Marketing Automation Replaces Salespeople?
“There will always, one can assume, be the need for some selling. But the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself.” – Peter F. Drucker
Half a century later in 2015, how prophetic have Peter Drucker’s predictions been? Amazon is already old hat in the B2C marketing automation narrative, and Alibaba is doing the same for B2B wholesale. These giant companies have completely replaced their marketing and sales departments with efficient, market-automated websites that do all the heavy lifting for them. And the result has been skyrocketing revenue.
Marketing automation replaces sales? Surprisingly, the answer isn’t a simple yes or no.
Ask CXOs: Do CEOs Want Marketing Automation?
If you read Part 1 and Part 2 of my Just the Stats: Marketing Automation in 2015 series, you’d know that CEOs and business owners are excited about marketing automation. So excited, in fact, that they’re 25% more likely to be involved in a marketing automation software purchase than other business software purchases (Capterra, 2013).
Do CEOs want marketing automation? Yes. The question is why.
Ask Sales: Why Does Marketing Automation Help?
In Part 1 and Part 2 of my Just the Stats: Marketing Automation in 2015 series, I went over marketing automation at length and explained how and why it works with detailed stats. But it might be a lot to take in all at once, which is why I’m writing this two-part Ask series.
Earlier this week, I explained why CEOs are excited about marketing automation. Today, I’m going to do the same for Sales. While the answer might seem obvious (i.e., marketing automation leads to better sales), the truth is a lot more specific, and measurable, than just that.
Just the stats: Marketing Automation in 2015 (Part 1)
Marketing. Automation.
Never have two words inspired so much excitement and so much distress at the same time in the world of marketing.
The old guard worries about what might become of human marketers, while millennials can’t wait until marketing automation software is uniformly adopted across all industries, permanently changing the landscape of marketing for good.
Opinions aside, there are certain hard facts about marketing automation that everyone should know. Statistics that tell the story of where it’s been, where it is, and where it’s going.
I have done due diligence and compiled the most relevant, up-to-date stats (with sources) that we think best represent the state of marketing automation in 2015.
So, without further ado, we give you Part 1 of this story: 17 stats that summarize the current state of the market and its growth.
Alp Mimaroglu: Eloqua Certified Modern Marketing Luminary
Alp Mimaroglu was one of the first marketers to be named Eloqua Certified Modern Marketing Luminary on July 8th, 2014.
“Eloqua Certified Modern Marketing Luminary” is the highest degree of Eloqua certification that one can obtain. A prerequisite of becoming a Eloqua Certified Modern Marketing Luminary is having completed all Eloqua University classes. Which is roughly 35+ classes, 2 tests, hands on test and blog post. Eloqua Luminary certification launched in April of 2014.
Only 29 people achieved Eloqua Luminary status in 2014, meanwhile the lower level certificate had over a 1000 people completing the “Eloqua Master.” Eloqua Luminary takes alot bigger effort and skill to complete than any other Eloqua certification.
To learn more about how you can become a Eloqua Luminary please see Topliners. Having membership to Eloqua University is required to complete any of the Eloqua certifications. Anyone that is serious about using Eloqua at the hands on level should enroll in Eloqua University.
7 Tips to a Powerful Email Marketing Strategy
Email marketing is one of the most powerful forms of marketing. If you’re not using it, you’re leaving a pile of cash on the table.
Don’t believe me? Marketing Sherpa’s benchmark survey found that over 60% of organizations feel that email produces ROI come budget time. Specifically, every dollar spent on email marketing generates an ROI of $40. Which means email has higher conversion rates compared to traffic from search and social media combined.
The Science of Writing an Email That Converts
The science of writing an email that converts is nothing more than writing an email that gets opened. If your email doesn’t get opened it never has a chance of converting.
Email marketing is quite powerful. Obama’s digital election campaign raised $690m in donations from email marketing campaigns alone.
Of all the forms of contacting someone email is the most personal. Research by ExactTarget suggests that 91% of consumers check their email daily and 74% of consumers prefer to receive commercial communications via email.
Also, 66% of consumers have made a purchase online as a result of an email marketing message.
Eloqua vs Marketo: Which is Better?
Eloqua is a Ferrari, Marketo a Lamborghini
What do you think about Eloqua vs Marketo?
This is a popular question that people have been asking me for years so I am writing a blog post with a more full answer since usually I am only able to explain for 60 seconds in person.
The answer is… both are “good” …it depends! And alot of people are biased including myself. (I lean to the system that I am best at). Though I am less biased than most people since I have used Eloqua, Marketo and Pardot.
Marketing Automation Automates Processes. Before making technology choices, think about how well you have defined your demand generation processes. None of these softwares happen automatically. You need to build decent processes and bring in great people to build, optimize and support them.
Marketing Automation Lead Scoring Tutorial
Lead Scoring
• Identifies where the lead are in buying process
• Helps with better resources alignment in your company
• Better aligned sales and marketing teams
• Allows better follow up of priority leads
Lead scoring is a shared sales and marketing methodology that helps sales people prioritize there focus on the lead database with more sales-ready leads. This makes better alignment so there is better followup and allows you to identify where each prospect is in the buying process. Usually the handoff happens after “Marketing Qualified Lead” (MQL). A MQL is at the lead score you define it to be at.
Duplicates Leads in Marketo and How to Dedupe
Problems Caused by Dupe Leads
Duplicate leads can build up over time in your instance of Marketo or Salesforce. And they result in a number of unwanted issues, like:
1. Inaccurate lead scoring
Inaccurate lead scoring causes you to miscalculate your Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL). And since your sales team won’t receive leads that are MQL, they may not hit the score threshold assigned to Salesforce.
Even worse, hot quality leads will be left behind in Marketo, which will make you miss revenue on people that you “could have” closed.
For example, this duped lead will never be seen by the sales team.
Lead 1A: 20 points
Lead 1B: 15 points
IE MQL = 40 with 0 min and 100 max.
2. Inaccurate Analytics
Bad data quality or improper data hygiene often lead to skewed open rates, overlooked leads that should have been emailed, etc. All sorts of problems can arise, and even the good data can’t be trusted.
3. Paying more for Marketo
Marketo continues to charge you as you continue to add up bad contacts. (Marketo charges by the number of contacts in the system at different levels.) So the more you miss on quality leads and engage bad leads, the more you actually lose money.
4. Complaints from Sales
This point hardly needs explaining, but Sales will raise hell if they find out they’re getting dupe leads, bad leads, or missing out on quality leads. Dealing with lowered morale should be the last thing on any CMO or CSO’s to-do list.
5. Duplicate Emails after Unsubscribing
Sometimes contacts may complain that they are still getting emails after unsubscribing.
That’s because when you have duplicates of emails and only one copy is unsubscribed, the contact can continue to receive emails. For example, if duplicate leads qualify for the same campaign, they will both receive emails. Email activity will be attributed to the most recent record.
Marketo dedupes by email and only sends one email even if there are multiple duplicate emails in a list. In other words, Marketo ensures that only one record among duplicates qualifies for a campaign.
If both an unsubscribed and subscribed lead are in the same smart list, no email will sent. So if any of the duplicates opts out, they will not receive a email.
Marketo does not consider someone’s business and personal email duplicates and they will continue to receive emails at both addresses.
How Duplicates are Created
Lead duplicates usually occur in your CRM or when you don’t sync all leads to the CRM. Marketo syncs with Salesforce every 5 minutes.
And Salesforce can make Marketo create duplicate leads if:
- There were duplicates in Salesforce of both record already
- The Marketo User is not seeing contacts properly
- Someone created a new Salesforce lead for that email address
Deduping Leads
Now that we’ve established that dupe leads are bad, let’s go over how we can get rid of them.
Marketo can automatically handle dedupe leads based on the email address field. Dedupe works when you enter new leads into Marketo from:
- List Import
- Directly made in Marketo Database
- Directly made through API
- Marketo Form – iFrame or Marketo Page
Depending on the severity of your duplicate penetration, you may have to try other options as well.
1. “Merge” in Marketo
If you use the Merge Function all leads are combined and the lead score is added together. Duplicate leads are atomatically attached to one another in Salesforce.
Here is the manual way to merge leads one at a time:
1. Head to Lead Database Tab
2. Select “Possible Duplicates” under the Smart List
3. Sort by ascending emails
4. Click Merge to combine – the lead score is added together
2. “Merge” in Salesforce
Lead scores are added together when you merge in Salesforce.
When merging leads in Salesforce, make sure you are logged into Salesforce with your synced Marketo account. If you merge with a non-admin account, the changes might not be reflected in Marketo.
3. Marketo Professional Services Easy Merge
Easy Merge is a one-time large-scale cleanup that Marketo Professional Services offers as a data cleaning and preservation solution. It will run you back about $3,000, though, so definitely contact Marketo first for details.
4. Data Cleansing Solutions for Salesforce
Here’s a list of data cleansing apps for salesforce. For example, you can estimate how many duplicate leads are in your database with the Salesforce App “Dupe Dive.”
Preventing Duplicate Leads
Obviously, you want to prevent duplicate leads from happening in the first place. You can easily do that by:
- Syncing all leads to Salesforce
- Importing all lists into Marketo using the “Normal” label
- Training Sales to use Salesforce to search for leads first using email or Full Name and then to update an existing record
- Using Marketo Forms
- Setting a standard procedure for consistency among multiple Marketo Admins and build documentation of your best practices
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