live one-on-one interactions?

When used correctly, marketing automation can facilitate personal interactions in a much more scalable way than any other tool. Particularly for small businesses who are strapped for time and have access to a very limited supply of resources, marketing automation can relieve them of the burden of following up individually with every prospect, and still allow them to maintain the small business “touch” that is so important to who they are.

What are your thoughts on the melting pot of automation, marketing and social media?  What are your predictions?  Automation can be a sore subject for many social media users.  Do you see marketing automation as a benefit or a nuisance for social users?  Feel free to share in the comments below.

Tyler Garns is Director of Marketing for Infusionsoft and has over 10 years of online marketing experience. He speaks to audiences across

the country about email marketing, lead nurturing, sales and marketing automation.  A recognized expert in the field, he blogs for MarketingProfs, Small Business Trends, CRM Magazine and more. At Infusionsoft, he oversees the inbound marketing and content marketing strategy and team. Follow Tyler on Twitter @TylerGarns.

Our guest for this episode of the Marketing Automation Podcast is Justin Gray, CEO & Chief Marketing Evangelist for LeadMD.  Justin founded LeadMD in 2009 and has spent the last 12 years helping companies overhaul and optimize their marketing and sales departments. Most recently Gray served as the CEO for MaaS Impact, a Marketing Automation start-up. Prior to that he was Vice President of Sales & Marketing at BillingTree and founded RootOne Marketing while in college at the age of 17.

This interview covers the following topics.

• Background on LeadMD how they help companies with marketing automation.
• When an organization should engage a marketing automation consultant.
• How to use marketing automation software to improve the lead scoring process.
• The biggest mistake most companies make in their marketing automation efforts.

Demand Generation – The strategy by which you engage your buyers at every stage sales process.

Lead Management – The process by which you support your demand generation strategy.

Marketing Automation – The technology that will enable both of the above.

Thanks to Software Advice for providing this content.

In MarketingSherpa’s 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Survey, 92% of marketing professionals indicated that webinars are one of the most effective means of generating high quality leads. While effective, webinar programs require a commitment of money and time. To justify the investment, you need reliable metrics to measure the success of your webinar program:, such as:

• The number of prospects registered for your webinar
• The attendance rate for your webinar
• The number of qualified leads identified for follow-up
• Revenue and ROI associated with your webinar program

Managing your webinar program through your marketing automation platform has the potential to improve these metrics and lower costs, but your marketing automation solution must be integrated into your webinar service.

By integrating webinar software with sales and marketing automation platforms, the ability to improve efficiency and drive revenue from webinars is significantly improved.

Lack of Integration, Problems Arise

Webinars capture a great deal of qualification information from the attendees. You have the registration page, polling, chat and post event surveys – all of these vehicles allow the marketer to progressively profile attendees. Further, due to the perceived value of webinar content, respondents willingly offer up more information about themselves than most media vehicles. Unfortunately, without integration, this data is isolated from the system used to nurture, score and deliver the lead – your marketing automation software. This disconnect presents a number of challenges for marketers running webinar programs, including:

1.     Confusing participant experience

Often participants receive a branded invite from marketing automation tool and then a confirmation from the webinar service that does not follow company branding guidelines and looks different than the invite. Plus, if a generic URL was sent to the registrant, they will have to register again at the time of the event. This confuses participants and decreases your registrant-to-attendee conversion rate.

2.     Less accurate attendance data

Data integrity is also compromised with double registration. For example, an attendee may have provided their business email on the initial registration form, but entered a personal email address (or even bogus data) when joining the webinar.

3.     Manual export and import of webinar data

Without an integrated solution, webinar attendance is trapped in the webinar platform and marketers must manually move it into their marketing automation system. At a minimum, this process involves downloading CSV files from one platform, uploading them into the other and doing the necessary field mappings.

4.     Delayed webinar follow-up activities

According to a 2011 study done by the Harvard Business Review, firms that contacted potential customers within an hour of receiving an inquiry were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead. Without an integrated solution, precious time is lost moving your data over to your marketing automation system.

The Value of an Integrated Solution

To make the most of webinar programs, marketers need a webinar platform that seamlessly integrates with their marketing automation system. The ideal integration allows marketers to use the right tool for each part of the process and solves the challenges outlined above.

 Consistent Branding and Seamless Experience

Marketers no longer have to choose between consistent branding and accurate attendance data. With an integrated solution, they can have the best of both worlds: the branding and tracking capabilities of their marketing automation system plus their webinar platform’s ability to provide each registrant with a unique “join meeting” link to more accurately capture attendance data. In addition to giving marketers the best of both worlds, this approach ensures that prospects have a seamless and familiar experience and that your brand standards are maintained.

Automatic Import of Data

When their webinar platform can “talk” to their marketing automation system, marketers don’t have to waste time, manually moving data from one platform to the other — webinar data is automatically captured in the marketing automation system. This means lead scoring happens immediately, pre-event communications is simplified and post event follow-up is immediate.

Faster More Targeted Follow-up

With an integrated solution, webinar data is immediately available in the marketing automation platform, allowing for timely follow-up actions to leverage an opportunity that resulted from the webinar. Integration also allows for more targeted follow-up — decision rules can be extended so that, for example, prospects receive a different follow-up email not only based on whether or not they attended the webinar, but also on how long they attended the webinar or other engagement metrics.

Summary

Webinars provide a compelling option for moving prospects through the funnel faster, but — as with any other marketing program — measuring effectiveness and maximizing ROI are critical. By choosing a webinar platform and a marketing automation system that can “talk” to each other, marketers can make the most of the time and money they invest in webinar programs. An integrated approach allows you to use the right tool for each part of the process, resulting in: a seamless and familiar experience for prospects; freedom from the tedious task of manually moving data between two systems; and immediate access to accurate webinar data to speed lead scoring and follow-up activities. These benefits have a positive impact on key metrics like number of registrants, attendance rate, and number of qualified leads – ultimately driving more efficient webinar programs and better ROI

About the author

Mike McKinnon has 15 years of experience in B2B marketing. Mike carries a wide breadth of experience into any project he tackles with experience in PR, digital marketing, market research and event promotion and sponsorship. After receiving his MBA from University of Denver in 2000, Mike worked as Director of Business Development at a start-up software company in Denver and built a worldwide reseller network with annual revenues in excess of $10 million. In 2005, Mike moved to ReadyTalk where he began as Social Media Manager and launched ReadyTalk’s first foray into social media with blogging, link building campaigns, SEO and PPC. In 2007, he was promoted to Senior Demand Generation Manager his current position. He is responsible for the performance of all demand generation programs, directed ReadyTalk’s Eloqua implementation and oversees marketing operations and pipeline metrics.

Traditionally, Marketo and rivals such as Eloqua, Silverpop, Hubspot, Genius, Pardot and others have focused on what’s known as ‘lead nurturing’, which is the art of following up on an initial contact from a prospect so that they are reached by a salesperson at the time when they’re ready to buy. In B2B sales cycles, many months can pass between that initial contact and the final buying decision. A service such as Marketo monitors the contact’s interactions with the website and follow-up emails, with the aim of identifying the best moment during the sales cycle for a sales person to engage with the prospect. If all works well, the software will have a significant impact on the productivity of the sales team by maximising the time they spend interacting with ‘hot’ prospects.

Companies in this sector have previously expanded their scope by focussing on bringing more high-quality leads into the funnel, for example by optimising keyword advertising or by developing other forms of what is known as ‘inbound marketing’ — activities designed to help prospects find a company online when they are already thinking about or looking for what it sells. Clearly, social media is a part of this (if, for example, you maintain an informative blog and an engaging Facebook page or Twitter stream about the widgets you sell, you will pop up in search results or recommendations about those widgets more frequently than if you don’t). But Fernandez’ comments imply that Marketo is also thinking about engaging in and acting on conversations that might take place with customers after the initial sale.

Such a move makes sense given the age-old mantra that your best prospects are often found among, or through referrals by, your current and past customers. It’s also in line with the emerging trend, supported by online technologies, towards ongoing, subscription-based relationships rather than the traditional pattern of disconnected, one-off sales events — see my take on subscription billing vendor Zuora in my blog last week, Enterprise software pivots to new stacks. Another factor in Marketo’s thinking may be a strategy to help it expand out of its core B2B customer base to embrace more consumer-focused brand owners, where maintaining the brand relationship forms a big part of the marketing spend. Certainly, this is where some of the most successful of the emerging new breed of social influence vendors have been building their businesses.

“The relationship between buyers and sellers is changing,” said Fernandez. But he added that fields such as social campaigning and influence marketing, in which a company works with independent social media advocates to get its message out, were “still very much a work in progress.” This inevitably creates an environment where there are a lot of start-ups trying out creative new ideas, but few are going to be successful enough to reach sufficient scale to stay independent. This is the pool in which Marketo will be fishing, he said: “There’s some wonderful little companies that are not broad enough to be standalone companies but have built something with social media.”

Without giving any inkling of who might be on Marketo’s shopping list, Fernandez did say that, “In the brand space, horizontal integration of social influence marketing is ripe for full integration into a platform like ours.” He cited Buddy Media, which in August secured $54 million in venture funding for its social media publishing and tracking platform, as an example of a company in the field that had been able to reach “escape velocity”. Other companies with similar offerings include HootSuite, Involver, Vitrue, Context Optional, — acquired for $50 million in May by ad performance management provider Efficient Frontier — and CRM Idol finalist Crowd Factory.

Psst… want to know a secret?  Marketing is simple.  Any marketer should be forced to explain their company’s value proposition in less than five words, and have it be compelling. Because that’s all marketing is: being concise and compelling, but recognizing that not everyone reacts to the same message.  The tough part is determining who will react to which message. When companies see low “returns” out of the gate (as most do in early stages of marketing or with new product lines) they tend to get a little paranoid. Instead of focusing in on that message and whom it’s being delivered to they instead take out the super soaker. They start buying lists, advertising anywhere they can get a deal, sponsoring everything, and otherwise become a checkbook for the marketing vendors.

How can marketers avoid this pothole of costly despair? How can they make sure the buying decisions are based on something meaningful? If you are a marketer asking yourself these questions, take a step back and start with this one: If tomorrow every lead in your database was standing outside your door and they were all waiting for you to tell them about how great your solution or product or elixir is – would you be able to do it in a way that meant something to each and every one of them?  That’s the most important question. And the answer makes your marketing far simpler and easier to manage.

The Content Game — How to Play

There seems to be some big debate around content. Companies aren’t always quite on terms as to what exactly qualifies as marketing content and at what stage of the funnel each lead should receive a specific piece of content. I think this debate actually jumps the gun a bit.

Before discussing what goes into an email newsletter or an ad campaign, turn your attention back to home base for a minute. I’m talking about your website. That old thing? Yes. The content on your company website will pay off 100X before anything else.

If your website doesn’t immediately tell each and every target buyer what you do and why they need you – stop fussing with all other content.  Go back. Do not collect 200 leads. This step is called buyer persona establishment. It’s critical before you can start any marketing campaigns and especially before you implement a marketing automation program.

The fact is too many websites are designed by people who SELL something – not by people who BUY something.  Buyer persona establishment allows you to get into the minds of your buyer and target them specifically with words, actions and channels that speak directly to them.

Focus in with Focus Groups

It helps tremendously to have a sounding board during the buyer persona establishment process.  A group of customers is great.  Assemble the best customers you have and start to pick apart their differences.  If you’re like me you will find that customer attitudes, psychology and desire highly determines the type of buyer they are, and ultimately the type of customer they become.

We all have clients we enjoy dealing with, and we have some we don’t.  So if we can target the ones that we want we can create better customers and reduce headaches on the backend.  Likewise, during this process you will discover the messaging you are using that is hurting your business or that no one understands or simply isn’t compelling.  That’s expected too.  You many be tempted to try to hold onto that content. Stop (hand slap), get rid of it.  All the time spent in the world doesn’t justify content that doesn’t speak to a buyer.

And what about those startups that don’t have customers?  The persona process can become an experiment in how understood your business is.  Take professionals that you know and explain the business to them. Do they get it?  What don’t they get?  And don’t worry about not knowing your exact personas for new businesses right off the bat.

Successful buyer profiling never stops. And it keeps you grounded. The next time you are tempted by a six-month ad buy pitch that happens to come in when leads are slow, you’ll refer to your personas to know for certain if it’s worth the spend. You no longer have to make decisions out of fear, but rather out of data.

Bla, Bla, Bla

Now that you know who these people are, formulate a message. In fact formulate a ton of messages.  This is where a lot of marketers start throwing slime on a wall because they are convinced the wall has to be decorated. Buyers can tell if they’re looking at slime or a piece of art and most would rather look at a blank wall than one with slime on it. In fact, if they see too much of it they’ll stop even looking at your business. So choose your content wisely.

Every piece of content should contain specific elements that speak to the buyer intended to receive it.  For instance, do you have a buyer who is apprehensive about online purchases? Make sure your pricing page has links to testimonials or case studies that speak to how secure your site is. Nurture those leads with content about PCI compliance and how to have a safe online shopping experience.

Again, this all starts with the website.  It’s the first thing your buyer sees, and the place where you will continue to funnel them back to.  Often times it’s the place they will spend the most time after they become a client or loyal customer. It’s where you’ll collect most of your data on customers and the health of your campaigns.

Your website content stems from the persona exercise and all of your outbound content stems from the website. That’s the formula for marketing simplicity and your marketing automation system will support this formula. And all of this ends (and your success starts) with the simplicity of having something to say.

Ask your team, or yourself if you’re a one man marketing show, if you have relevant messaging that’s distinguishable and actionable for every target.  If the answer is no, its time to postpone that Marketing Automation software purchase, hold off on that campaign that just can’t wait, and cancel that third-party demand gen initiative.  Without something to say, it’s simply a waste of money.

Justin Gray is the CEO and chief marketing evangelist at LeadMD. The company helps businesses generate and manage leads better through marketing automation processes and technologies. He can be reached at jgray@leadmd.com.

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.

Infusionsoft announced it acquired CustomerHub, a web-based application that provides a membership site and customer portal platform to small businesses who market and sell content online. The financials of the deal were not disclosed and this is Infusionsoft’s first acquisition.

Designed specifically to work with Infusionsoft, CustomerHub is one of the top apps in the Infusionsoft marketplace.

CustomerHub integrates with Infusionsoft’s sales and marketing software to allow small businesses to easily deliver protected content to paying customers and automate the subscription and collections process. CustomerHub also allows small businesses to share free protected content by integrating with marketing campaigns. The service starts at $59 a month.

“Membership sites are growing in popularity as marketers shift their content delivery channels from physical media, like DVDs and binders, to online membership sites which are easier to manage and more profitable to operate,” says Infusionsoft CEO and Co-founder Clate Mask. “Membership site tools are the way of the future as small businesses look to generate high-quality leads, as well as monetize content and establish recurring revenue streams.”

Both companies are based in Arizona and CustomerHub’s five employees, including Founders Kyle and Nathan Leavitt, will be moving to the Infusionsoft headquarters.  More than 7,500 small businesses use Infusionsoft’s sales and marketing software that combines CRM, email marketing and e-commerce with automation to nurture and convert leads, grow sales and save time.

To read more about the deal you can read posts on the Infusionsoft and CustomerHub blogs.

Here is a Seven Role framework to address this critical skill set.

Role #1:  VP of Revenue Marketing

This role is the strategic leader and is laser focused on revenue results directly attributable to marketing efforts. The VP of Revenue Marketing sounds like a VP of Sales as they discuss and measure funnel, conversions, opportunities and bookings.

I recently had a great WRMR interview with such a marketer – Evan Whitenight of ReachForce

Role #2:  Business Analyst

This role is critical to revenue marketing success as you transition from a creative organization to now encompass a focus on revenue metrics. Revenue Marketing is a new competency and it is the job of the Business Analyst to analyze results, set up testing protocols and work to optimize systems and programs in order to achieve the highest and fastest revenue result.

In this recent WRMR interview with Liz McClellan of Sage Software, Liz speaks to the importance of the Business Analyst role (click here for the snippet).  In the same interview, Alex Pelletier of Acqusio also discusses the need for the Business Analyst role (click here for the snippet).

Role #3:  Power User or Marketing Technologist

Technology is the driver for Revenue Marketing beginning with CRM tightly integrated with marketing automation.  This technical skill set is an absolute requirement for the team and works closely with the business analyst.  Make sure you invest in training, more than once.

Role #4:  Campaign & Nurture Specialist

The Campaign Manager is the individual who takes the direction from the VP of Revenue Marketing, the analytics from the Business Analyst, best practices from the content and creative team, and knowledge from the Power User to ultimately design the most effective campaigns possible.  This individual is obsessed with creating an intimate digital dialog at all phases of the buying cycle and creating that perfect SQL for sales.

Role #5:  Content for Revenue Marketing

This role is responsible for the content associated with campaigns – the currency for the digital discussion that can then be tracked and scored.  Content in this context is at the right time, the right message, to the right person and only just enough.

Listen to Alex Pelletier’s comments on content and the value to the Revenue Marketing practice.

Role #6:  Creative for Revenue Marketing

Creative cannot be for the sake of creative.  It’s not about how pretty something is, it is about how effective it is.  The creative person needs to understand how the creative will be used and what “action” the campaign is trying to evoke.

Role #7:  TeleQualifying the MQL

A huge trend on Revenue Marketing teams is once the MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) is created, turning this lead over to a live person to make a phone call to further qualify for BANT – Budget, Authority, Need and Timing.

As you review these seven roles, you can begin to see how the marketing team and skill dynamic needs to change if you are to embrace a Revenue Marketing competency and be accountable for revenue results in the B2B organization.  To find out more about these roles, register for our in-depth white paper on Skills for the B2B Revenue Marketing Team.

What has been your experience with these skill sets?

About the author: Debbie Qaqish is Principal Partner and Chief Revenue Marketing Officer for The Pedowitz Group, a thriving demand generation agency http://www.pedowitzgroup.com/.   A nationally recognized thought leader and innovator in revenue generation, Qaqish has over 30 years of experience helping organizations connect marketing to revenue.  She is a pioneer in marketing automation – first as a beneficiary of the technology and now as an advocate and expert.  Her first book, “The Rise of the Revenue Marketer®,” will be published in early 2012.   Contact Debbie at Debbie@pedowitzgroup.com OR http://www.linkedin.com/in/dqaqish