"Incorporating data from Jigsaw, Demandbase, and LinkedIn, Marketo aims to empower sales with its native Force.com application." Read More »

"Selling is essentially a social profession, says Marketo CEO Phil Fernandez. Tools that help monitor customer relationships by capturing "interesting moments" — behaviors that suggest a deepening engagement or a falloff of interest — can make the sales process more streamlined and effective. " Read More »

"Unsure of the worth of a B2B tweet? That's not surprising. After all, the Twitter rage is much more of a B2C social media thing, right? Well, not according to Maria Pergolino. " Read More »

"We've spent a lot of time talking about the sales/marketing misalignment that exists at most companies, and we keep hearing from readers that this seemingly never-ending issue saps efficiency from their companies in ways that endanger the success of both sides of the equation. " Read More »

"The application, which adds tabs to the Saleforce.com interface, also provides automated rankings, including "Best Bets" and "Watch" lists. Users can set up instant alerts to be notified of status changes via e-mail or text messages. " Read More »

"Those of you who read my blog know that I'm passionate about marketing automation. Last week, I was privileged to see a preview of Marketo's 2nd product, Sales Insight, released today. I liked what I saw and think this extension to Marketo Lead Management software can help marketing and sales begin closing that alignment gap. " Read More »

"Like bread and butter or Bonnie and Clyde, marketing and sales are supposed to work better together than apart. In a perfect business, the marketers promote the brand and generate leads, while the sales crew makes contacts and closes the deals. And everyone prospers. " Read More »

"There are four basic types of lead nurturing campaigns; each type adheres to the basic philosophy that the best way to increase sales through lead nurturing is by continuously building trust and meeting the needs of your prospects through timely, relevant communications. " Read More »

"Lead scoring, when done right, can bring new power to a sales organization and make its bond with marketing much tighter. Using the intelligence gleaned from lead scoring, you might even gain new insights about your company. It takes a fundamental change in how you run your business -- how you train and deploy salespeople. " Read More »

"The first decision a prospect makes when looking at an e-mail is whether to delete it. This is where the “From” name comes in. If the e-mail comes from an unfamiliar source, the recipient is much more likely to delete it. Of course, you still need to optimize the subject line to make sure the e-mail gets opened, but it's the "From" that starts the process. " Read More »

"Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Campaign Management '09: A tough economy calls for tough, but cheaper, solutions." Read More »

"Marketo's SaaS-based marketing automation applications help businesses improve their lead-generation efforts and get their sales and marketing organizations working on the same page." Read More »

"B-to-b buyers are still people, and in the end, they buy from people and not companies," said Jon Miller (@jonmiller2), VP-marketing at b-to-b software vendor Marketo (@marketo), who uses Twitter personally and as part of his company's marketing strategy. "If you can build a relationship with a prospective buyer using Twitter before they are actively looking, you built your brand more effectively than you could with much more expensive options. The trick is to know who to follow and who to focus on for that relationship-building." Read More »

Susanne Lyons, former chief marketing officer of Visa and Charles Schwab, and an advisor to Marketo, talks about marketing and the recession. Read More »

Looking to get better traction in the market and improve its often dismal response rates, AppAssure in the third quarter of 2008 started working with Marketo, a marketing automation and lead management software provider based in San Mateo, Calif., to make some changes. Read More »

Working with Marketo, the Quaero marketing team collaborated with the sales team to define leads, create scoring models, and determine interaction strategies for different customer segments while reducing manual intervention. Boockoff-Bajdek says that now her team can respond to new leads within 48 hours with relevant content based on each lead's demographics and behavior. Read More »

"In the ideal world, Marketing and Sales would work together in a collaborative relationship, with common objectives and a shared view of the progression from contact to lead to sale. They would look beyond silo-ed systems and visions of lead generation and sales pipelines..." Read More »

"B-to-b search firm Enquiro uses Marketo to track leads in its business, using the typical incentives of white papers and webinars to attract registrations. It uses the Marketo tool to score the leads and help automate followups, said Enqurio Director of Marketing Andrew Spoeth. " Read More »

"As the buyer takes control of the purchase process, marketing’s job becomes one of synchronizing its activities with the buyer’s process to: (a) Stay top of mind; (b) build propensity for the brand; and (c) accelerate the buying cycle, if possible. Traditional “batch and blast” e-mail marketing strategies no longer cut it. Today, marketers need to think “outside the inbox” and have conversations with prospects—watching specific behaviors and reacting with the appropriate responses." Read More »

"One of the most significant impacts such systems [as Marketo's] can make is in improving the timeliness of sales contact. Many B2B prospects first visit a website long before they're ready to purchase. A good marketing automation soluton will apply best practices to keep nurturing those leads until they've reached the point where they're ready to buy. " Read More »

"Marketo software is designed by marketers, for marketers. I've had several lengthy conversations with Jon Miller, VP of Marketing, about how the company uses Marketo Lead Management to prove that marketing automation produces results by educating leads and building engaged relationships prior to sales activities. " Read More »

"What [Marketo's solution is] really doing is making sure that a company's sales team can identify Joe Customer, who's just starting to shop and clearly is still doing research, and approach him with more of a how-are-you, can-I-help-you-find-something type of contact from a sales rep. It also allows them to spot a Jane Customer, who went straight for specific products and price lists online, as a customer who needs a sales rep with a blank purchase order ready. " Read More »

"Marketo Lead Management 3.0 includes more than 200 substantial new features, which Fernandez explains are largely based on customer feedback and insight garnered from its customer discussion boards. The overall guiding theme, however, tied the company back to its roots-helping marketers build 'conversations' with their customers. " Read More »

"Companies seeking to improve the efficiency of their lead generation and lead management processes should first identify the gaps in their existing processes and most pressing needs before beginning a vendor evaluation process. But with an established platform and 200 enhancements in its new release, Marketo Lead Management 3.0 is definitely worth a look for midsize and larger enterprises who have focused internal lead management resources. " Read More »

"It wasn't an inaugural address, but Marketo and Fernandez certainly have some inspired positioning. How's 'The Last Frontier of Productivity' for ambition? Fernandez is serious about lead gen’s promise in that context." Read More »

"'Lead scoring should be an indicator of sales readiness – not of how much of a fan they are of [our company],' says Emily W. Salus, Senior Marketing Manager, CollabNet, which provides a project development collaboration platform for the software industry." Read More »

"Major themes were greater access to detailed information, more precise targeting, and tighter integration with Salesforce.com. The company also reworked the user interface--of more than 200 total changes in this upgrade, about 75 were tied to usability--although it still takes the same basic approach of building campaigns as lists of steps, rather than branching flow charts." Read More »

"As marketers, it's time to throw out the notion of simply throwing leads over the wall to sales. No one wins in that situation-marketing gets a bad reputation for generating poor leads, and sales has to devote too much time just discerning who a good person is to contact." Read More »

"Lead nurturing is a key element to successful lead generation strategies. But what makes a good lead nurturing program? Jon Miller, vice president of marketing at Marketo, highlights three points to consider when developing a lead nurturing plan." Read More »

"The software allows web-based marketing and sales teams collaborate on a single revenue cycle, turning web visitors and sales leads into customers using tools like email marketing, lead nurturing, lead scoring, sales lead insight. The software is up and running for the client within an hour, saving clients time and money." Read More »

"CSO Insights' 2008 Lead Life Cycle Optimization study found that technology is playing a larger role: 51 percent of marketing organizations are using lead management systems and 60 percent are using some form of lead scoring before passing leads to sales." Read More »

"Last week it was announced that Marketo won the Stevie Award for 'Demand Generation Program of the Year'. They submitted a case study about ShipServ, a global e-marketplace for the shipping industry (details below). Thanks to Marketo's Lead Management software, ShipServ was able to send more email campaigns in less time. As a result of that, the number of opportunities per 100 contact requests increased from 3 to 11, almost a fourfold increase.." Read More »

"We've already revived a number of leads that would have simply fallen through the cracks without Marketo," says David Politis, executive vice president and general manager at Vocalocity, "and that's led to about a significant increase in sales. This not only reflects a better number for our opportunities-to-close rate, but also means that we're converting a lot more leads into opportunities to begin with. Marketo has already paid for itself and we're expecting the numbers to keep going up." Read More »

"From my own conversations with privately held SaaS players, I can certainly confirm that business seems to be expanding with continued momentum. Yesterday I was on a call with Phil Fernandez, CEO of marketing automation vendor Marketo, when I heard a bell ring and some cheering in the background. "We ring that bell whenever someone closes a deal in the sales team," he explained. "Someone's had a good start to their day," I commented, noting it was 10am in his timezone. "That's the third time so far this morning," he replied." Read More »

"Phil Fernandez, President and CEO of Marketo, says that many companies today are not managing sales leads effectively. He suggests ways to utilize the marketing department to monitor and motivate leads and encourage them into the sales cycle." Read More »

B-to-b marketers struggling for growth in today’s economy know they need to get maximum results for their e-mail marketing efforts, but too many do not understand the critical role deliverability plays in the process of turning prospects into revenue-driving customers. Read More »

Susanne Lyons, former CMO at VISA and member of Marketo's Board of Advisors, is profiled in the Wall Street Journal's Second Acts series.Read More »

Acteva, a Marketo customer, is honored for their success in using marketing automation. "Due to the landing pages and lead nurturing campaigns that Acteva creates through Marketo, Acteva expects to see a 100% improvement in landing page conversion rates for the year."Read More »

Enhancements include an authentication and branding package, e-mail proofing, a delivery monitor, a premium certified IP address and proactive reputation management.Read More »

Antarctica Digital uses Marketo's Lead Activity Tracking solution to track customers' behaviors online to determine their interests and tailor the sales reps' conversations with them. "Because of people's behavior online, we give them the right message at the right time," says Patrick Stratton, vice president of business development for Antarctica Digital.Read More »

Susanne Lyons, former CMO at VISA and member of Marketo's Board of Advisors gives a few suggestions that may help CMOs gain credibility and make a positive difference for their firms. Read More »

"The current economy may be sluggish, but a recession is no time for B2B companies to engage in a marketing strategy slowdown. At the recent SMX (Search Marketing Expo) Advanced Conference in Seattle, Jon Miller, Co-founder and Vice President of Marketing for Marketo, provided seven strategies for B2B marketing during a downturn." Read More »

"It's always important for companies to get the most of their marketing dollars, but even more so during economic downturns. San Mateo-based Marketo Inc. has jumped into that space with a software-as-a-service play that helps marketing and sales departments automate the process of turning Web visitors and leads into customers.." Read More »

"[Marketo] provides a sequence of services intended to take online traffic from a product site, an ad or other methods where user interest can be collected, and turn it into sales. Features include the ability to create landing pages, where a user can provide information to the company about the product they're interested in." Read More »

"What I like about Lead Insight for Sales is that it's designed to work with salespeople, not make them adopt something else. We all know how tough that is. The beta version has an integration with both salesforce.com and Microsoft Outlook. But the Marketo system becomes the system of record for the lifetime of the lead." Read More »

"Today, the marketer's job is to synchronize marketing activities to the buyer's process. This means moving from a 'demand generation' mindset to one of 'demand management' or 'demand facilitation.'" Read More »

"We serve the marketing department. Broadly defined, we're in the marketing-automation space. So we help marketers fundamentally become part of a company's revenue-generating pipeline. Traditionally, the revenue pipeline starts in the sales department; that's where CRM systems got their start. We really think revenue starts in the marketing department, and our systems help marketers deliver more ready-to-buy sales leads to their sales channel and [also]... have the analytics to really prove it - to take credit, to show how marketing is impacting the top line of the company." Read More »

"Sales and marketing teams often seem like contentious relatives, fighting bitterly and avoiding contact. Beyond causing animosity, their refusals to cooperate damage business, costing companies an estimated $1 trillion in lost revenue every year. Intent on helping companies reverse missed opportunities, Marketo, a California-based management firm, offers a new on-demand product called "Lead Insight for Sales," which provides these respective groups a system for achieving cooperation." Read More »

"The problem, of course, is that sales-marketing alignment is easier said than done. And even when it's done, companies often go about it all wrong, focusing on what Miller calls "point initiatives" such as common lead definitions and better communication. Certainly, these areas are important but they don't get to the heart of the issue, says Miller. "Sales and marketing need to throw out old notions of marketing leads and sales cycles and departmental boundaries," he argues, "and focus instead on integrating marketing and sales as dual drivers of revenue." Read More »

"While technology is definitely an enabler, marketing automation software Marketo is focusing on promoting a "Revenue Revolution," in addition to its new Lead Insight for Sales release today. The lack of coordination and communication between marketing and sales has been entrenched in the cultures of many companies, resulting in nearly $1 trillion in wasted opportunities, according to Phil Fernandez, Marketo's chief executive officer. In light of that, it's going to take a revolution in thought, particularly among senior executives, before technology can ever successfully solve the problem." Read More »

"This conflict [between sales and marketing, Marketo president and CEO Phil] Fernandez said results in 70 percent of leads generated by marketing being wasted - and sales duplicating marketing's efforts by hunting for leads on its own. 'If the 20 to 40 percent of the time sales people do cold prospecting because they don't trust marketing's leads could be devoted to actually selling, we think it could release $1 trillion in revenue,' Fernandez asserted. Talk about your peace dividend." Read More »

"Lead Insight for Sales integrates with Microsoft Outlook and Salesforce.com and allows sales reps to send e-mail campaigns, track how prospects respond to marketing and sales communications, and get instant alerts when recipients open e-mails, visit a Web site or take other actions. " Read More »

"The SaaS allows marketing and sales departments to use Microsoft Outlook or Salesforce.com to send e-mail blasts to prospective leads and then track e-mail open rates, Web site hits and key buying signs instantly." Read More »

"Sales is seen as a revenue driver because sales operates in terms of positive numbers. Yet in order for marketing to align with sales and impact business as a revenue driver in its own right, marketing also needs to measure itself based on positive numbers and revenue in the door."Read More »

"We have improved a number of leads. It is the first time I am able to deliver the vice president of marketing a lead report saying, 'We generated this number of leads, this many were passed on to sales and we are seeing these types of trends.' This allows us to predict campaigns."Read More »

"That's not to say Marketo is a simple product. Functionally, it covers all the demand generation bases: outbound email, landing pages, Web site monitoring, lead scoring, multi-step nurturing programs, prospect database, analytics, Salesforce.com integration. It even adds A/B testing for landing pages, which you don't see everywhere. The depth in each area is perfectly respectable as well." Read More »

"...encourage marketing to really get on the same page as sales and to make sure it's doing its best to pass quality leads. Now that there's a number that can be identified, there's skin in the game for marketing to get that number to go up." Read More »

"Best-in-class marketers are working hard on shoring up the foundation of their lead-management processes," said IDC Research analyst Michael Gerard. "Above all, they're taking a more process-oriented approach rather than saying, "Let's get more leads and throw them over to sales." Read More »

"Even BANT criteria (budget, authority, need and timing) have limited usefulness since buyers' answers to those questions are notoriously inaccurate (only 29% of respondents always fill that information out accurately, according to MarketingSherpa). In contrast, as we all know, people's actions speak louder than their words. This means you should also track and score a lead's behavior so you can measure their interest and engagement in your solution." Read More »

"The WizKids of 2008 all take CRM solutions to the next level of ease-of-use and productivity. "Beyond the leverage of the on-demand model," Pombriant writes, "is their orientation to helping companies to present their customers a face that is easier to do business with." Read More »

"Another sign of the times is the emphasis more and more companies have on delivering solutions that make their clients easier to do business with. I have been investigating this phenomenon for a while and believe it is very understandable." Read More »

"We are the first complete software in this space that lets marketers act responsively — to build and deploy campaigns in minutes, not days or weeks." Read More »

"Nothing focuses the sales force on sales like a quota. But what does a CEO use to focus Marketing? Can Marketing really begin to source leads for Sales? And how can you really optimize the relationship between Sales and Marketing?" Read More »

"Another software company that has had significant success with free trial offers is Marketo. The marketing automation provider is now offering free trials of its lead management solution to qualified prospects." Read More »

"What if you don't have an in-house web designer or the resources to hire someone to design a landing page for every online marketing campaign? Luckily, there are online sites that help you create your own landing pages relatively easily and inexpensively. These sites don't require that you know HTML, and designing a landing page can be as easy as creating a PowerPoint slide. For example, Marketo.com offers landing page creation tools and hosting." Read More »

"Test your landing pages, but don't over test. Having too many test versions means it will take a long time to get anything even remotely looking like accurate results.. Don't pass a lead to sales before it's ready." Read More »

"Marketing is suffering from a crisis of credibility. So what can marketers do to be seen as part of a machine that drives revenue and profits, not just the people who throw parties and buy swag?" Read More »

"Did you hear the one about the VP of marketing who demanded budget and IT support for a $10 million enterprise application that he promised would revolutionize how his company did its marketing? Neither did we... Despite the fact that many marketers have as much bottom- and top-line responsibility as their counterparts in sales, finance and manufacturing, they need to be much more creative about getting the software tools they need. Enter the software-as-a-service, or SaaS, provider." Read More »

"Do your marketing and sales teams work together or against one another? In many cases, office politics may be choking your results - and your career. 80% of B-to-B marketers surveyed by MarketingSherpa last year don't receive any feedback once a lead has been passed along. Want to reverse the lead generation black hole? Here are seven strategies to get both sides talking, including how to: model the sales/marketing funnel, develop a common vocabulary, and create a closed-loop reporting process." Read More »

"For Marketo's clients, which are strictly B2B, multivariate testing is not as effective, because of sites' lower conversion rates. Unlike retail companies that sell a lot of products with lower price points, B2Bs generally make many fewer sales, but their price tags are much higher. Therefore, if a company's goal is to convert more consumers into buyers and the firm is trying to figure out which version of its Web page best makes that happen, the company will have many fewer positive data points." Read More »