Closing Marketing Sales Gap2

8/6/2019 Closing Marketing Sales Gap2

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MarketingAutomation 2.0Closing the Marketing and Sales Gap with aNext-Generation Collaborative Platform



MARKETING AUTOMATION 2.0 - Closing theMarketing and Sales Gap with a Next-Generation Collaborative Platform 2

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Contents

Executive Summary

Defining Marketing Automation 2.0

Marketing Automation 1.0: Current Challenges

Marketing Automation 2.0 – Next-Generation

Solution Characteristics

Marketing Automation 2.0 Architecture

Benefits of Marketing Automation 2.0

Conclusion




Executive Summary

The birth of marketing automation in the mid-

90’s can be termed as a significant milestone

both for B2B Companies and for B2B

marketers. With a number of players in this

space the industry has slowly but steadily won

itself a lot of believers. Websites which were

once considered online company brochures

were transformed into lead generating

platforms. Visitors to a website were distinctly

classified into leads, prospects and sales-ready, each getting a different level of nurturing

and personal attention, based on their stage in

the overall sales cycle.

In the words of Laura Ramos, VP and Principal

Analystat Forrester Research, “The benefits of

adopting Lead Marketing Automation are

clear:B2B marketers that successfully carry out

lead management practices enjoy more

predictable conversions, faster sales cycles,

“

”

campaign automation, when done in a vacuum, isnot very meaningful, since there is no integration

with the other moving parts within the overallmarketing and sales process.

and real alignment between marketing activity

and sales results. While leading vendors like

Eloqua, Marketo, and Silverpop drive results

through improved marketing and sales

productivity, no technology supplier is yet in a

breakaway position.”

This quote summarizes the current state of the

Existing marketing automation is all about

automating the process within the marketing

departments to set up and measure online

marketing campaigns. However, marketing

campaign automation, when done in a vacuum,

is not very meaningful, since there is no

integration with the other moving parts within

Marketing Automation industry. Companies

which use this technology have, to a large

extent, have not yet fully translated the true

potential of Marketing Automation industry.


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Executive Summary

the overall marketing and sales process. In

that sense, the existing marketing automation

business segment is ripe for disruption.

On the other hand, Marketing Automation 2.0 is

all about 'collaboration' leveraged to produce

leads and accelerate the marketing and sales

process at multiple levels. Rather than existing

in silos, marketing, sales, channels, and

partners can all share a unified 'opportunity

view', establish a more productive deal-flow,

and drive success as measured in leads

converted to sales opportunities.

In this paper we describe the advantages

and capabilities of the next-generation

Marketing Automation 2.0 platform, which is

built on the basics of the Web 2.0 world. It is a

platform which derives intelligence and delivers

analytics in real –time. It seamlessly integrates

all activities from the time a lead is identified

until a deal is closed, all on a unified platform.

It is capable of determining a website visitor’s

interests and buying intent, and can not only

analyze and report the ROI of marketingcampaigns, but also repeatedly provide a

complete return on investment its users.

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Marketing Automation 2.0 is an advanced

and integrated software platform designed for

inside sales, sales, marketing and web

optimization. It goes beyond demand generation

and workflow automation while providing insight

into a website visitor's intent, deriving actionable

intelligence to convert a visitor into a qualified

lead and subsequently into an opportunity. Itbridges the gap between sales and marketing to

drive sales success. MA 2.0 also uses effective

collaboration methodologies and analytics,

provides a holistic view of each prospect, and

enables sharing and up-sell opportunities within

communities across an organization's internal

and external networks.

Marketing Automation 2.0 provides one platform

and one data set for different internal

departments and outside partners, including

sales, marketing, management, web dev team,

inside sales and channel partners. It then

layers collaboration on top of this, increasing

the 3V's in the lead generation process-

Velocity of leads (faster pace of lead

generation), Volume of Leads (higher quantityof leads) and Value (Higher return on

investment).

To understand why Marketing Automation 2.0

represents a quantum leap in capabilities,we

need to first understand the limitations ofthe

current generation of marketing automation

platforms…Marketing Automation 1.0.

Defining Marketing

Automation 2.0

Defining Marketing

Automation 2.0





Current ChallengesMarketing Automation 1.0:

Incomplete capture of prospect information

Most the existing marketing automation solutions can find anonymous visitors on a website and, based

on their activities on the website such as downloading a whitepaper, or requesting a demo etc., can

shortlist which lead is considered good enough to be sent to the sales team for further action. The

short-listed lead may be someone from a commercial organization who visited the website. Now it is

up to the marketing or sales teams to find for themselves the complete identity of this individual and

his/her employer.

The current process is time consuming and fails to provide intelligence on the interests and

requirements of the visitor. It is also unlikely that it can determine where the prospect is in the buying

cycle. Lead nurturing programs are only as good as the information that supports them. Limited onsite

visitor intelligence results in sub-optimal marketing campaigns, poor qualification of sales leads, and

lost sales opportunities.

Meaningless lead scoring

When a Marketing Automation1.0 platform captures details of all the visitors who browse anorganization’s website, lead scoring becomes an integral process of segregating the good from the

useless. It also forms the basis of future action both by the marketing and the sales teams.

Unfortunately, in the current generation platform the attitude towards lead scoring is very mechanical.

The marketing and sales teams define a good lead and then all leads are measured against this

information and prioritized on the number of ‘actions’ they performed on the website. Since the

process fails to give any actual insight into the intent of the visitor and his/her behavioral analysis, the

lead funnel gets populated with a lot of leads which may not be relevant.

“Wait and watch” lead nurturing approach

The process of lead nurturing is critical to converting a lead into a prospect, and a prospect into a sale.

This is one process which can give the organization a sense of having its lead funnel buzzing with

activity, but without any real data on when all those “leads-in-waiting” will actually convert to sales.

A successful lead nurturing program requires insight into the actual needs and requirements of the

online visitor. On this count, the current generation 1.0 platform fails. The intelligence provided is not

sufficient to develop a lead nurturing campaign which can be focused on helping the lead, by providing

him with the exact information he is seeking, and thereby hastening his decision making process.





The Marketing Automation1.0 platform is designed to wait and watch. Ensuring higher conversion

rates and shorter sales cycles, however, requires a more proactive and comprehensive approach.

Gap between marketing and sales

Marketing and sales are two beneficiaries of the same lead funnel. For both of them to succeed in their

respective roles, it is essential that they collaborate and interact in real-time. The Marketing

Automation1.0 platform has managed to bring these two important divisions of an organization closer

but has still not completely bridged the gap. Using current solutions, marketing runs lead generation

campaigns, scores the lead, nurtures it and sends it across to the sales team for further action. After

that point of connection, there is little synergy between the teams. Marketing believes that it has done it

job, and sales believes that it can manage the lead from that point forward, without any further

assistance from marketing. Both the teams are still operating in silos from a lead management

perspective

Poor collaboration and no common “view”

The process of lead nurturing is critical to converting a lead into a prospect, and a prospect into a sale.

This is one process which can give the organization a sense of having its lead funnel buzzing with

activity, but without any real data on when all those “leads-in-waiting” will actually convert to sales.

Current ChallengesMarketing Automation 1.0:

Lack of Web 2.0 integration

Web 2.0 has changed the way businesses function. Leveraging social networks and various other web

2.0 platforms is an integral part of modern day marketing campaigns. These platforms encourage

marketing, sales, partners, and customers to contribute and collaborate in real-time. These attributes

can make a significant difference on how marketing and sales teams find, nurture and pursue a lead.

This is Marketing Automation1.0’s biggest drawback. It fails to provide its users with a platform where

all the stakeholders can share, discuss, and strategize their next move…and take action their

collaborative decisions in real-time…and a major reason why existing marketing automation platforms

are reaching obsolescence.





Next-Generation Solution CharacteristicsMarketing Automation 1.0:

"Tools that monitor online activity, match visitors

against commercial databases, look up their firms

and roles, and help sales proactively chasebuyers across the Web take priority over

technology that manages demand once it comes

in the door…”- Laura Ramos

VP & Principal Analyst, Forrester Research

Solutions that focus only on lead generation and

lead management are not enough to solve the

growing challenges of an enterprise in a socially

aware world. Now a marketing automation

platform must think for its customers.

Marketing Automation 2.0 represents a solution

which uses effective collaboration methodologies

based on existing social networking platforms,

enabling sharing and up-sell opportunities within

communities across an organization's internal and

external networks. The platform primarily works

based on ‘3I’ – (Intent, Intelligence and

Integration) logic that provides teams with

sufficient information and statistics to effectively

run their lead management programs. Marketing

Automation 2.0 follows the concept of the web as

a participation platform.

There are several characteristics which are

intrinsic to a next generation, Marketing Automation 2.0 platform.

Behavior Tracking and Intent Analysis

The Marketing Automation 2.0 platform can

actually determine the interests and discern the

intent of a website visitor. It tracks the visitor’s

browsing behavior when on the site and puts

together a lead intent module, giving the

marketing and sales teams an insight into the

areas of interest for the lead. His browsing

behavior provides insight into the solution he is

seeking. Regardless of whether your visitor

fills a registration form on your website or not,

you can still find enough intelligence about his

interest and intent to qualify him.

This one feature changes everything that is

done on the Marketing Automation 2.0

platform. Lead capturing, lead scoring, lead

nurturing, and sales closures all acquire a

whole new meaning. Campaigns that are

created are not reactive, but more action-

oriented, customized to suit the requirements

of the visitor, ensuring higher responses, faster

turnarounds and shorter sales cycles.

Marketing Automation 2.0’s intent-tracking

features re-define sales pitches visitor’s

interests.






enterprise lead view. It tracks different visitors

who came to the site from the same company,their individual behavior on the site, and an

overall view on all of them together in one

place – providing information on which stage

the company is in during the decision-making

process. This capability enables marketing and sales

teams to take immediate action by establishing

instant contact over email or phone with thevisitor/visitors should they find the prospect to

be in a sales-ready stage. The process also

helps eliminate those leads which are

perceived to be good but are actually useless,

ensuring the lead funnel only has prospects

who are either sales-ready or will be sales-

ready with some bit of nurturing.

Web 2.0 Collaboration

This is the feature which makes this next

generation Marketing Automation platform truly

a “version 2.0” solution. Marketing Automation

2.0 solutions leverage existing web 2.0

platforms and social networks to provide a

Comprehensive Lead Data Collection

The Marketing Automation 2.0 platform not

only captures the anonymous leads on a

website but also completes the contact details

of the online visitor. Visitor matching is done

based on the analysis derived from the visitor’s

browsing patterns and other online behaviors.

This feature changes the way a company

views its leads and runs its follow-up

campaigns. Now the identified lead is not just

an anonymous visitor, but includes a

comprehensive set of identifiers, including

name, email, company, etc.

Integration of Lead “Views”

The MA2.0 platform seamlessly integrates all

activities involving the marketing and sales

teams in an organization….from driving leadsto the website, to making the first live

connection with a prospect. It bridges the gap

between the Marketing and Sales teams in an

organization by providing a single platform and

a single view of the captured lead.

In addition to a single lead view, the Marketing

Automation 2.0 platform also provides an






stakeholders in the lead generation, lead management and sales closure processes within a company.

Teams can now acquire rich lead intelligence and share their insights in real–time. They can

deliberate, decide and take action, without losing any time. This critical MA 2.0 feature eliminates any

gaps between the marketing and sales teams by synchronizing all their various activities, at the same

time making them more efficient.

Marketing Automation 2.0Architecture





Benefits of Marketing Automation 2.0

1Increased Sales andMarketing Synergy

Sales and marketing disconnect is detrimental to the success of any organization. It not only reduces

the effectiveness of the marketing campaigns run by the company, but also reduces the efficiency of its

sales teams in pursuing and closing deals. Existing marketing automation solutions fail to bridge this

gap because they still see the two departments passing the baton once their respective role is

completed in the overall lead management process.

A next-generation, Marketing Automation 2.0 solution with its process integration and Web 2.0 enabled

platform makes lead management a collaborative process, ensuring real-time communication between

the marketing and sales departments. Both teams gain from each other’s insights and experiences:

Sales feedback helps marketing optimize its marketing campaigns, which in turn results in better-

focused lead generation campaigns. In addition, the common lead view helps them to take action on

decisions immediately, eliminating lead-lag, and resulting in higher conversion rates.

2Better Lead Qualification and OrganizationalProductivity

Lead scoring takes on a whole new meaning with Marketing Automation 2.0. Leads are not scored

based on the number of items visitors download from the site, or the number of click-throughs. Leads

are scored based on the online visitor’s browsing behavior and inferred intent. Scoring also includes

taking into account the Individual and the enterprise’s behavior in the case of multiple people from the

same company visiting the website.

These intelligent insights, coupled with a common view of the identified leads for the sales and

marketing teams, ensure that only the good leads which have the potential of being converted to

prospects as well as closed deals stay in the system. This not only ensures a highly qualified lead line-

up but also helps the organization to optimize its resources to the maximum.





Benefits of

Marketing Automation 2.0

3Targeted Campaignswith Impact

Independent research has discovered that sales people need to have a conversation with the prospect

within 20 minutes of the prospect visiting the website, after which the chances of successfully

engaging the prospect fall dramatically. This underscores the need for communicating quickly and

effectively with a lead.The analytics provided by a Marketing Automation 2.0 platform are focused and intent driven.

Intelligence gathered gives a deep insight into the visitors buying process, including the stage of the

decision-making process. This data enables the marketing team to create customized lead nurturing

campaigns which are based on real prospect needs, rather than guess-work.Since the lead nurturing campaigns are intent-driven, they help ensure that the prospect is receiving

only relevant content and emails, increasing the likelihood that emails will be read, rather than

discarded. And greater lead intelligence makes it easier for the sales teams to create customized

pitches. Focused lead nurturing campaigns, and tailor-made pitches result in shorter sales cycles and

improved sales and marketing productivity,

4 Data Mining and Success Feedback

Companies have success stories and it pays benefits to learn from those successes so that they can

be replicated. A Marketing Automation 2.0 platform captures significantly more online visitor and

prospect data than was previously attainable. For example, online activity capture and behavior

analysis uncovers not only where the visitor browsed, but for how long, and in what sequence throughtthe website. Multiple visitors from the same company can be similarly tracked, and their behavior

aggregated into a separate analysis. Such capabilities enable companies to determine what works,

and what doesn’t work with their online marketing component. Now marketing and sales teams can

analyze their success stories, look for patterns, and based on this intelligence, create a more

predictive model which can be used for managing similar leads in the future. What you did right the

last time around can now become an automated benchmark for planning your activities across the lead

management process every time you find a prospect that fits the model. This becomes an extremely

powerful tool for the organization.




MARKETING AUTOMATION 2.0 - Closing theMarketing and Sales Gap with a Next-Generation Collaborative Platform

Benefits of

Marketing Automation 2.0

5Quantifiable MarketingSuccess

Every organization strives to maximize the return on its investments, and no more so than in today’s

challenging economic environment. Marketing, like sales, is under pressure to quantify results from

expenditures on online campaigns, PR and AR activities, advertising, and other marketing

“investments”.

A Marketing Automation 2.0 solution not only helps ensures a higher return on investment when it

comes to the money spent on the solution itself but it also helps measure the value received from other

marketing investments by a company. All types of marketing activities, including PR/AR, advertising,

and social media participation can now be measured with a Marketing Automation 2.0 solution.

If the focus of an organization’s marketing activities is lead generation, a Marketing Automation 2.0

solution can clearly inform and provide the company with a rich set of data, including which marketing

campaigns and channels brought in the maximum number of leads, and which channels did not yield

good results. These insights help a company measure its marketing spends against the leads

generated. It also helps a company to re-focus its efforts on campaigns and channels that yield them

the best results.

6 Ease of Use

Being a SaaS-based solution, the next-generation, Marketing Automation 2.0 platform does not require

a dedicated IT component in order to be deployed. Companies can largely reduce or completelyeliminate the cost associated with IT support, which represents a major cost savings for most

enterprises, especially those without dedicated IT resources.

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MARKETING AUTOMATION 2.0 - Closing the

ConclusionMarketing Automation 2.0 is the next generation solution for marketing automation, providing B2B

enterprises and marketers with a platform that is intuitive and responsive to the dynamic needs of

commercial organizations.

Marketing Automation 2.0 solution, powered by its intelligence and analytics, ensures that

organizations acquire qualified leads in their sales funnel, generate effective, customized, lead

management programs, and achieve shorter sales cycles and increased ROI. It is the only platform

which provides end-to-end integration, from designing the lead generation campaign to making a live

connection with the prospect.

And Marketing Automation 2.0 solution merges smoothly with Web 2.0 tools to collaborate with

prospects and customers on product development, service enhancement and promotion. Marketing

automation 2.0 can make defining impact for companies in multiple ways:

• Customer and Partner Analytics: Companies can set up online communities to promote

Communication between company and customer, company and partner, and customer-to-

customer, using a next-generation Marketing Automation 2.0.

About LeadFormix

LeadFormix is the leader in next-generation marketing automation, known as Marketing Automation 2.0.

LeadFormix delivers a game-changing real-time marketing automation solution for enterprises that converts

anonymous online visits into qualified sales leads, determines website visitor interest and intent, and enables

sales teams to reach decision-makers more effectively and close deals faster using patented business

intelligence and data mining technology. LeadFormix provides significantly richer lead data than any other

solution, enabling enterprise sales and marketing teams to uncover hidden opportunities, accurately identifydecision-makers, and deliver powerful, targeted, real-time responses and offers to potential customers.

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• Marketing and Sales Collaboration: Marketing departments can add value to generated leads

Generated by the marketing campaigns by providing a richer set of descriptive information,

including additional insights, research and references in real-time…which sales can utilize to

help close the sale faster.

• Finally, Marketing Automation 2.0 solves the big problem of the marketing and sales divide,

providing one unified platform and data set for different internal departments and outside

partners, including sales, marketing, company management, channel partners, customers, and

other key stakeholders.

• Website as Lead-Generation Engine: Today’s B2B websites are more complex, with greater

volumes of content and visitor interactions. Marketing can collaborate with the web development

team to ensure that the website is designed to support and optimize lead generation programs.

Closing Marketing Sales Gap2

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