Demand Generation Implementation -- Take My Survey, Please!

Update - 4/23/09: I have some preliminary results, but would still like more responses. Click here to take survey. One result of interest: how quickly people deploy the features they eventually use. I had expected people to start slow and add more features over time. Not so much. It seems that by the end of the first month, people have already used 2/3 of the features they will ever use. Interesting. Here is the cumulative percentage of total features deployed based on when they were first deployed:

time since system deployment	first week	first month	second month	third month	later
cumulative % of used features	38%	65%	81%	86%	100%

The recent discussion triggered by my post Pedowitz Group Offers Free Support for New Eloqua Clients raises an important question: Just how much can marketers realistically expect to accomplish during the initial stages of a demand generation system deployment?

The obvious answer is “it depends”, but that just begs the question, “Depends on what?” My own take is that the main factor is how well the marketers know what they want to do – that is, do they understand their data, know what marketing campaigns they want to set up, have the materials in hand and process flows defined, know what their scoring rules should be, etc.

In theory, those could be defined even before a marketing automation system is selected. You actually need a pretty good idea of the answers to select the right system. One might also think that most companies would already have these processes in place, even if they’re not formally defined. Yet my impression from industry vendors and consultants is that most deployments start with a fairly extended planning stage where companies either document their existing campaigns and processes or, more likely, define a large number of new ones.

This makes sense to a certain degree, since a demand generation system allows vastly more activity, specified in more detail, than was possible without one. A new system also presents an opportunity to revisit and update existing practices rather than simply reproducing them.

In any event, I’m curious about people’s actual experiences. I’ve created a little poll using SurveyMonkey – if you’ve implemented a demand generation system, please click below to fill it out. Of course, I’ll report on results when I have some. Thanks!

Click here to take survey