Multi-Step Campaign Interfaces: A Quick Vendor Survey

If you read this blog regularly (and who doesn't?), you know that I see a lot of demand generation systems. Naturally, the vendors showing them to me have all thought very carefully about their designs and made the best choices they could, typically based on feedback from their customers. As a result, they tend to be quite certain that they have made the right decisions and are correspondingly unreceptive should I suggest otherwise.

The area where this comes up more often than any other is the design of multi-step campaign flows. There are two basic approaches to this: use a flow chart, or present a list of steps. My own opinion is quite firm: flow charts don't work. They look good in demonstrations and can lay out simple processes quite nicely. But they get impossibly convoluted once you try to do something complex.

I say this with the fervor of a reformed sinner, since for many years I looked at flow charts as the mark of an advanced marketing automation system. But in all that time I never saw a flow chart interface that actually did a good job handling complexity. So I've reluctantly concluded that flow charts are only suitable for serious technical experts.

Such specialists are fairly common at big consumer marketers such as banks and retailers. These organizations have marketing operations staff members whose entire job is to set up campaigns. They do perfectly well with flow chart interfaces, which indeed are standard on enterprise marketing automation products (e.g. Unica, Teradata Relationship Manager, SAS Marketing Automation, Siebel Marketing, Alterian, Aprimo, SmartFocus).

But the vast majority of demand generation systems are installed in much smaller marketing departments, where setting up campaigns is just a fraction of the user's job. Those people don't have the time or inclination to master the subtleties of a flow chart interface.

Of course, holding an opinion strongly doesn't make it correct, even when I'm the one doing the holding. So I thought I'd take a little scan of the demand generation systems I've looked at to see how the vendors themselves had voted. I'm pleased to see that the majority of vendors (11 of 16) , and particularly those tending towards serving smaller clients, have in fact chosen against the flow chart approach. (Gone against the flow, as it were.)

I don't expect this news to change the minds of vendors who made the opposite decision. In fact, if they're any kind of marketers at all, they'll argue it's a competitive differentiator. But at least I'll feel more justified the next I tell one of them I disagree with their choice.

Here, then, is a list of vendors (alphabetically) and their interfaces.

	flow	list
Act-On Software		x
ActiveConversion		x
Eloqua	x
Infusionsoft		x
LeadLife		x
LoopFuse	x
Manticore Technology	x
Market2Lead	(1)	x
Marketbright	(1)	x
Marketo		x
Neolane	x
OfficeAutoPilot		x
Pardot		x
Silverpop Engage B2B		x
Treehouse Interactive		x
True Influence	x

(1) embeds simple list- based campaign in a larger flow chart. I'm in favor of that approach.