Next-Generation Marketing Automation Systems Target Small Business

I’ve been gearing up for the next edition of our VEST report on B2B marketing automation systems, which involves catching up with established vendors and chasing down some new ones. The new entrants are clustered towards the small business end of the market, where they see an opportunity for simpler systems at lower prices than existing market leaders. I always wonder whether newcomers can find substantially simpler approaches than the older firms, which are already focused on ease of use and typically gone through several redesigns as they learn from experience. But it’s still worth scanning the new entrants to see how they’ve departed from older approaches. It’s also interesting to see how the new systems are similar, which gives some insight into what are apparently perceived as common problems in the older approaches.

Before jumping into the new systems, it helps to define a set of standard features to measure them against. I’ve written about this extensively in the past, so I won’t go into great detail here. Briefly, a standard B2B marketing automation system can send bulk emails to segmented lists, capture email responses on landing pages and forms, track email and Web site behaviors, score leads based on behaviors and profile attributes, execute multi-step workflows (i.e., nurture campaigns), and share leads with a CRM system like Salesforce.com. Not quite standard but increasingly common features include social media sharing and tracking, Webinar integration, visitor identification via reverse IP lookup, and capturing campaign information from Google AdWords. A system can be useful even if it lacks some of the standard features, but buyers should know what they’re missing so they can decide whether it’s something they really want.

Here are highlights of several vendors I’ve looked at recently. I’ll write about some others next week and then offer some general observations.

Leadsberry is among the oldest of these systems, launched in July 2012. It basic versions of the standard marketing automation features: lists are not updated automatically, workflows only branch on email behavior (opens, clicks, or nothing), and lead scoring is largely limited to profile attributes. On the other hand, it adds a powerful survey tool, easy conversion of emails to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn messages, and easily created “instant offers”. Looking beyond technology, the vendor provides access to a 15 million name email database, a telephone lead generation team, and other services that can supplement or even replace an in-house marketing department. System pricing starts at $99 per month for up to 1,000 contacts; a system with 15,000 contacts costs $499 per month. There are additional fees for survey responses, list rental, and other services.

Leadsius launched its first paid version around July 2013. Like several of the new vendors, it is based in Europe (Sweden), although the user interface is in English. The system includes email, landing pages and forms, and Web behavior tracking. Workflows are currently limited: triggers are based only on email and Web activities, segments are defined only with profile attributes, and the only actions are emails. The next release will support list-based triggers and additional actions. Workflows can execute multiple steps but only branch on whether the previous email was opened. Synchronization with Salesforce.com and SugarCRM are due by mid-2014. Lead scoring is not available and probably won’t be added any time soon, because the developer feels it is dangerous without validating that scores are accurate.  Among its strengths, the system provides detailed control over the rights assigned to different users; premium clients can have their own domain for landing pages and IP address for emails; and lists can be dynamic (i.e., continuously updated) as well as static. Leadsius comes in several versions including a free edition with a good set of basic features. New pricing in mid-February will retain the free version and introduce several other levels, most under $1,000 per month.

Salesformics is designed primarily to give sales people a pleasant-to-use CRM system, while offering marketing automation and dashboards to everyone in the organization. The system was developed by a UK-based marketing services firm and is still in public beta, which should end in mid-February. In a relatively radical departure from standard interfaces, it replaces traditional menus with a search box that lets users type commands or contact information (name, address, phone, etc.) and have the system return the best matching results. The system is also unusually reliant on third-party applications – dare we say “platform”? – using external systems to trigger promotions (for example, executing targeted searches in Twitter or LinkedIn to find contact-related events), to capture data (via externally-built web forms), and to deliver messages (email via Constant Contact or SMS via Twilio). Data from those sources, as well as the built-in CRM functions, can be used to create campaign segments. Indeed, the only traditional marketing automation functions provided by Salesformics itself are workflow and basic (untracked) email. Otherwise, trackable email and forms are provided via integration, there is no cookie-based Web behavior tracking, and lead scoring is not yet available (though planned). There is no synchronization to any external CRM system since Salesformics includes its own. The workflow uses a conventional diagram of triggers linked to actions; the triggers and actions are based on both internal and external data. A workflow can include multiple steps but branching won’t be supported until mid-2014. Pricing is based on number of users and starts at $79 per user per month.

Target360 was also developed by a UK-based service firm, in this case CRM consultants specializing in Microsoft Dynamics. The system adds email marketing and campaign tracking to Dynamics, working with Dynamics files directly rather than synching to a separate database. Among U.S-based firms, CoreMotives and ClickDimensions take a similar approach. Of the standard marketing automation functions, Target360 provides email, Web behavior tracking, lead scoring, and workflows. There is no form builder but the vendor provides a tool to map existing forms to the Dynamics database. Campaign workflows can only react to an email result, with separate branches for opens, clicks, and no response, although standard Dynamics workflows could support other actions as well. The system’s particular strength is tracking customer activities across different channels by assigning them campaign codes; this covers emails, Web visits, social media responses, and CRM interactions. These are connected with revenue captured in CRM to create return on investment reports. Revenue can be attributed in these reports to either the first or last campaign to reach a customer. The system was released in mid-2012 and starts at $1,050 per month including a Dynamics license.

Raab Report: B2B Marketing Automation Vendors Are Making Incremental, Not Radical, Changes To Their Products

One of my favorite parts about putting out a new edition of the VEST report is I get to dive into a pile of new data about industry trends. Think Scrooge McDuck and his pool filled with gold coins.

Indeed, with 208 data points on 22 vendors, there’s so much data that it’s a challenge to make sense of it. The approach I settled on this time is to compare the average score of each item against its average in the previous edition, six months earlier. Since we only added one new vendor for this edition and kept all the old ones, the vendor base itself is largely stable. Items with the greatest change in average score are the ones that vendors are adapting most rapidly. (The scores are: 2=comply fully; 1=comply partly; 0=do not comply. So, a higher score indicates a more common feature. An item present in every system would have a score of 2.0. The actual average is 1.41.)

The table below shows the top 20 items based on this ranking. Colors in the “average score” column show the relative score of each item – closer to green means an item is more common; closer to red means it is more rare.  The ranking is based on all 200 items, so the broad range among this group shows that all types of features are being added, not just the rare ones.

At first glance, these items seem almost random. But on closer examination, they fall into three categories.

• Sophisticated marketing programs. These are features for advanced outbound campaigns.  This means they appeal to the most sophisticated marketers and are probably not very widely used. As hinted by the color coding and confirmed by group, these features are already relatively common. So their continued growth represents catch-up by vendors who had not already provided them, probably more for competitive sales reasons than actual customer needs.

• New channels. These are features for marketing outside of email. They include managing events such as trade shows, integrating with external Web sites, and support for fax and direct mail. As a group, these are more rare than the previous set (average score of 1.02 vs. 1.28), suggesting that vendors who add them are more leaders than followers. They illustrate the continued expansion of marketing automation to support true multi-channel marketing programs.

• Advanced marketing management. These are features to help manage large-scale marketing operations. They relate to administrative and reporting needs including fine-grained control over user access rights, detailed cost reporting, user interface in multiple languages, and control over large volumes of assets. Most of these features are still relatively rare, although the group average is raised by two relatively common items (templates that automatically copy changes into existing assets and reports on asset usage by campaign). As with the changes to support sophisticated marketing programs, these features are needed by a small fraction of marketers, but vendors are probably adding them because they appear on buyer checklists.

You may have noticed that social media is missing from these lists.  Don’t be alarmed – it's just that most social media features were not covered in the previous edition, so we can't calculate growth rates. Here’s a list of all the new items and their scores. As you see, they’re all still relatively rare. I'm pretty sure that social media features are being added quickly although I don't have the data to prove it.

What didn’t grow so much? Well, there’s little change in basic marketing capabilities but that's just because pretty much everyone already has them. Less predictably, there’s little change in reporting, CRM integration, database design, features targeted at ease of use, content creation, and pricing models. If there’s a pattern here, it’s that these are fundamental aspects of system design and business models.  In other words, vendors are making incremental enhancements rather than radical changes.

You can read this as a sign of maturity or stagnation. Maybe they're the same thing.  Either way, it's arguably a good thing for marketers that the pace of change has slowed down a bit, since it gives them time to catch up.  It's more dangerous for vendors, since a stable feature set is easier for outsiders to duplicate, and gorilla invasion is the biggest threat faced by existing marketing automation leaders.  As my previous post reported, small vendors can still grow quickly enough to approach the industry's top ranks.  But it's entry by large outsiders who can leverage an existing customer base, such as users of email, CRM, or Web content management systems, that could really change the industry structure overnight.   Stay tuned.