Manticore Technology Sees Expertise as Key to Success as a Demand Generation Vendor

Summary: Manticore Technology released some modest enhancements to its demand generation platform today. The company takes a conservative approach to marketing automation, stressing the importance of process over flashy software. I’m not sure this will be enough to thrive as the market develops, but customers will benefit regardless.

Manticore Technology today released the latest version of its marketing automation system. Changes include a drag-and-drop design tool (similar to Microsoft Powerpoint); integration of opportunities and custom objects from Salesforce.com; better reporting on Web site visitors; and, real time sales alerts on Web activity.

Each of these makes Manticore a bit more useful but none breaks new ground for the industry. So rather than review them in depth (you can read Manticore’s press release for details), I’ll look at Manticore’s broader business approach as outlined by Marketing Vice President Christopher Doran.

First some background. Manticore launched its B2B marketing automation system in 2003, making it one of the older vendors in the industry. With a $2,000 per month starting price and a solid mix of features, it sits squarely in the middle of the market. The firm has grown steadily but slowly, reaching just under 125 active clients. These include a few very large firms but mostly mid-size businesses and divisions of larger companies. Unlike faster-growing competitors, Manticore has been largely self-funded.

In a stable industry, this would be a comfortably conservative position. But the marketing automation space is changing rapidly. A mid-tier company which is neither growing quickly nor dominating a particular niche could easily be left behind. At least, that's my opinion.

Manticore doesn’t see it this way. According to Doran, the company has found that the real key to success is guiding clients through successful execution of demand generation programs. Manticore wants clients to understand that demand generation is a business process. It positions itself as a "trusted advisor" that sells based on its expertise, not on technology.

Part of this approach is to give clients a methodology. Manticore offers a straightforward one: define the stages in your marketing funnel; benchmark performance at each stage and identify bottlenecks; create transitional content to move prospects into new stages; define nurture programs to reduce bottlenecks; execute the programs; measure the results and compare them with your goals. The product supports this methodology but does not insist on it.

Doran sees Manticore's customer support group as playing a key role in delivering its expertise. Support staff are trained to help clients address their business issues. This fills a key gap between buying the software and hiring an actual marketing consultant. Manticore relies on business partners for such consulting services.

Of course, Manticore recognizes that it cannot succeed unless the product itself remains competitive. As the latest round of enhancements illustrates, Manticore remains focused on the core demand generation features of email, landing pages, lead nurturing and sales integration. The company is avoiding extensive investments in “inbound marketing” technologies such as search engine optimization and paid search advertising. Nor will it expand into marketing resource management features for planning and budgeting. Doran did say he expected to add some social media features and deeper reporting. And the company will continue to stress its traditional message of ease of use – although at this point, most other demand generation vendors make a similar claim.

I remain skeptical about Manticore's approach. It's true that process is more important than technology and that services to new users were the key to success in earlier marketing automation generations. But today there are plenty of consultants and agencies to provide that support, so it's probably not necessary for vendors to do it themselves. As a practical matter, I think most buyers will prefer systems with a broader scope, flashier presentation and more aggressive marketing. But so long as Manticore and similar firms remain financially sound, they can sell to the minority of buyers who understand the value of expert service. Perhaps that's all Manticore really needs.

Ranking the Demand Generation Vendors by Popularity (Yes, Life Really Is Just Like High School)

As you might imagine, I’ve been trying to decide how to expand the set of products covered in the Raab Guide to Demand Generation Systems. My original plan had been to add several marketing automation vendors with significant presence in this market. The tentative list is Unica, Aprimo, Alterian, and Neolane.

But I’ve also been approached by some of the other demand generation specialists. My original set of products was based on a general knowledge of which companies are most established, plus some consultation with vendors to learn who they felt were their main competitors. So far the original list of Eloqua, Vtrenz, Marketo, Manticore Technology and Market2Lead has proven a good set of choices. Yet there are so many more vendors I could add. How to choose?

The general rule is pretty obvious: pick the vendors that people are most interested in. We do, after all, want people to buy this thing. Of course, you want some wiggle room to add intriguing new products that they may not know about. Still, you mostly want to the report to include the vendors they are already asking about.

But although the general rule is obvious, which vendors are most popular is not. Fortunately, we have the Internet to help. It offers quite a few ways to measure interest in a vendor: Web searches, blog mentions, Google hits, and site traffic among them. All are publicly available with almost no effort. After a close analysis of the alternatives, I have decided the Alexa.com traffic statistics are the best indicator of vendor market presence. (You can read about the analysis in fascinating detail on my marketing measurement blog, MPM Toolkit.)

The table below shows the Alexa rankings and share statistics for the current Guide entries, the four marketing automation vendors already mentioned, and a dozen or so contenders.

	Alexa	Alexa
	rank	share
Already in Guide:
Eloqua	20,234	0.007070
Silverpop	29,080	0.003050
Marketo	68,088	0.001700
Manticore Technology	213,546	0.000610
Market2Lead	235,244	0.000480
Vtrenz	295,636	0.000360
Marketing Automation:
Unica / Affinium*	126,215	0.000850
Alterian	345,543	0.000250
Aprimo	416,446	0.000220
Neolane	566,977	0.000169
Other Demand Generation:
Marketbright	167,306	0.000540
Pardot	211,309	0.000360
Marqui Software	211,767	0.000440
ActiveConversion	257,058	0.000340
Bulldog Solutions	338,337	0.000320
OfficeAutoPilot	509,868	0.000200
Lead Genesys	557,199	0.000145
LoopFuse	734,098	0.000109
eTrigue	1,510,207	0.000043
PredictiveResponse	2,313,880	0.000033
FirstWave Technologies	2,872,765	0.000017
NurtureMyLeads	4,157,304	0.000014
Customer Portfolios	5,097,525	0.000009
Conversen*	6,062,462	0.000007
FirstReef	11,688,817	0.000001

The figures themselves need a little explaining. The Alexa rank is a “combined measure of page views and number of users”, with the most popular site ranked number 1, next-most-popular ranked number 2, etc. (In case you're wondering, the top three are Yahoo!, Google and YouTube.) Alexa share represents “percent of global Internet users who visit this site”. The rank and share figures correlate closely, but share is probably for comparing sites, since the ratio directly reflects relative traffic. That is, a share figure twice as large as another share figure indicates twice as many visitors, while a rank that is one half as large as another rank doesn’t necessarily mean twice as much traffic.

The figures for the existing vendors, in the first block of the table, give pretty much the ranking you’d expect. One wrinkle is that Vtrenz is owned by Silverpop, so Silverpop.com presumably siphons off a great deal of traffic from Vtrenz.com. On the other hand, Silverpop is a major email service provider in its own right, so a large share of the Silverpop.com traffic probably has nothing to do with Vtrenz. In any event, I’ve listed both sites in the table. Vtrenz is clearly a major vendor, so nothing is at stake here except bragging rights.

What’s more interesting is the figures for the Marketing Automation group. Unica is quite popular, while the other vendors are much less visited. This doesn’t particularly surprise me, although seeing Alterian, Aprimo and Neolane rank well below Manticore Technology and Market2Lead is odd. Perhaps these vendors are more obscure than I had realized. Still, they are much larger firms and do much more marketing than Manticore or Market2Lead. Interestingly, the other measure I found somewhat credible, IceRocket’s count of blog mentions, ranks Alterian, Aprimo and Neolane considerably higher than Manticore and Market2Lead. (See the MPM Toolkit post for details.) So the marketing automation vendors are probably a little more important to potential Guide buyers than the Alexa numbers suggest.

But my real concern was the Other Demand Generation group. Here, the Alexa figures do provide some very helpful insights. Basically they suggest that Marketbright, Pardot, Marqui and ActiveConversion, are all pretty much comparable in market presence to Manticore and Market2Lead. I spoke with Marketbright and Pardot this week and connected with ActiveConversion some time ago. Based on those conversations, this seems about right. (Marqui is a special case because they fell on financial hard times and the assets were recently purchased.) Rankings fall off sharply for the other vendors on the list, providing a reasonable cut-off point for the next round of Guide entries.

Of course, nothing is set in stone. Perhaps one of the smaller vendors can convince me that they have something special enough to justify including them. Plus there is still the question of whether I should invest the effort to expand the Guide at all, and what sequence I do the additions. But, whatever the final result, it’s nice to have an objective way to measure vendor market presence.