Capterra, a software directory website, recently released the results of a research study comparing the popularity of various Marketing Automation vendors.  The comparison focused on available stats from Alexa, Compete, Google and Twitter data as well as some user data.   While top marks went to familiar companies such as Eloqua, Hubspot and Infusionsoft (all NeoMarketing Partners), I was concerned

It seems all that I’ve been posting lately have been about conferences, well, here’s another   I wrote about other sponsored roadshows like this one which provide you the opportunity to receive strong thought leaders to you as well as offer an opportunity to network. KUDOS to 1) event planners for making this happen and 2) those on the road at each conference.   

Silverpop, my former alma mater, hosted an informative event here in their hometown of Atlanta as the next to the last stop of the tour. Hosted at the Intercontinental Hotel, the meeting rooms where in close proximity to each other.  It was nice to catchup with former colleagues who are new friends as well as new faces at Silverpop and Atlanta marketers. 

I arrived a bit early and had the opportunity to reintroduce myself  with Adam Stienberg (@adams472) co-founder of PlacePunch, Silverpop’s newest acquisition.  The company offers a location-based loyalty program platform via the common social networks.   This is a differentiating new social offering on top of social sign-in (via janrain) and the Share-to-Social feature introduced by the company in October 2008.  Great offering for their B2C base.  I was told that Adam’s preso on the usage of location-based marketing was one of the B2C crowd’s favorite. Congratulations Adam and Chris.

So I attended the Pardot Users Conference in Atlanta, GA.   Users conferences, when well done as this one, can really boost confidence in the system and provide a great opportunity for face-to-face time. When I arrived, there were a sea of smiling Pardot folks in grey shirts guiding us around and answering questions. The W Hotels are trendy and the event venue for the conference here was no exception.

My knowledge of Pardot was limited, but engaging two new of our clients who are users, there was no greater motivation to get up to speed quickly.  Also with the chance to get to know another marketing tech company and it’s product, I was very much looking forward to the event.

For those of you new to Pardot,

New Perspectives

There are lots on-going about marketing and sales alignment. However, as marketing begins to recapture the role as an operational center of an organization, marketing will need to look beyond the revenue silo to increasingly learn and leverage support from other parts of the organization.   In this “new perspectives” series, we’ll explore how marketing operations will impact other parts of the organization:

I’m a huge Seth Godin fan and hope to be as inspired as his writings demonstrate.    If you haven’t already, I suggest buying his book “Permission Marketing“.  His notions back in 1999 spawned what we know about marketing today.    This and another book “The Quiet Revolution in Email Marketing” Bill Nussey of Silverpop (my former CEO) helped transform me from an HTML dabbler geek to understanding that the new method of marketing/selling is buyer centric, rational and methodical.

Seth’s latest blog post, discusses a different perspectives on the usual “light” analytics provided by webmasters.  The six elements are broken down into two categories:

1) Revenue items require good funnel metrics.
2) Cost elements will require insights with the help of IT and good marketing finance.

Seth mentions that you can use these metrics to explain successful vs. unsuccesful company websites, however if well defined, you should be able to take these metrics to compare the “truth” behind one campaign vs. another.

While spending any time in this space, you’ve probably stumbled upon a variety of operational and technological themes.  In building and maintaining a sales/marketing ecosystem, there are many moving parts to consider. 

Here are a few common areas of focus we face:

I had the opportunity to attend the Marketo Revenue Rockstar (#RocktheRev) event at the W Hotel (you know the one where the elevators make you disco) in downtown Atlanta.   This was my first encounter with Marketo live… Here’s what I had hoped to get out of the session:

As many of you have come to learn, Steve Jobs has passed today at 56. He was not only a true innovator (317 patents as of April ’11), but an inspiration.

The world is undoubtedly a smaller place due to computing and the Internet, but it was Steve Jobs who helped accelerate the empowerment of people to leverage them in our daily lives.

“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.” – Pericles

Thank you Steve for you vision. You’ve left a wonderful legacy.