MARKETING AUTOMATION / MARKETO + SALESFORCE INTEGRATIONS

MARKETING
Traditional marketing is characterized by product, price, placement, and promotion (the four Ps). Promotion includes public relations, sales promotion, personal selling, and advertising. Philadelphia retail pioneer John Wanamaker is attributed with the quote, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” This traditional view of promotion has been up-ended with 21st-century digital transformation and a proliferation of devices. 538 reports that marketers are moving beyond cookies on a prospective customer’s browser, enabling them to capture information about the browser for the purpose of identifying a user’s presence. In the article, Princeton researcher noted, “fingerprinting is so effective is that even if you have a device that you think is identical to the device of the person sitting next to you, there are going to be a number of differences in the behavior of your browser.”
WEB ANALYTICS
With the modern web, it is possible to measure where dollars are wasted and when a marketer realizes a return-on-investment (ROI). This enables spend optimization. Google advises analysts to look at various website metrics: Audience session on a weekly basis, comparing new visitors to returning visitors each week, demographics (including age and gender), sources of web traffic (channel grouping), page tracking, average session duration, tracking conversions (from prospects to paying customers), event tracking (to see if some trigger matters more than others for certain prospects), and cost analysis. These KPIs were required to open the door to marketing automation, both technically and philosophically. Having detailed information about each user as well as aggregated results is what makes marketing automation possible. Real world data informs the use of triggers, which are based on business rules (if/then scenarios).
AUTOMATION OF MARKETING PROCESSES
Many organizations already have customer relationship management (CRM) software to aid in personal selling. A growing number are using more software and fewer people to mass-customize lead nurturingGartner defines Marketing Automation (MA) as “a system that helps marketers execute multichannel marketing campaigns by providing a scripting environment for authoring business rules and interfaces to a variety of third-party applications.” MA software features include sales integration, data management, website enablement, inbound capture, external campaigns, content management, lead scoring, as well as measurement reporting & analytics. Some MA vendors also have email marketing, landing page creation, and social media management. HubSpot warns that automation has led many marketers with limited budgets to buy email lists rather than generate leads online with content relevant to web surfing buyers.
BEYOND THE TRANSACTION
Enterprise Value Integration (EVI) adds value to Marketing Automation tools by going beyond marketing and sales. It is not enough to generate a transaction and then upsell. Total lifetime value (TLV) requires brand loyalty. EVI focuses on building brand loyalty by more consistently executing business processes that support brand promise(s). EVI also introduces methods and systems that allow marketers to track the total lifetime profitability (TLP) of each customer based on their consumption of resources through each business process. EVI represents a significant breakthrough for teams in finance, marketing, IT and PBM. EVI’s approach to integration involves enabling software algorithms to work in concert; data to be normalized and shared across the enterprise; for user interfaces to be designed with simplicity and elegance; and financial metrics to be assigned to each prospect/customer from the point where they are first entered into the CRM.
CRMsearch observed “sales literature or inexperienced marketing software salespeople can suggest that due to Marketo’s strong ease of use that technical resources are not necessary. This is false.” A technical administrator is required for setup and implementation for tasks such as web domain and email management, landing page forms integration, Salesforce integration, JavaScript tags. Many clients have complained that the company does not have enough personnel or partners to support the demand from new and existing clients with its “jump start” professional services, which slows-down the initial roll-out. EVI offers on-site implementation consulting to fill this void.

MASS PERSONALIZATION + PREDICTIVE INTELLIGENCE

In 2004, Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA) pioneered the concept of Account-Based Marketing (ABM) to aide marketers in moving beyond generic sales pitches and focus on the essential needs of their highest-priority clients. ABM consists of four principles:  1. It starts with a focus on solving client problems;  2. Next, marketing and sales collaborate in order to take an integrated approach;  3. ABM is based on long-term thinking and growth based on trusted relationships;  4. Personalization is realized through tailored programs, content, and campaigns to drive interest and engagement.

In many ways, ABM was a vision that is still being realized as the capabilities of technologies are expanded and marketers earn the budgets and authorities to move beyond traditional marketing. Marketo offers ABM through the application of rudimentary artificial intelligence (AI). Marketo’s ContentAI crawls a client’s website and automatically identifies their media assets, such as videos, white papers, case studies, and blog posts. Based on the initial results, the client can select which content gets recommended. Use machine learning and predictive analytics to automatically put the most relevant content in front of each person across multiple channels, particularly the web, mobile, and email platforms. Marketo promises to get more ROI from client’s existing content. Clients can leverage content consumption, profiles, and behavioral patterns to learn which content works best for each person, moving them through their journey from prospect to customer more rapidly. Enterprise Value Integration focuses on building a sustainable path from a customer to a loyal and profitable customer.

EVI starts by defining what a stage and a trigger mean in the context of a given industry and with a particular client. It is vital to do this in a collaborative environment between sales and marketing. The team can map out and clearly define exactly what happens on a whiteboard. This can be converted into an RCM flow chart or model. The transitions and rules can then in entered into a table before building Program and Campaigns to manage the stages.

BUSINESS PROCESS MODELING (RULES + WORKFLOW)

Business Analysts use the acronym BPM to describe the discipline of creating business rules and modeling workflows that can be executed online and offline. Marketo is part of the proliferation of acronyms with the term Revenue Cycle Model (RCM), which is a subset of BPM applied to marketing and sales. It is part of the Marketo Lead Management (MLM) application and sibling to Revenue Cycle Explorer (RCE) and Revenue Cycle Analytics (RCA). RCE is an add-on (incurring additional fees) Business Intelligence (BI) tool that is helpful in “running certain large pivot tables and especially analyzing the Funnel, which is where RCM comes in,” according to Josh Hill. Then there is the Success Path Analyzer, which functions when Lifecycle and RCM are both enabled. Hill notes “this is what the sales team uses to sell you on Marketo. They forget to tell you the amount of work required to use it.”

RCM is built on additional acronyms, such as MAL, MQL, SAL, and SQL. A Marketing Accepted Lead (MAL) has been qualified based on demographic scoring, both as a good fit and interested on some level. A Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) is likely to have a positive conversation with Sales and have been qualified based on behavioral scoring. A Sales Accepted Lead (SAL) have moved beyond the realm of marketing and machines to a salesperson or lead qualifier. They have been contacted or are at the stage in the process in which they are about to be contacted, so they are “suspects,” in the traditional parlance of sales. A Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) show real opportunity with an estimated dollar amount and a closing timeframe. These would be otherwise known as “prospects.”

Each sales organization needs a brand buying model that is supported by a lead scoring model. EVI works with clients to customize and integrate these efforts. Lead fit, lead interest, lead behavior, as well as buying stage and timing are vital to scoring each lead. For example, marketers can assign higher lead scoring values to actions like registering for a webinar or downloading gated content, while assigning lower values to introductory behaviors like clicking through blog posts. Lead behavior requires little in the way of special data on leads.

LEAD MANAGEMENT (SCORING + NURTURING)

Organizations with a mandate to scale revenue are using automated lead nurturing as a way to more accurately predict the quantity and quality of leads in the sales pipeline. Our research shows that many companies over-invest in hiring sales staff when there are not enough qualified leads to give them. According to Marketo, on average, 50 percent of the leads in any system are not yet ready to buy. EVI has found that it is essential to keep leads actively engaged, but they will make purchasing decisions on their own timeline. Marketo defines lead nurturing as “the process of developing relationships with buyers at every stage of the sales funnel, and through every step of the buyer’s journey. It focuses marketing and communication efforts on listening to the needs of prospects, and providing the information and answers they need.” Marketo asserts that companies that apply best practices of lead nurturing generate 50 percent more sales-ready leads at a 33 percent lower cost. The Annuitas Group research found that nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads.

Top performing sales executives pay close attention to the timing of the buyer. Marketo notes “scoring for buying stage helps determine where a buyer is within the brand’s sales model. One way to score buying stage is to align behaviors with the top, middle, or bottom of your sales funnel. Attach higher scores to clicks on pricing sheets and product demos.”

 

Marketo has five types of users as default roles. An Admin is required to begin the configuration and give other people permissions. They include Analytics user, Marketing user, Standard user, and Web Designer. The admin can create Custom roles for others, which may provide limited access and functionality. An Admin can also set up an approval process so that someone else needs to review, edit or approve the work of a user. For example, a Marketing user may want to approve the work of a Web Developer.

CONFIGURATION OPTIONS

Marketo does not offer a free trial directly to prospective clients on its website. It does have a network of partners who can configure a free trial, but the consultants charge for their services. Marketo has “bundles” for different pre-configured modules for companies with narrow or specific needs. The Lead Management bundle may be a good bundle for a small or medium-size business (SMB) to start the down the path toward scalability because it nurtures buyers who meet the ideal profile of brand users. Marketo’s PRO bundle includes fifteen (15) modules: Digital Ads, Content AI, Program (Campaign) Analysis, API / Integrations, Additional Marketing & Sales Users, Customer Engagement Engine, Lead Scoring, Segmenting & Nurturing, Search Engine Optimization, Email, Landing Pages & Forms, Social Marketing, Events, and Webinars, A/B Testing, Sales Intelligence, CRM Integration, Campaign Dashboards and Reports, and Marketing Calendar. Its ELITE bundle adds Anonymous Retargeting, Opportunity Influence Modeler, Revenue Modeler, Success Path Analyzer, and Advanced Report Builder, which are helpful for medium-sized businesses that aspire to scale to the enterprise level.

In addition to the Lead Management bundle, Marketo sells four other bundles, including various Email Marketing bundles, enabling companies to build long-term customer relationships with meaningful conversations at scale. Mobile Marketing is engineered to weave mobile experiences into campaigns.  Consumer Marketing is designed to grow lifetime value by engaging consumers across channels. Customer Base Marketing enables revenue generation teams to engage existing clients across channels to deepen relationships over time. Enterprise Value Integration (EVI) focuses on long-term profitability of each customer, not just from the revenue side, but from re-engineering and optimizing internal business processes and IT systems to deliver what customer need. Prospective clients may use the EVI Value Calculator to measure the likely impact of these initiatives.

Integration is a common method to leverage the capabilities and strengths of different software vendors to realize the vision and strategy of a client’s brand. Marketing Automation needs to be integrated with CRM software to get the most out of both. Integration of Salesforce and Marketo are requested by many of our clients.

Marketo has integration methods with CRM vendors. It works with Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics and is designed to create what Marketo describes as a “closed-loop, seamless connection” between either CRM system and Marketo. Marketo runs two-way syncing every five minutes.

INTEGRATING CRM WITH MARKETING AUTOMATION

Salesforce has made a number of acquisitions in recent years, attempting to offer a suite of marketing automation features. Pardot is one example. Although Pardot’s base price is 12% more than Marketo, it is pre-integrated with Salesforce. Oliver Sholder is with Idealist Consulting and feels that kiosk mode for events makes Pardot better. He describes this as “any event where your organization is using one device (like a tablet) to enter prospect information through a Pardot form. This allows for event attendees to sign up without the device being tracked.”Rebecca Graves with SpotOn feels Marketo is better for sophisticated email users. She notes, “Marketo’s email tool allows for a little more depth, providing templates and a WYSIWYG editor. That can be a bonus or a curse, depending on your comfort zone with basic coding.” Graves also feels Marketo reports are more useful, which are built into Marketo. Pardot taps into third-party reporting functions, so there can be glitches. Given that Marketo is not part of a CRM, it requires integration. In addition to native integrations for Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Marketo also has non-native integrations for SugarCRM, SAP Cloud for Sales, Netsuite (part of Oracle), and Oracle Marketing Cloud.

To integrated Marketo with Salesforce, enter your CRM credentials and all your custom objects and fields are synced automatically. A user can add a lead in either system and Marketo ensures both systems are updated. Modify fields or objects to your CRM framework and they are automatically updated in Marketo.

 

NATIVE INTEGRATION

Native integrations are simpler because custom engineering is not required and are often free, compared to non-native, which often entails more time and money. According to Bedrock Data, “native integrations are highly contextual to its native system. If you don’t have complicated sales and marketing operations processes or a great deal of custom objects, the native integration will likely meet your immediate point-to-point integration needs.” Marketo has native sync connector to Salesforce. It syncs to your custom objects in Salesforce, which produce these sense of relational database capabilities. Inga Romanoff explained, “connection is via SOAP API and provides flexibility to establish data schema sync, select levels of access, and required field-level security.” These include standard configuration syncs read/write access four key objects. One example of an object is ‘Opportunity.’ Workato’s Hannah Herman noted, “the bigger challenge is cases where the out-of-the-box connector does not work— usually, these are use cases that involve automating processes around those integrations or expanding those workflows to include other apps, or if you have multiple instances of Salesforce or Marketo.”

Permission is the foundation of 21st Century branding and marketing. This means your content has to offer relevant value to the recipient of the marketing. What is of value to one prospect may be irrelevant to another. Marketo’s Engagement Programs are easier when you need to evolve the content. As a marketer better understands the target audience or market segment, content should evolve.

ENGAGEMENT PROGRAMS vs. SMART CAMPAIGNS

As a reminder, “Programs” in Marketo are similar to “Campaigns” in Salesforce but quite different than Smart Campaigns in Marketo. Engagement Programs (EP) are more of a library of assets, so they have no automation. They are containers that can include related assets, such as emails, landing pages, forms, lists, smart lists, and smart campaigns. This container usually corresponds to a Marketing campaign. Admins or marketers should never create a smart campaign outside of a program. Smart campaigns are each distinct, so reporting can be a problem if a single manager has to generate reports for each. Admins and marketers can take advantage of the EP Stream Performance Report to see the performance analytics of all of the email assets within your engagement program in one centralized place. Marketo’s Campaign REST APIs provide basic capabilities to manage Smart Campaign execution. This includes scheduling batch campaigns and requesting / activating / deactivating trigger campaigns.

Dan Stevens explained, “the only time we will use an Email Program is when we want to do automated A/B testing (and we have a large enough audience) or for some of our [company’s] internal campaigns that we know will only be sent once on a regular cadence.” Balkar Singh has more extensive use of email. Singh notes, “while we can set up the campaigns to send the emails, engagement programs have the ability to drag-drop content, and provide quick insights on engagement scores, leads who are in particular casts, next scheduled casts etc. You can keep on adding content to streams as drag and drop but can’t customize it with as much flexibility as with standard smart campaigns.”

Jupiter Research has found relevant emails drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails. Email marketing remains a direct line to communicate with a single person or many in a campaign. According to research by Merkle, 74% of consumers prefer to receive commercial communications via email. Direct Marketing Association has found email marketing has a return-on-investment (ROI) of 4,300%.

EMAIL AS PART OF A CONTENT MARKETING CAMPAIGN

Found in the AppExchange, Sales Insights is an on-demand sales management and sales professional empowerment toolset that allows you get more revenue from existing resources. Emails sent from Sales Insight in Salesforce make an API call to Marketo which then sends separate emails out to each lead through the Marketo servers. An Admin or Marketer can send an email to multiple leads using Salesforce Sales Insight and the open and click activities will be tracked for each lead separately. Enterprise Value Integration goes beyond the technical dimension of integration by focusing on content and results.

Jupiter Research advises that effective email marketing consists of five points: Relevant, Conversational, Coordinated, Strategic, and Trusted. A smart opt-in process sets up accurate expectations, which means your content will be well-received in a prospect’s inbox — making it Trusted. The days of email “blasts” are over. Segment your audience as much as possible, and send small, highly-relevant campaigns — making them Relevant. It the email is written as a normal person would write one, it is more likely that the recipient will respond. A Conversational email asks questions and encourages a dialogue. It should be tied into other communication platforms, such as social media. Coordination is vital to stay on message and stay relevant with each user’s needs. Strategic email must be measurable, going beyond opens and click-through-rates. Measuring and reporting on return-on-investment (ROI) is essential.

MOBIFY / MARKETO CASE STUDY

Mobify is a digital experience platform for building modern, customer-first shopping experiences through Progressive Web Apps (PWA), Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), and native apps.

CHARLES SCHWAB / CASE STUDY

Schwab is one of the largest financial institutions in the U.S. and provides a full range of securities, brokerage, banking, money management, and financial advisory services through its operating subsidiaries.

LEANDATA / CASE STUDY

LeanData adds value to CRMs. They claim to enable sales people close more deals and drive more revenue, faster by aligning marketing and sales with accurate matching, routing, and trustworthy attribution.

GE HEALTHCARE / CASE STUDY

General Electric is a multinational conglomerate. Its healthcare group manufactures, finances and distributes diagnostic imaging agents and radiopharmaceuticals used in medical imaging procedures.

MARKETING AUTOMATION (Marketo)

- David Everly

In January 2023 we made an API-related enhancement to the Admin UI and  are making two announcements.  See the full list of updates below. Admin UI Bulk Lead Extract We have enhanced the Marketo Engage Admin UI to allow you to view the Bulk Extract API daily capacity allocation for your subscription.  In addition, you … Continue reading "January 2023 Updates"

The post January 2023 Updates appeared first on Marketo Developers.

- Kenny Elkington

Beginning with the 2022.R2 release, currently scheduled for the week of March 24th 2023, the Adobe Marketo Engage Forms Asset APIs will consistently return only the name of the form without a prefixed program name, regardless of whether the form is a child of a program or not.  This change will make the Forms API’s … Continue reading "Upcoming change to Marketo Forms REST API"

The post Upcoming change to Marketo Forms REST API appeared first on Marketo Developers.

- David Everly

In October 2022 we are enhancing existing REST APIs.  See the full list of updates below. Lead APIs Bulk Lead Import We have enhanced the Bulk Lead Import API to support adding Leads to Sales Persons records during the import process.  This is done by including the externalSalesPersonId field in the import file. Defect Resolutions … Continue reading "October 2022 Updates"

The post October 2022 Updates appeared first on Marketo Developers.

- David Everly

In August 2022 we are enhancing existing REST APIs.  See the full list of updates below. Lead APIs Bulk Program Member Extract We have added several new filters that can be used when calling Create Export Program Member Job endpoint.  Note that many of the filters can be used in combination with each other to … Continue reading "August 2022 Updates"

The post August 2022 Updates appeared first on Marketo Developers.

- David Everly

In May 2022 we are enhancing existing REST APIs, and resolving several defects.  See the full list of updates below. Lead APIs Companies, Opportunities, and Sales Persons We have added the ability to retrieve Company, Opportunity, and Sales Persons records when either SFDC Sync or Microsoft Dynamics Sync are enabled in your Marketo Engage instance. … Continue reading "May 2022 Updates"

The post May 2022 Updates appeared first on Marketo Developers.

DIGITAL EXPERIENCE (Adobe)

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CRM (Pardot + Salesforce)

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MARKETING PROCUREMENT (by GEP)

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