The Evolution of Newsreader Apps

Posted by & filed under Uncategorized.

When I first started to use email in the workplace in 1997, the forward button became the bane of my existence.

Coworkers kept forwarding articles, or links to articles from the Internet, that they thought I might enjoy.  Some were for a project or client work at hand; others were for more personal reasons.  Needless to say, at least ¼ of my Inbox was simply forwarded news articles. (Let’s forget jokes and chain emails, too – thankfully those have died off.)

Fast forward to 2013, and my email is a little less cluttered with shared articles – but my Facebook and LinkedIn newsfeeds are not.

Sharing articles – or photos, videos, and other content – is all grown up now.  It is now called “curation” – and content curation is what social media consultants – including myself – advise clients to do when they want to contribute something meaningful to online conversations (be sure to include a few relevant comments while posting, of course).

New Solutions to Old Problems

Recent announcements by vendors of solutions to the news sharing headache had me thinking about the future of sharing articles important on the job.  After all, if I happen upon something relevant to a project at hand, shouldn’t everyone on my team be able to access and read the same item?

Volume is another issue.  We all dislike Inboxes clogged with article after article.  Wouldn’t it be great if there was one single site we can visit where we can view all shared news items – from a range of media outlets as well as from multiple social networks?

Enter the newsreader category.

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What is Progressive Profiling? Asking questions, but not too many at one time.

Posted by & filed under Content Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Automation, Revenue Performance Management.

“Hi, how are you? What’s your name? Where are you from? Where do you work? What industry is that? What brings you here? What products are you interested in? Are you satisfied with your current product? My industry is such-and-such; what about that are you most interested in? What’s your email address? Do you have a Facebook account? Would you like us on Facebook?”

That’s a bit much, right? If you encountered that in real life it would likely result in the one consistent final question “Hey, where are you going?” So in asking the question “What is progressive profiling?” this example is part of the answer; it’s keeping your website from asking too many questions at once. This, in turn, helps increase leads and arms your sales force with more effective information.

While you do want the most information you can get on your customers at any given time, the problem is that having them fill out long forms online is more likely to increase the abandon rate on your website or landing page. In fact, according to some statistics from Eloqua, mean conversion drops significantly with more than 6 fields are on a form. But you still want to capture critical information from prospects and customers – as evident by the fact that many marketers Eloqua surveyed actually used forms with 15+ fields on them. That’s where progressive profiling and inbound marketing (see Deep Dive: Linking Inbound Marketing to Sales Results) tactics can help not only capture more information, but accurate information.

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The Age of Agile Everything: Agile Applications Outside of IT (Marketing & Sales)

Posted by & filed under Agile BI, Marketing, Sales & Customer Service.

Sometime between the creation of the Knorad Zuse K1 computer and Justin Bieber’s 37 millionth follower on Twitter, using the word agile in business reached a tipping point. It’s cool to be agile; quick, nimble, responsive, iterative. Who doesn’t want that for their business! Agile Business Intelligence –yes! Agile Marketing – why not? Agile selling – of course! Hype aside, I actually think there are some profound trends that make agile a compelling methodology / tactic / framework… wait, what is it? How is it so popular and yet so fundamentally ill-defined and misunderstood? I actually spent some time on a brand marketing technology project for Nike (which, by the way, is an awesome place to work) and we used an agile development framework that was surprisingly successful at bridging the gap between development work and the business users in Brand Marketing. I am not a developer, so it was really my first experience with the real-world application of agile development. I quickly came to accept and appreciate the agile processes, frameworks, and practices. But, I also learned that outside of IT and development, very few business leaders have deep knowledge of what agile really is, or how it can be applied universally across the business to help with the complexities of today’s fast-paced world.

So, I thought I would do a quick 101 guide to common applications of agile in business. The thinking here is that by exposing business leaders (particularly in marketing and sales) to agile perspectives, maybe we can start to advance the discipline of customer management, reduce cycle time on marketing campaigns, increase relevance, and take customer engagement to the next level.

Should have used agile…

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Analyst Day at HubSpot: Sunshine and Daydreams

Posted by & filed under Campaign Management, Email Marketing, Lead Generation, Lead Scoring & Nurturing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Social Intelligence, Social Media Monitoring, Uncategorized.

As an industry analyst, I’m frequently invited to attend “analyst day” events hosted by technology solution providers. I typically decline. I find that spending a full day listening to a management team boast of how they’re solving the marketing, business intelligence or customer service management equivalent of world hunger isn’t always the best use of my time. Usually I can get all the information I need in a 45-minute analyst briefing and without having to pass through airport security.

But I didn’t think twice about accepting an invitation to join HubSpot for their “analyst day” event, which took place earlier this week at their offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The reason is simple: HubSpot ranks as a true innovator in my book and is therefore a company worthy of some extra attention. It’s that rare breed of technology solution provider that seems do everything right, largely by defying conventional wisdom.

HubSpot has always been a bit of an anomaly within the realm of marketing solution providers. For starters, it can’t be readily lumped into any existing competitive arena. While HubSpot’s “all-in-one solution” includes features and functionality that straddle everything from marketing automation, landing page creation and lead management to search engine optimization and analytics, the breadth of its integrated offering makes it difficult to compare its platform capabilities to those of any other player in the marketing technology space.

 

 

Setting out to establish and own a new software category can be a risky proposition. The dustbins of history are littered with many more one-of-a-kind startups Read more »

The Secret to Justifying Marketing Automation to C-Suite Executives (Outside of Marketing)

Posted by & filed under Email Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Integrated Marketing Management, Marketing & Sales Alignment, Marketing Automation, Multichannel Marketing, Revenue Performance Management, Uncategorized.

Research from a January 2013 Gleanster survey captured trends on the top challenges of marketing automation adoption. A simple data pivot provided a window into the unique challenges among users of marketing automation and organizations that have yet to take the plunge. For organizations that have yet to invest in marketing automation, lack of senior management support and funding made the list of top three challenges. Despite the challenges of multiple fragmented systems and a general lack of cadence in communications, it seems old habits die hard. Senior leaders in finance, sales, operations, and IT often approach marketing automation with an air of skepticism. Can the organization really realize all of the benefits touted by marketing automation sales reps? For those of you who are trying to champion internal change and drive awareness around marketing automation, there is one secret to selling the idea to senior leaders: it leads to widespread commitment from decision makers and influencers faster and demonstrates attention to measurable return on investment. (Blog post compliments of: Pardot)

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Please Stop Emailing Me Articles You Think Are Important

Posted by & filed under Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Inbound Marketing.

When I first started to use email in the workplace in 1997, the Forward button became the bane of my existence.

Coworkers kept forwarding articles, or links to articles from the Internet, that they thought I might enjoy. Some were for a project or client work at hand; others were for more personal reasons. Needless to say, at least ¼ of my Inbox was simply forwarded news articles. (Let’s forget jokes and chain emails, too – thankfully those have died off.)

Fast forward to 2013, and my email is a little less cluttered with shared articles – but my Facebook and LinkedIn newsfeeds are not.

Sharing articles – or photos, videos, and other content – is all grown up now. It is now called ‘curation’ – and content curation is what social media consultants – including myself – advise clients to do when they want to contribute something meaningful to online conversations (be sure to include a few relevant comments while posting, of course).

Email Hell

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Inspiring B2B Trends & Best Practices from DemandCon SF 2013

Posted by & filed under Uncategorized.

After attending DemandCon 2013, I thought I would share a few of the notable best practices and key takeaways from the event. Here are 10 takeaways from DemandCon SF 2013 (in no particular order).

1. The buyer doesn’t really own the buying process

All this talk about buyers being in control isn’t quite accurate. They are certainly more informed, but does having access to more information really help buyers? Buyers are overwhelmed; they have access to information, but is all of it really making them more informed and intelligent? Who has the time to pick through all the perspectives and figure out which ones are credible and should factor into a buying decision? Plus, more information demands more depth of knowledge and more specific questions. B2B marketers need to start thinking about the content marketing strategy in terms of how it is relevant and specific to the target audience. More content isn’t better; more of the right content is what drives leads to qualify.

Top 10 B2B Trends

Top 10 B2B Trends from DemandCon 2013

2. Don’t find people, help people find you

It is estimated that about 90% of prospects never respond to a cold call or email. We are no longer in an age of information scarcity, we are in an age of information abundance. But more information doesn’t necessarily accelerate the lead-to-sale; the right information does. Inbound marketing through blogs, webinars, and thought leadership should be used to attract prospects. Marketing is about generating a smaller number of higher quality leads.

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Perspectives and Thoughts from DemandCon SF 2013

Posted by & filed under Lead Generation, Market Events, Marketing & Sales Alignment, Marketing Automation, Revenue Performance Management.

Picutre of DemandCon 2013

This week I swooped in on the San Francisco DemandCon event. It’s always fun to gain new perspectives from some of the world’s leading B2B experts, thought leaders, and consultants. Delegates continue to be bullish on the return on inbound marketing and omni-channel engagement. After soaking in the delegate comments and questions at the end of the sessions, I felt like there was an underlying theme for 2013: sustainability. How do we as marketers embrace the new dynamics of B2B selling (content marketing, sales and marketing alignment, nurturing, sales optimization, etc.) and deeply root them in the company culture? How do we continuously learn and ADOPT new best practices? How do we hire and train talent? How do organizations and demand generation professionals justify emerging practices that may contradict traditional marketing strategy?

I think the answer to these questions is measurement. And today the measurable benefits of emerging B2B marketing strategy are largely identified by a handful of tenacious marketers who relentlessly question every marketing outcome and demand tangible results for answers. There’s no arguing with tangible measurement, and that means sustainability for adoption of marketing automation, lead scoring, and inbound marketing. But measurement and attention to analytics in marketing demands visionaries – and today, those visionaries are the attendees of events like DemandCon. As Jill Rowley (@jill_rowley) from Oracle put it (in a panel session) there continues to be a scarcity of demand generation resources, the Elo-queens and Elo-kings (highly skilled Eloqua users), to fulfill Demand Generation leadership roles. If you can apply the theory and best practices in platforms like Eloqua, or Marketo, or Hubspot, or Act-On, you are in high demand these days.

DIY Social Data Worthy of Martha Stewart Living

Posted by & filed under Social Media Analytics, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Monitoring, Uncategorized.

News last week that social data vendor provider Gnip will now offer API (application programming interface) access for Instagram and Tumblr probably prompted the average social media manager to yawn, but for anyone covering the social analytics space, this is huge.

And for DIY’ers, like domestic empress Martha Stewart, we now know where and how to shop for raw materials.

Martha Stewart in her early days.

Martha Stewart in her early days.

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