Recent news stories about Social Media being bigger than email as well as the recent beta release of Google Wave have made marketers rethink their email strategies, but should we really be moving our email efforts to social media? And if not, should they be kept apart, or can they truly work in unison?
      
I think the separation of email and social media started a few years ago when every email began with Forward to a Friend written above the emails headline. This seemed like a great way to make emails more social, but marketers ended up disappointed when these buttons were ignored, and left unused. Since this first attempt at socializing email was so poorly received we started to separate out our social marketing from our email marketing efforts.
       
But here at Marketo we think that social media and email marketing work best hand-in-hand. During a recent discussion with Michael Smith, Director of Interactive Marketing at Medialogic, a strategic marketing and communication firm, we agreed that social media has complimented our email efforts, not hurt or replaced them. For B2B marketers to stay at the top of their game they must not choose one or the other, but instead learn how to make them work together.  “The best approach is to build an integrated strategy utilizing both mediums to help seed conversations and engage with your customers/prospects in order to build relationships of significant and sustained value” said Mike.

And in support of this integrated strategy, Mike and I thought we would brainstorm as a team on why social media and email are like a marketer’s peanut butter and jelly. Together we listed our best practices on how to make both social media and email marketing work hand-in-hand.
       
Create a Unified Strategy:
Instead of keeping separate email and social media plans, create marketing objectives and see how social media and email marketing can help accomplish these objectives as one coordinated effort. Create the content for these programs at the same time so they feel coordinated and complement one another. This will also help prevent there from being gaps in your overall marketing strategy or conflicting information in different marketing messages.
       
Use Similar Voice:
Your brand has a personality. Let it shine through both social media and email, but make sure they both have the same mood and tone. Don’t let emails be boring while social media posts are fun and edgy. Instead, try to design email to look like your social media voice sounds. This is a great way to help prospects and customers become more familiar with your brand.
       
Don’t Duplicate Content:
It’s understandable that a prospect or customer may opt-out of your email or unfollow/unfriend you if all you do is post the same news over and over again on different sites and through email. You must adjust your messages for each site to keep readers interested and engaged.
       
Give email recipients the inside scoop
Use email to share your best discounts and rewards, but allow news to spread virally through social media sites. An example of this is giving an insiders peak and premier registration for events to email recipients, but encourage subscribers to share news via email and social media. Or post new product information on social media sites, but product discount information in emails. These exclusive email discounts will get people signed-up to your email, while news of your discount program may spread on social sites.
       
Help email recipients share your news:
Many email marketers are encouraging people to share the details of their emails on Facebook and Twitter. Other marketers are posting links to the company or senders social marketing accounts, allowing email recipients to choose if they wish to receive emails or want to interact with your company through social media sites.
       
Utilize email functionalities in social media sites
Sites like Linkedin and Facebook allow group owners to send messages to their group members. When sending emails remember to create messages targeted for these groups. These sites are often forgotten by email marketers, though are a great way to connect. Watch email opt-outs on these sites and when people leave your group, similar to how you watch opt-outs in email and adjust messaging to your audiences preferences to decrease this attrition.
       
Shared reporting:
Don’t report your email marketing successes separate from social media mentions. Create marketing reporting that is unified and can create a complete picture of your marketing activities. Make sure you show how all the pieces worked together, and how each influenced the overall success of a campaign.
       
By combining these strategies, you will increase the success of both your social media and email efforts, allowing you to create the strongest online marketing effort possible for your organization. Mike and I agree, the power isn’t in social media or email marketing, it’s in how you use them together.

Yesterday’s BtoB Leading Edge, Demand Generation in the Digital Age was a great way to make sure your organization’s demand generation programs are best-in-class.  With almost 5,000 registrants, it is clear that B2B marketers are concerned about getting the most out of their demand generation and lead management programs.  But with so much on a marketer’s plate these days, not all 4300 could attend this half day event.  For those, and as a wrap-up from the event, I wrote up the top tips I took from the show: 

1.     Website visitors need clear directions on what to do when they arrive on your website

Developing clear calls to action was a key point during almost every session during the event.  While each presenter’s take on the topic was a little different, it was clear that you need to look at each page of your website and all landing pages and decide if it would be clear to a prospect what their next step should be.  Buyer personas help companies develop paths for prospects, helping those who may purchase learn about your product or service and allowing them to consume information at their own pace.  Best in class marketers will ‘follow’ the path so they know when sales should begin interacting and what information will be most useful to the prospect at a particular time. 

2.     You can do a lot even with a small budget

LinkedIn gave an impressive demonstration on how they handled demand generation without a robust marketing budget or unlimited marketing staff members.  Instead, they focus on their targets, implement strategic programs, and measure the results to know where they should continue efforts.   You should too.

3.     Social media is not going away and needs to be embraced by ALL marketers

Social media was mentioned a lot during the show.  Why?  Because it’s here to stay.  Gone are the days of relying on your website and SEO alone to drive traffic to your site.  Marketers who embrace social media will be successful, and those who do not will be forced to play catch-up as social media is becoming more and more main stream.  Three big social media tips from the show: 1. Be thoughtful and dedicated, and monitor your social media results 2. Use it in conjunction with your marketing campaigns to fully integrated marketing programs and 3. Use different social media sites differently, based on the culture of the community that already exists.  (This means use LinkedIn differently than you use Facebook.) 

4.     Direct mail may not be dead

The Kern Organization did an impressive presentation about B-to-B offer strategies that keep your pipeline filled with the best leads.  Of course this presentation talked about incentives and email programs, but surprisingly it also talked about direct mail.  With many marketers solely focusing on email, direct mail now has the ability to stand out.  The trick to deciding if direct mail is right for you is testing and segmentation.  This allows you to make sure you are sending the right content to the right people without wasting marketing dollars on those who will be unreceptive to your offers. 

5.     Offers need to be relevant AND appropriate for the prospect's place in the buying cycle

In demand generation we often focus on creating great content, but the timing of when it is delivered is often an afterthought.  Because consumers want to see different information at different parts of the decision process, the asset you choose to present at a particular time may often decide if you make their short list.  Look at online buying behavior using a marketing automation or web analytics tool to see what information is useful to a prospect when they first consider your solution, when they are evaluating different vendors, and when they are ready to make a purchase.  Then provide appropriate content to those prospects at the right time so they don’t have to do as much hunting and sorting. 

6.     Testing can allow you to enter a new market with little risk

Denise Hopkins of Experian talked about how you can use testing to try out a new market before launching a full-fledged demand generation program.  This is very important as many marketers need to look for new opportunities to grow, but can’t afford to make costly mistakes.  Testing allows for success while minimizing mistakes.  

7.     Incentives can work really well

Some people are very motivated by incentives and will purchase because of the incentives they receive.  The trick to using incentives well is to only use them for those that are motivated by them, instead of wasting marketing dollars by giving out incentives to all.  You can do this by understanding buyer personas and then using incentives with those personas that are going to be motivated to buy because of them. 

8.     It’s okay if people who will never buy your product consume your content

While you want to drive the right traffic to your website and landing pages, others who are never going to buy anything from you are also going to download it.  By using lead scoring or other lead qualifying methods you can avoid wasting sale's time contacting consultants, partners, analysts, students, and competitors, while benefitting from these non-prospects because they may share your information with those who will ultimately buy.  One extra tip: When reporting on campaign success remove these people from your data so that you get a clear picture of the actual campaign outcome. 

9.     An event doesn’t need to have to trend on Twitter to be great. 

On the day of the this event there were fewer than 1000 tweets marked with the event hashtag, far less than what we’ve seen for other online Marketing events, even though the content was packed with great information from well known thought leaders.  While use of social media was stressed during the event as part of an integrated demand generation program, it wasn’t used as frequently.  I think this may have been because BtoB’s Twitter account is newer and has less of a following, and because they did not promote the event hashtag very much before the event.   The benefit?  You can search for the event’s hashtag, #b2bexpo, and in a few minutes catch up on the entire show because there aren’t hundreds of retweets and tweets with the same info as others. 

10.  Demand generation is just a piece of the entire Marketing puzzle

The final keynote, Demand Generation the Cisco Way, stressed integrated demand generation programs as the most important point.  If you get a chance to watch one presentation recording it should be this one.  This presentation stressed the importance of analysis of your database, creating appropriate and targeted demand generation programs, paying attention to full execution of your programs, doing proper reporting, and testing to make changes.  The presentation also stressed their is a difference in being data rich and properly analyzing the data.  Make sure you not only collect data but properly interpret it. 

I think that regardless of how successful you are in demand generation, there was something to be learned at the event.  The presentations, thought leadership information and vendor booths from the BtoB Leading Edge virtual event are still available, so you can review at your convenience.  And when you do, make sure to stop by Marketo’s booth to see some of the ways we can help you streamline and improve your demand generation and lead management programs. For more more on how to improve your demand generation programs, check out this white paper about selecting a demand generation system.   

On recent call with a prospective enterprise customer, the marketing manager told me that at her company, the relationship between marketing and sales was so bad that the sales team did not even allow her to access their Salesforce CRM system.

In this economy, fighting between marketing and sales teams must stop. The need to to maximize revenue using every tool at your disposal is simply too important. Research shows that companies where marketing and sales can collaborate through the revenue cycle generate more leads and convert more leads into revenue.

We recently recorded a great webinar with some fresh perspectives on this topic from Barry Trailer of CSO Insights and Phil Fernandez, president and CEO of Marketo. Now available on-demand, register to watch Can Marketing Help Sales Sell? to see:

• The latest research from CSO Insights
• How marketing and sales can work together
• An introduction to Marketo Sales Insight

Here are some tidbits from the webinar:

• Companies that find say it is easy for sales to access to useful information about leads and prospects generate 18% points higher revenue attainment than those that say it is hard
• When should marketing stop talking to a prospect, if ever
• How can online insights help sales reps prioritize time on the right accounts and activities
• What types of campaigns help sales sell

Watch the on-demand webinar Can Marketing Help Sales Sell? now.

On Thursday, June 4^th over 200 customers, prospects, analysts and friends of Marketo attended an evening at Hotel Vitale in San Francisco for the launch of Marketo Sales Insight.  The party was high energy and with filled some great spirits, snacks, and demos of the new product.  Phil Fernandez, President and CEO of Marketo, shared some thoughts during this fun night, talking about how Sales Insight came to fruition, explaining why so many customers were implementing these new features, and how this latest solution is helping marketing and sales collaborate together to ignite revenue. 

But don’t trust us, this is what some of our favorite twitterers had to say about our launch party:

dougpepper: Huge turnout at the Marketo launch party tonight in SF. Lots of excited customers and partners. 200 customers in only 15 months…

DeannaDeery: Excited to be a part of the fastest growing vendor in the Marketing Automation space. Marketo – 200+ Customers and growing!

Annette_G: Congratulations Marketo on a fantastic launch event last night at Vitale… can’t wait for all the exciting news to hit next week!

cvilly: Marketo puts on a nice party. Ketel One at the open bar never hurts, either. J #fb

tomcanning: Liked the Marketo party last night at Americano. Cool product and people. They did it RIGHT! Thanks! http://www.marketo.com

kristenshue: @marketo Good #marketo party at Hotel Vitale last night. What a great turn-out! Enjoyed bouncing ideas with fellow marketers. Thank you.

lostintheflog: great party last night @marketo. Met some new folks and re-connected with old friends. Thanks for inviting us Scott.

To see all the pictures of the event, please visit our Facebook page.  Here you can tag pictures of you and your friends at the event, find other Marketo users, and post up your thoughts about Sales Insight or the launch party. Feel free to comment here with your thoughts or favorite moments from the event.

You can also find many ways to connect with Marketo users like yourself in our various communities. 

The next interview in the B2B Marketing thought leader interview series is with Barry Trailer. Barry is co-founder of CSO Insights, an analyst firm that benchmarks the challenges faced by today's sales and marketing organizations, tracking the trends in the usage of people, process, technology and knowledge to improve sales effectiveness. Barry is also a member of the Marketo Board of Advisors.

Barry is also presenting his latest research about marketing and sales alignment at an exclusive webinar titled Using Marketing's Insights to Close More Deals Faster. The webinar will be held this Thursday, June 18, 2009 at 11:00am Pacific/2:00pm Eastern. Sign up today!

1. How did you get into sales and marketing, and what you like most about it?

How I got into sales was easy. I've been in it all my life, seriously. Door-to-door magazine and encyclopedia sales, retail sales in high school, more commissioned sales jobs in college. After I graduated, I was an engineer (civil) for eleven years, selling engineering design services the latter half of that time. Then I left engineering and went straight commission and never looked back. I think sales is the greatest job in the world. I'm much less versed/experienced about marketing but appreciate the interplay between them and recognize this could be so much better than it is today.

2. What three tips would you offer to improve collaboration between sales and marketing?

First, quit thinking that if you ever get it right, you can get rid of the other group. Marketing seems to feel this way about sales and vice versa.

Second, figure out roles/responsibilities of each and quit trying to do the other group's work; there is too often no trust that the other component is going to execute.

Third, track the life of each lead to its conclusion and close the loop; so much could be learned if this actually occurred on a consistent basis.

3. How can better sales and marketing alignment improve sales performance metrics?

On one hand I think the answer to this is self-evident: if better marketing means more and/or better sales leads, then sales can focus more on selling than on lead generation, which should translate into higher close rates and more sales.

On the other hand, I think some results may be less obvious or counter-intuitive: will closer alignment mean marketing taking on a more prominent sales role, at least early in the sales cycle? Will sales, freed of the lead generation effort, do more cultivating of higher level relationships and penetrating accounts more broadly? We may actually see, if not a minor reversal of roles, at least the beginning of a sharing of roles/tasks.

4. Beyond demand generation, how can marketing best help sales close more business?

Let's assume that beyond generating just MORE leads, marketing is also generating HIGHER QUALITY leads. OK, if that has happened, then new areas of investigation may begin to open up. Where are leads falling OUT of the sales process and why? Is this fallout happening early in the cycle, suggesting a disconnect between the messaging that attracted these prospects and the early conversations with sales? Or are they happening later in the cycle, suggesting a hole in the sales process or that a process step was glossed over? Can marketing provide case studies, industry-specific interviews and/or thought pieces to support the solution sales is advocating for this prospect? And, if this prospect is closed, is there a testimonial or case study to be gleaned from this new client/customer?

5. What do you think are the biggest opportunities for companies striving to optimize sales lead generation?

For starters, and I know we've said this a thousand times before but it's still true, gaining agreement between sales AND marketing on what constitutes a quality and qualified lead. Developing a Perfect Prospect Profile and criteria for lead scoring to grade how close or far each lead is from the real bulls eye of the target market. Having done this, consistently scoring leads and tracking them to their eventual disposition will provides heaps more insight than the vast majority of companies have today. In our current Lead Gen Optimization survey one-quarter of companies have a formal lead scoring process in place. More than one-third have NO process in place. What could these companies be LEARNING from their lead gen efforts if they tracked results more carefully?

6. What are the top three ways companies can improve sales effectiveness?

There are four areas to look into with possible levers for improvement:

1. People
2. Process
3. Technology
4. Knowledge

It starts with having the talented, motivated, engaged personnel. Lots of folks are on the payroll but are they truly on the team? How do you judge? How do they and you know? Do you have processes in place and what level of process implementation occurs at your company (CSO Insights has defined 4 levels)?

You may have technology in place but is it being used. Is it useful? Companies are now finding that CRM alone is not enough, or that one size fits all. What we've labeled CRM 2.0 includes dozens of categories and hundreds of new solutions that increase basic CRM capabilities. Marketo is an example of one of these solutions but certainly is not the ONLY example.

Finally, sales knowledge is WAY BEHIND where it needs to be today. Three-quarters of companies report competitive analysis requires some to significant hunting to even FIND what information is available. How current, complete and useful the information is (generally developed and provided by marketing) is a whole other issue.

7. What are some sales and marketing metrics that more companies should track?

This varies to a certain extent by company/industry but a few are pretty universal: lead source, lead score, leads converting to first discussions, leads converting to opportunities. Once a lead is accepted into the pipeline there are loads of other metrics that can and should be tracked. Another metric that is now available through technology is time to follow up on a lead/inquiry, and the rate of decay of lead metrics as the response time lengthens.

8. Bonus question: Anything else you'd like to discuss?

Sure! I'd like to explore why the Sales is from Mars, Marketing is from Venus dynamic persists between marketing and sales. Who is winning by the continuing lack of alignment/cooperation? In many ways it feels like our two-party congress where each party can blame the other for lack of real progress or real system improvement. The elephants blame the donkeys to their constituents, the Dems blame the 'Pubs to theirs, then they all go off to the Georgetown bars together and nothing gets done. Sales can say, "The leads suck!" Marketing can say, "You suck!" We go off to the bars together or separately and nothing gets done to improve the system. I'd like to talk about this but also, I'd REALLY like to talk about companies where this is NOT the case. Rather, where the puppies and kittens are growing up together and playing nice, having fun, and making huge strides forward in changing the conversation and their companies' results. That's what I'm talkin' about! (or we should be).

Register now to hear Barry present the latest research about sales and marketing alignment: Using Marketing's Insights to Close More Deals Faster.

There are many new features for marketer to check out in the Summer 09 release of Salesforce.com.  You will know you are using Summer 09 because the image next to the Salesforce logo at the upper left of your screen will change from a frog to a sailboat.  Once you see this new image, the new features will be available to you.  The changes for marketing are diverse, spanning from report improvements to campaign functionality.  Release notes and details of the release can be found at http://www.salesforce.com/community/summer09 and are grouped with the Sales Cloud enhancements. 

Some of my favorite new features are:

Campaign Member Fields in Email Templates is great because you can put an email template in Salesforce for your sales team to use that references a field from a campaign, which could never be done before.  To set up email templates, click Setup |Communication Templates | Email Templates.

After July 2009, you can create Custom Fields on Campaign Member Records. For example, you can create fields that tracks event-specific responses like RSVP status, the offer that was responded to, seating charts, or food preferences. Your organization can create up to 500 custom fields. And you can also include campaign member custom fields in reports.  This is made possible with the Campaign Member Detail Page which will be found:  Setup | Customize | Campaigns | Campaign Member | Page Layouts

Other new features include:

Auto-response email and updates are now available in Salesforce.com, which means you can set up automated emails & field updates based on campaign member behavior and attributes using workflow rules.  You will do this in coordination with your administrator by creating workflow rules.  These can be tricky, so make sure you read about workflows prior to getting started.  Once you are ready to create these rules, go to Setup | Create | Workflow & Approvals | Workflow Rules in Salesforce.com to get started. 

You can also now take your Visualforce pages and make them externally facing to create websites and landing pages using Force.com Sites.  Salesforce will be doing a developer presentation on the topic of using Sites on June 22^nd.  You can register for it here. 

New email enhancements include the ability to create email addresses like sales@yourdomain.com.  The sender can then select the from address that the email will arrive from.  This may be useful for internal sales associates who may send an email from the sales person, or a marketer who wants to send an email from sales.  This needs to be improved though, as this feature cannot be used in mass emails or workflows (so a nurturing email sent by Salesforce.com could not arrive from a selected email).

Chart Analytics 2.0:

There have been lots of enhancements to the chart analytics in Salesforce.  Below is a summary of the new enhancements, which may be very useful to marketers who struggle with current charting functionality in the system.  My favorite change is the new funnel chart.  One example of how to use this is to create a funnel chart to graphically illustrate your opportunity stages. 

• New chart types: donut and funnel
• New chart colors, and styling for shading, highlights, title, legend, and axes
• New data label options to show values, total, and percentages
• New label truncation behavior (truncates the right side rather than the middle)
• New option to show the legend on the chart for pie, donut, and funnel charts
• New maximum title and text font size: to minimize text overflow, 18 point is the largest
• Better decimal-place precision for numeric and currency values displayed on charts
• Better handling when there is no data or other errors are encountered
• Better placement of pie chart labels to avoid overlap 

For you to use the new reports, you must upgrade to the new charting engine by doing the following:

Click Setup | Customize | Reports & Dashboards | User Interface Settings. | Click Enable.  Then confirm your choice by clicking Yes, Enable New Charting Engine.

What I love about the new release is that marketers now have new options.  If they are very technical or have access to Salesforce administrators and/or developers they can start creating more robust campaigns inside their CRM.  Marketers with less resources or less time can now take advantage of features like campaign specific fields inside Salesforce, while utilizing marketing automation tools like Marketo to create landing pages, sales alerts/tasks, and robust nurturing campaigns in minutes.  Either way, it's a win for marketers!

Years ago a successful sales representative knew how to optimize their time by ‘reading’ their prospects.  A quick phone call would be made to colder opportunities, while a day would be spent golfing with a good bet.  The key to the salesperson’s success was interpreting the signals of their prospect, allowing them to focus their time when it was needed most, at pivotal moments during the buying process with those most likely to buy. 

But then things changed, as buyers started to research their purchases online, preventing the sales rep from deciphering the buyer’s intention from their physical actions.  So sales professionals reacted, spending their time pouring over online data, trying to understand what made a good buyer.   Because it was difficult to tell which online behaviors were part of the buyer’s decision path, sales couldn’t just focus their energy where there would be the biggest payoff.  And when they did reach the buyer, it was often after they had made much of their decision, leaving the sales rep to negotiate price and mail out a contract.  Marketing tried to help by scoring leads and only passing the ones that met certain criteria, but this still meant a heavy burden for sales, who had to look through pages of online data for the leads that were given to them. 

Sales is now ready to take back some of the control, with the evolution of social selling.   Social selling is the use of web 2.0 technologies merged with traditional sale strategies, enabling sales to prioritize their time again, and help serve as experts in the product selection process instead of just serving as negotiators.  But there are many misconceptions about its use. 

While sales may not go back to days on the golf course, with social selling they are able to go back to prioritizing their time, focusing on the qualified leads that will be the biggest sales earlier in the buying process.  This will not only cause for increased success, but increased margins and shorter sales cycles, making their contributions evident to the entire organization. 

Modern B2B Marketing is a new, technical, and constantly evolving way of marketing that allows for measurable campaigns results and has created the need for marketing ROI measurement.  But while the way we are doing marketing is now quantifiable, it is also highly dependent on the creativity of those in the field.  Marketers today are challenged to be more creative than ever, as they need to find out-of-the-box ways to implement lead generation programs, create viral messages, and build links.  Modern marketers must be right and left brained, and able to switch between the two seamlessly, though I suspect this is often what attracts successful marketers to the field.  The rush of creating campaigns and watching them produce revenue for an organization is powerful, and is what often pushes us on. 

But creativity is sometimes hard to capture.  And marketers must learn methods to think of new ideas that are going to continue to be the spark in their campaigns.  For forty ways to help do this I would like to recommend Hugh MacLeod’s new book, Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity.  You may not recognize Hugh by name, as he is better known for his blog GapingVoid.com, which features his quirky cartoons that are the size of business cards (like the one pictured below).  In this quick read, he describes his path to cartoon success from his start in New York City’s intense world of advertising.  His advice is sometimes harsh and cynical, but is based off of real examples, and can be implemented by anyone in any industry. 

Hugh MacLeod- GapingVoid.com

Hugh is a great resource for marketers, as he has been very successful in use of social media and blogs to promote his cartoons and book.

My favorite part of the book, and one that applies so well to marketing, is about allowing your work to age with you.  He points to an old adage that suggest, many people who claim to have 20 years of experience, may really only have one year’s experience, repeated twenty times.   I know you can think of marketers that this applies to, as I know the marketing industry still has many that are resistant to online marketing or hesitant to move from advertising’s traditional ad based revenue model.  To avoid being one of these people, Hugh suggests going with the flow, changing with the times, and most importantly, avoiding those who are worrying about change instead of making it.  

For the other 39 ways, you’ll have to grab Hugh’s book, “Ignore everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity”, which can be ordered now for delivery on its release date of June 11^th.  Haven't ordered the book yet?  One lucky commenter to this post will be randomly selected to receive a free copy, so let me know what your key to creativity is, why you want the book, or just say hi.

"Visceral design refers primarily to that initial impact, to its appearance. Behavioral design is about look and feel -- the total experience of using a product. And reflection is about ones thoughts afterwards, how it makes one feel, the image it portrays, the message it tells others about the owner's taste."

Recently, I read an article about the Ten Small Business Lead Nurturing Tools after a search on Twitter Search. I found the title curious, since I only use one lead nurturing tool, and upon reading the article realized that many small and medium (and even large) companies are purchasing anywhere from 2-10 tools to do what one marketing automation system can do.

It made me think how hard it must be for a small business to operate when having to use so many different systems. Using different tools for email, landing pages, lead scoring, and auto-replies causes inefficiencies from time lost during vendor discovery and selection and the time to duplicate information in multiple systems. In addition, there is value lost from not having the different systems talk to each other. Then I thought about the literal cost small businesses faced when using multiple tools, since it must get expensive to use so many, and how much use of the tools must be wasted because of the time it took to do a separate program in each one.

In days past, when all that was available to small companies was piecemealing these types of systems together or using a large enterprise system with costs upwards of $15,000 a month (or more), I understood the need for this time consuming approach. But now, after using products like Marketo that start at less than a sixth of that cost, I realized that the time for this effort is gone.

Even if the cost for a holistic marketing solution is slightly more than a small or medium business’s current solutions, which is often not the case, the benefit from the integration should prove its return many times over very quickly. This is because the real power in these tools is not in the ability to score, email, or auto-reply, but instead, from the ability to see all the actions of the prospect, and how they interact with you, and then be able to adjust your message (and timing of that message) to them based on their previous actions. When using multiple systems this is impossible, which makes all marketing decisions based off of them in the future risky since the marketer isn’t working on complete data.

As we are almost half way through 2009, I encourage marketers to look at what they have spent on utilizing multiple systems and what return was achieved from all this time and cost. Now compare those costs to the cost of utilizing a marketing automation system. Add in the additional benefit of not having to interact with IT constantly to make landing pages, and the savings from having to hire a designer every time you want to create an email. When you look at the additional return your organization will achieve because of the increase in sales and the ability to shorten your sales cycle and reduce sales efforts, it is easy to see why you should immediately implement a marketing automation solution.