VISION, SKILLS, DATA: HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF MARKETING TECHNOLOGY & DELIVER A MORE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

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VISION, SKILLS, DATA: HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF MARKETING TECHNOLOGY & DELIVER A MORE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
As recently as five years ago, inbound marketing was fairly straightforward. Companies had a website that was the central point of demand generation. They used various paid and organic search engine tactics to drive people to this site. And they sent emails to people in their database to provide additional Web traffic, boost engagement and increase revenue. Flash forward to today, and mobile and social have completely transformed the buyer landscape. While 139.3 million smartphones were solid in 20081, 207.7 million were sold in 2013 in the fourth quarter alone2. Tablets, which werent even a factor five years ago, have experienced a similarly rapid growth rate since the first iPads were introduced, with tablet sales jumping 78 percent in 2012 and 2013 sales expected to outpace desktop PCs3. And these devices have changed the way buyers interact with emails and websites, with email the No. 1 activity on both smartphones and tablets.4 Meanwhile, social networks have more or less taken over the universe. The number of LinkedIn users, for example, has increased tenfold since 2008, with more than 200 million users currently using the platform. Facebook and Twitter have experienced similar exponential growth, while new social sites such as Google+ and Pinterest have emerged as significant players. These developments have changed the way all of us communicate, learn and make purchase decisions. No longer do buyers need to talk to a sales rep or seek out an expert at the retail store to get informed. They can get informed on their own, and they are the majority of buyers start the decision-making process via online research and talking to other users5. As a result, buyers are on average more than halfway through a purchase decision before theyre willing to engage a sales rep6. This means that marketers must step up and adjust. But how?

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MARKETING IN THE NEW ERA

In many cases, marketers have responded to these shifting dynamics by doing more: more promotional content, more campaigns, more company social network sites. Yet the added effort isnt always translating to better results. The reason? Too many marketers are still relying on traditional push marketing tactics and focusing on revenue at the expense of customer experience. A better approach is to create your content and campaigns with the customer or prospect in mind, positioning your business as an educator and thought leader. Meeting the needs of buyers who are increasingly conducting their research via search and social does mean more content and campaigns just not of the promotional, batch-and-blast variety. Rather, it means developing: More content for different points in the buying cycle More content for different channels More content for the diverse buying audience More content for extra messaging paths and dynamic content options to tailor messages to the specific user, and developing responsive leadscoring and routing systems that streamline lead management. Given all the advances in marketing automation technology, its easy to get caught up in the excitement. And you should be psyched about the possibilities for engaging contacts on a 1:1 level. But just remember that an awesome digital marketing platform is only part of the puzzle when it comes to connecting with todays buyers in an individualized fashion. To take full advantage of todays technology and maximize ROI, you need three other pieces: vision, skills and data. Only then can you deliver an enhanced customer experience that differentiates you from your competitors. In this white paper, well outline how you can approach these three areas to build a rock-solid foundation that enables you to use marketing automation technology to deliver an amazing experience that helps nurture buyers, build loyalty and drive revenue.

Whew. How can marketers do all this with the same limited resources? The answer lies in tapping todays sophisticated marketing automation technologies to do all sorts of cool stuff like shifting from batch-and-blast emails to drip nurture or rule-based email communications, using personalization and dynamic content

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Reading Silverpops Vision, Skills, Data: How to Make the Most of Marketing Technology and Deliver a More Personal Experience

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SECTION I: VISION
To make the most of marketing technology, its essential to recognize the importance of process and strategy. Without careful attention to the whys and hows of your efforts, youll likely run into various problems, including: Unsatisfactory customer or prospect experience Absence of interdepartmental cooperation Siloed efforts and/or achievements Lack of support from the C-suite Explain to these executives that using data to change your website and email content is possible today and can enable you to create a massive customization model that will improve the customer/prospect experience. This is critical because, as mentioned earlier, the buying cycle has changed and this technology will allow marketing to take an increasing role in owning more of the engagement process. Remember that when it comes to the C-suite, numbers speak loudly. Highlight success youve had or that companies similar to yours have experienced and focus on data that affects the company bottom line, since thats what C-suite executives will most likely be intrigued with. Examples of numbers to zero-in on might include revenue, return on investment, lead flow, new customer growth and existing customer retention. For instance, tell management that since adding behavioral-triggered content to your nurture campaign youve reduced the lead-to-conversion time 25 percent, and youll have their attention. If youre lucky, you may emerge from these meetings with more resources, budget and even additional head count. But at worst, the C-suite will gain a better understanding of your actions, youll gain a clearer picture of overall company goals, and both sides will gain a greater understanding of how marketing objectives should tie to these goals. 2) Evaluating Your Processes Another key aspect of crystalizing your vision involves evaluating your current lead management processes, including scoring and nurturing approaches, all the while looking for holes and gaps in your business processes. Review lead-to-sales waterfall or handoff steps, and take a careful look at the offers and content youre delivering based on score thresholds (or other criteria). Consult with sales management and reps regarding the lead flow and how it will affect them. (See Section 2 on p. 8 for more on working with sales and other departments.) Looking outward is just as important in the evaluation process as looking inward and often even more so. If you want to move to a customerfocused marketing model, youll have to put the customer at the center of all your processes. So, take a customer experience perspective, putting yourself in their shoes as theyre considering your product, and thinking about how can you tailor the information flow to mirror the experience you want them to have. Three areas to look at as part of this process: Buyer Personas: Who are the people that research and buy your products? If you lack an understanding of these contacts, its tough to create the content youll need to connect with them. And thats where buyer personas come in. SiriusDecisions defines a buyer persona as an archetype of the buyer that the company

So, how can you overcome these challenges? Lets look at three areas key that will help you in clarifying your marketing vision and making it a reality: 1) Getting Executive Buy-in No matter how smart you are, you cant optimize your marketing program without support from the C-suite. Not only will you need their resources, but youll benefit from understanding their vision so you can shape your marketing strategy accordingly. Start at the top, then, and brief your executives so they understand whats possible with marketing automation platforms. The discussion should include your CMO (or the highestranking marketing leader) and possibly even the CEO if youre a digital-dependent business.

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hopes to persuade to choose its products, services or solution.7 To build these personas, think about your prospects top priorities, expectations for how your product or service will help them, barriers to purchase and decision criteria. Youll likely find that a few key personas emerge (see example at right). While youll ultimately want to go more granular with your communications than just segmenting based on personas, this exercise will help you with your content audit and better inform your decisions as youre building out different nurture tracks and deciding what dynamic content blocks would engage users most strongly. Channels and Formats: With all the new channels and formats available today, revisit how youre creating and distributing content. White papers, Webinars, videos, blog posts, Slideshows, case studies, demos and podcasts all offer different user experiences. Do certain formats resonate more strongly with your prospect or customer base? The answers will likely vary from individual to individual and even change for each person depending on where they are in the buyer journey, so youll want to make sure youve got content that covers a wide spectrum of preferences. Given resource constraints, that means thinking about the pieces of

PERSONA

KEY CHALLENGES
Getting results committed to the business to drive a certain amount of marketing -generated revenue and whether I do it by getting more leads or by driving larger average deals, I have to do it. Database Pain need to get the highest success from my programs that I can, so a bad list or an unknown vendor is a risk to the same names, I need to target my speci c buyer and I need the data to be correct so my programs deliver and sales breathing down my back is to become a spreadsheet jockey and I wish I could just

P ROFILE
!

Titles include: Demand Manager, Marketing Director, VP Marketing, Marketing Communications Manager In her 30s or 40s, younger in a smaller company Pays attention to Sirius Decisions, Marketing Sherpa, MarketingProfs for information on best practices

Reports to VP M arketing or the CEO in smaller rm s , sometimes , but rarely , S ales . May supervise a Marketing Specialist Likely started her career in marketing and stays with companies for longer than 3 years.

KEY MOTIVATORS & GOALS

enough time to do everything and is the bat May be in a rush; unlikely to answer the phone Probably is budget sensitive Has many programs running simultaneously

on social networks, and whether there are certain ones that seem to resonate more strongly with your industry or company. Also, examine what platforms contacts are using to interact with your content. (See the Thinking About How Mobile Fits into Your Strategy sidebar on p. 7 for more).

Buying-Cycle Stages: Someone who comes Relies on her network of peers to recommend new vendors. to your website to ABOUT CHRISTINA more information I have about Christina is a busy professional, who knows her stu and makes judgment each prospect the better I can learn more about quickly. She believes that marketing is an important part of the organization use it for targeting. I need to and typically feels underappreciated by the organization, both personally have agreement with sales , your industry needs and as a function. prod uct marketing, and product management on our different information Regardle target market so I can enough time to do everything. She likely has many meeting a day and is speci cally market to them, but than someone whos often in a rush. She is tasked with developing leads for sales and feels like we can get better aligned she can never create enough. comparing product about that de nition Ultimately, Christina is looking to grow her career, and takes meeting her features and functions goals seriously. for the last time before FOR INTERNAL USE ONLY selecting a vendor partner. So, think content youre creating and spinning off other about your prospects buying cycle stages, iterations, such as repurposing a white paper from first touch to repeat purchase. Given as a Webinar and blog post and sharing related the changes in the buying process, are nuggets on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. you addressing all their needs at the different stages and thus providing the Speaking of social networks, youll also want best customer experience? to consider whether your contacts are active
Targeting

Vision: Talking Marketing Possibilities with Executives View the video >>>

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Since triggered message and multipart lifecycle campaigns will be a key aspect of any savvy marketers strategy (see Section 3: Data on p. 10 for more), this is a good time to identify candidates for automation. For example: Lifecycle messages: welcome, nurture, trial to purchase, onboarding, upsell/addons, reactivation Transactional messages: PDF download, event registration, video watched, browse abandon, score-based routing, client/prospect online Promotional messages: newsletters, offers

doing doesnt exist in a vacuum. To get a complete picture of your efforts, youll want to consider both output metrics and process metrics as youre determining how youll measure and benchmark success: Output metrics. These metrics are diagnostic in nature and should be tracked over time to determine how individual elements of your email program are contributing to overall success. Examples: open rate, click-through rate, unsubscribe rate, share rate, list churn. Process metrics: These metrics measure your marketing programs performance against your companys strategic marketing and business goals. Examples: revenue, cost savings, leads generated, customer retention.

from what they found. This means that the offer (white paper, event invite, discount) that interested them should be tracked separately from the source (pay-per-click ad, Tweet, organic search). Doing so will enable you to more accurately gauge what tactics are most effective in both generating leads and nurturing them toward a sale. Of course, your benchmarking is only as good as your reporting tools, so review each standard report provided by your marketing automation vendor. Evaluate these reports to determine their usefulness within your department and among other interested parties. Also, review the campaign and pipeline reporting capabilities of your CRM system if installed. This will allow you to easily gain insights across the entire marketing and sales pipeline. Finally, adopt a standard process to evaluate each report, interpret the data and make recommendations both within the marketing team and to other departments. In the rush to get the next campaign out, its easy to skip analysis, and having a process in place will help ensure you learn from your successes and failures and use this experience to improve future efforts.

The best part about most of these messages is that 1) theyre driven by a persons actions, and 2) you can create them for recipients at any point in the buying cycle whether its their first interaction with your company or if they are in the final stages of their buying decision. Every time a contact interacts with your brand across any channel, that behavior can potentially be added to their profile in your database allowing you to place them into a nurture thats specific to their interests. 3) Establishing Key Metrics and Benchmarks Finally, youll need to figure out how youll measure success and make sure what youre

As youre establishing your key marketing objectives, think of how they tie to overall company goals. Focusing on process metrics will help ensure youre doing this, and will also give you more leverage with the C-suite as youre building your case for your next resource request. Tip: Consider implementing a Web-based, selfservice dashboard or portal where executives and other key individuals can get metrics and performance information on a self-service basis. To help you in your measurement efforts, make sure you have a system in place to track how your customers found you separately and distinctly

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Thinking About How Mobile Fits Into Your Vision

More people are using mobile devices to read emails, surf websites, access apps, visit social networks and much more. While the topic of mobile could fill a white paper by itself, heres a quick primer on questions youll need to ask yourself regarding mobile strategy: 1) Email: How are your customers interacting with your messages across devices? Its a given that more are opening your emails on smartphones, but there are additional factors to consider. Which device types are emails being opened on? Are contacts that are engaging via mobile low or high-value? Are mobile openers converting more or less than desktop users? The answers will guide the decisions you make regarding mobile approach, but in general we recommend employing a multiscreen strategy that provides an excellent user experience across devices. 2) Landing pages/website/forms: If you spend time and resources optimizing your emails for mobile, but the CTA takes the user to a page that provides a poor experience, youve wasted an opportunity. Check your analytics if a sizable percentage of readers click on your mobile emails but a smaller than typical percentage converts from them, you may have to change your approach. 3) Apps: Would your customers or prospects benefit from the more robust mobile functionality an app can provide? If so, make sure these interactions are feeding into a unified master database (see Section 3: Data on p. 10 for more). 4) Check-ins: The implications for retailers with physical stores are clear, but with millions checking in on Foursquare and Facebook, businesses of all kinds should take a careful look at location-based marketing. B2B companies, for example, might work check-ins into their marketing mix by incorporating check-in sweepstakes at trade shows and other events they attend. 5) SMS: Certain types of communications lend themselves to text messages, and the channel offers an easy way to grow your database at events (e.g. Text to opt in!). Would you benefit from working SMS into your messaging mix? For more on mobile, check out the Resources section on p. 12.

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SECTION 2: SKILLS
Todays new buyers and technologies require new skills from marketers, a change in how marketing departments are configured, and increased cooperation with other departments. Yet many businesses havent evolved to meet the demands of todays more educated, self-reliant and social buyers. The problem is that if you dont rebuild your department to be more transparent, more helpful and more human, your prospects may seek out a competitor that does. For businesses, that translates to hiring and developing talent with different skill-sets than in the past, as well as focusing on building interdepartmental alliances. Lets take a look at how the marketing department is evolving and what strategies you can employ to increase alignment with other departments. The New Marketing Department Across the board, marketers roles are evolving, with an increased emphasis on flexibility and content production. While these roles will differ a bit from business to business and industry to industry, heres a general overview of how the requirements for a few key positions are evolving: Demand Generation: Must be comfortable with left- and right-brain activities, possessing both a flair for the creative Skills: Assembling the Perfect Marketing Team View the video >>> and discipline for tasks such as project management and measurement. Product Marketing: Must make sure they have a comprehensive framework of sales enablement tools, slide decks, case studies and RFP response templates to address a wide array of sales situations. Marketing Communications: Must be more social-savvy, whether crafting a strategy that connects the company message with critical social channels and influencers, responding to social critiques, or streaming helpful social PR snippets. Journalism experience is a plus. Marketing Operations: In many cases its the creation of this group that marks the evolution, as well as the fact that many of these team members may come from IT backgrounds rather than marketing. The common theme? Today, you need a blend of creative thinkers and smart systems-thinking specialists who can leverage technology to drive efficiency within the marketing department. Building a marketing department with these qualities will require a combination of tactics: smart hiring, shifting people around to maximize their talents, and perhaps most importantly, training. Many companies overlook this, with 36 percent having no training expenditures and 81 percent investing less than $1,000 a year on training.8 In todays landscape, thats a huge mistake: continuous education is essential for staying on top of both industry trends and technology enhancements. Given the myriad of specialized resources needed today, though, even the most diverse, well-trained marketing organizations rarely have the breadth or depth in-house to handle everything necessary to achieve both short-term tactical and long-term strategic objectives. In many cases, then, tapping the skills of a laser-focused outside specialist is an excellent way to help you achieve your goals. Even if your financial resources are limited, boutique firms may be able to supplement your team on a project-by-project basis. Interacting with Other Departments Just as you cant mount an effective communication strategy if your channels are siloed, you wont be able to maximize your marketing efforts without aligning with other departments. SiriusDecisions calls this managing the matrix identifying key players and stakeholders outside the marketing department, figuring out what information you owe them and what you need from them, and determining how and when to involve them to drive best results9. Consider the following departments: Sales: Whether its agreeing on terminology and criteria for a lead scoring system, determining who should go into a nurture campaign and how

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best to get them to become a lead, or discussing how sales should be notified when a lead goes from warm to hot, sales input is valuable for optimizing the lead management process. Product: When it comes to the products youre marketing, no one knows more than the product team. So, the smart play is to involve the project manager (and other team members where applicable) in go-tomarket strategy, launch planning and demand generation expectations. IT: Many key marketing strategies, from providing sales with visibility into marketing activities to customizing website content based on a visitors past behaviors, are enhanced through an integrated digital marketing platform. Whether integrating

your marketing automation solution with a CRM, CMS or data management platform, youll need to work closely with IT. The list of ways marketing can benefit from positive interaction with other departments is long. Human resources might benefit from using marketing automation technology to onboard new employees, while finance could utilize it for payment reminders. While these use cases might not directly impact marketing, they might help you justify technology investments that would yield marketing benefits. When and how should you involve other departments? In general, early is the word. When creating a scoring model, for example, involving sales at the initial stages of the process can provide

valuable insights that help you build and weight your model. And once you put the system in place, these early-stage communications can make for a more streamlined nurturing and routing process, since salespeople having played a role in creating the system will have increased confidence that the leads being sent to them are high-quality To help build alignment across departments and secure critical buy-in, dont be afraid to be your own cheerleader. Mount an internal PR campaign to bring people in on your vision for how digital marketing technology can enhance the customer experience. If you have a company magazine or newsletter, thats the perfect place to highlight the importance and process of implementing marketing automation technology and recognize cross-functional teams that are facilitating this digital change and having success.

Establishing a Center of Excellence

Technology changes fast, and it can be tough to keep up with the latest innovations and best practices. To stay ahead of the curve, you might want to establish a Center of Excellence around marketing automation technology. This group would be the go-to team for: Helping ramp up competency in your division Staying on top of trends and technology enhancements Sharing knowledge about whats going on in other departments Consider making this group a mix of marketing, sales, product and IT experts. By having each group represented, youll help ensure that everyone will understand the significance of the latest technological and marketplace shifts, making the process of getting cross-department buy-in regarding resources and initiatives much easier. And as Steven Berlin Johnson noted in his book Where Good Ideas Come From, this type of collaboration across disciplines and platforms is critical to innovation10. Center of Excellence: How It Can Help Your Marketing Organization View the video >>>

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SECTION 3: DATA
A sophisticated marketing automation platform can enable you to drive incredibly relevant content (see the Using Behavioral Data sidebar on p. 11 for more info). But if the data you have on a contact is lacking, youll be limited in the tools and tactics youre able to use. In short, your technology platform is only as powerful as the data at your fingertips. With that in mind, its well worth the time to take a careful look at your current database and how you might improve upon it. Think of the process as building a comprehensive data blueprint for your organization, with the goal of aggregating data into your marketing automating platform and transforming it into the marketing database of record. Here are six steps to help you move toward a persistent master database: 1) Consider every way that your customers are interacting with you. Start big and look across channels, platforms/devices, and both online and offline. A common problem is that many companies today depend on an emailcentric marketing database, yet modern buyers expect a relationship beyond email. As we move toward smart data fueled by universal behaviors, every action by a customer or prospect across channels email, Web, social, SMS, CRM, mobile apps, check-ins, etc. should be looked at as having the potential to trigger an automated communication or piece of content. 2) Determine what data would enhance the customer experience. Based on what you found in No. 1, begin prioritizing the importance of these pieces of data, depending on which types of information would be most helpful in improving the customer experience. This will help you down the road as youre deciding where to begin in your move toward building a revitalized database. 3) Think about how you might capture and integrate this data. Different pieces of data will require different legwork to capture. Is it just a matter of adding some code or turning a feature on? Or do you need to upgrade or invest in a new technology? What steps do you need to take to break down the silos and build a unified database? Which process changes and integrations will be required to communicate key pieces of information, such as support data and product usage data, into your marketing automation system? To capture a contacts cross-platform activity and build a threedimensional digital identity, youll need a plan. 4) Look at outside experts that can append additional data to your records. In some cases, there may be gaps in your data that third-party experts can help fill. Silverpop, for example, partners with data management specialists such as NetProspex, ReachForce and CatapultWorks to offer clients additional options for enhancing their knowledge of prospects and customers. How can this help your marketing efforts? Lets say, for instance, that you want to change your website content depending on the type of company the visitor works for, but you lack the resources to collect this data. A third party could append

Data: Building a Comprehensive Data Blueprint View the video >>>

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these industry classifications or codes as part of a project, allowing you to transform the customer experience more quickly and effectively than you could have on your own. 5) Consider other external information to incorporate additional data. There may be pieces of data that are out of reach for your organization, but that could still be helpful in delivering more relevant content. Maybe youre a bank and want to set up an automated program to email people to refinance when rates fall 1 percent below their current rate.Or perhaps youd like to promote a special offer on your website when the temperature rises above 85 degrees Fahrenheit. A custom technology integration would enable you to deliver these types of unique content. 6) Actively listen to social media to understand what buyers want to talk about. While your persistent master database is capturing key social data such as social sharing of content or blog comments, youll also want to keep a close eye on social conservations. Whats being talked about? What pieces of content are people looking for? How can you help them in their process? Just as in your conversations with friends in the offline world, good digital listening skills are essential for businesses aspiring to connect more strongly with prospects and customers.

Using Behavioral Data to Drive 1:1 Interactions

As your customers are interacting with you through your website, emails, social media sites, mobile apps, brick-and-mortar locations and more, they want these behaviors to be recognized and reflected in the ways you communicate with them. When you combine a unified, persistent database with a sophisticated marketing automation platform, thats exactly what you can do. Lets say someone just came to your manufacturing website and watched a video about rapid prototyping. You might follow up via email with one of your most popular Webinars on the topic (as rated by your customers), a link to your ebook on how businesses can use rapid prototyping to speed their time to market, and thumbnails of three case studies of other clients that have achieved great benefits with rapid prototyping. What about the next time that prospect visits your website or Facebook page? Instead of showing that contact the same content youd display for someone who looked at the express delivery part of your site, you could ask that person a question about his/her company or areas of need, and then serve up related content that helped address these current challenges. Has a contact opened or clicked on an email? Browsed deep within your website or abandoned a download form? Made a purchase or watched a video on your site? Commented on your blog or tweeted your content? Try building new business rules that reflect these specific interactions. And look to get more automated by programming communication rules that change depending on how a person has interacted with your company, your website and your emails. By adding just a few business criteria that shape the content you serve up to contacts based on their behaviors, preferences and demographics, you can quickly wind up with dozens, even hundreds, of unique messaging paths. By treating every person as an individual with unique interests and needs, youll deliver a vastly improved prospect or customer experience.

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Conclusion
The empowered customer is now in charge of the business relationship, and these social, Websavvy buyers favor a personalized experience. It makes sense, then, that the most proactive marketing leaders are trying to understand individuals as well as markets.11 Marketing automation technology gives you the tools to move beyond generic mass communications and broad segmentation and connect on an individual level. But without the right vision, skills and data, your digital marketing platform is like a cordless drill set without bits or a battery charger not nearly as effective as it could be in getting the job done right. When you combine top-tier technology with vision, skills and data, though, thats when the real magic happens. With this fearsome foursome working together, you can deliver individualized experiences that transform the customer experience, And you can achieve unprecedented marketing successes think faster lead-to-sales flow, increased revenue and improved customer satisfaction that complement your companys overall goals and objectives.

Footnotes
1-Gartner, Gartner Says Worldwide Smartphone Sales Reached Its Lowest Growth Rate With 3.7 Per Cent Increase in Fourth Quarter of 2008, March 09 2-Gartner, Gartner Says Worldwide Mobile Phone Sales Decline 1.7 Percent in 2012, Feb. 13 3-Techcrunch, IDC: Tablet Sales Grow 78.4% YoY in 2012 Expected to Pass Desktop Sales in 2013, Portable PCs in 2013, March 13 4-Cisco, Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 20122017, Feb. 13 5-Enquiro, Integrated Persuasion: Offline and Online 6-Marketing Leadership Council, The Digital Evolution in B2B Marketing, 2012 7-SiriusDecisions, Buyer Persona Workbook, 2012 8-SiriusDecisions, Marketing Automation: Mind the (Skills) Gap, 2011 9-SiriusDecisions, Managing the Matrix: An Essential Part of Every Marketing Role, Nov. 12 10-Steven Berlin Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, 2010 11-IBM, From Stretched to Strengthened: Insights from the Global Chief Marketing Officer Study, Oct. 11

2) 10 Things Marketers Should Automate to Drive Revenue 3) Multiscreen Maturation: Email Design Strategies and Tips for Connecting Across Devices Webinars 1) Automation: Redefining Marketings Game Plan 2) Know the Score: Developing and Managing a Modern Scoring Model that Drives Revenue 3) Marketing Automation: Delivering a Better Buyer Experience by Aligning Marketing with, well Marketing! Blog Posts 1) Behavioral Marketing: What It Is and Why Its So Exciting 2) The New Marketing Team: Who You Need to Succeed 3) 3 Ways Behavioral Marketing Improves Sales and Marketing Alignment Videos 1) The Evolution of Marketing Automation 2) Using Social to Build Trust 3) Personalizing the Web Experience for Every Customer Through a CMS Integration

Additional Resources

White Papers and Tip Sheets 1) Marketing Automation ebook: Best Practices for Marketing Excellence and Operational Efficiency

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Appendix: 5 Questions to Ask When Selecting a Marketing Automation Vendor

So, youve got your vision, skills and data in order, but youre thinking about looking around at marketing technology providers. Maybe its because you feel youve outgrown your current providers capabilities, or perhaps its because youre unhappy with the customer service and support youre currently receiving. Or maybe youve just been exposed to Silverpops innovative features and our impressive roster of clients who are extremely satisfied with the Engage platform. Whatever path has convinced you to consider Silverpop, youre likely wondering exactly what would be involved in switching from your current provider. How long would it take, what steps are involved, and how painful would it be to get through the transition? Silverpop currently works with more than 1,200 clients, nearly all of which transitioned to Silverpop from another provider. In our 10-plus years of experience, weve seen it all and weve figured out how to make sure every step of your transition is anticipated, handled proactively, and managed to make the process as smooth and painless as possible. Chances are you have one or two questions that are top-of-mind, so rather than detailing our entire transition process here, we encourage you to look through the top five concerns listed below and read about how Silverpop has a plan and a process to make each of them a stress-free non-event.

TIME: Will switching providers take a long time?

b) APIs: If youve got someone at your company

Rememberweve helped more than 1,000 clients switch from another provider to Silverpop. Thanks to our time-tested, well-structured client onboarding process, the vast majority of Silverpops clients are up and running in less than 30 days. In fact, our most transition-ready clients can be up and running in as little as two weeks. Even better, Silverpop builds a 30-day provisioning period into every contract, so you can be confident youll have time to get everything in place.

Integrations with other systems are critical to my marketing efforts.

Once again, Silverpop has taken a multipronged approach to ensure you can reintegrate any critical systems with Silverpop quickly and easily.

whos handy with APIs, they provide an easy way to integrate with virtually any system in whatever way meets your needs. Silverpop offers a powerful suite of APIs with the flexibility of being offered in either an XML or Web Services format. Furthermore, weve got great, easy-to-use documentation and a test harness to make sure everything is working correctly before you flip the switch. c) Custom Integrations: If you need an integration thats a little less common than whats offered in our packaged integrations, fear not. Our Custom Integration Services team has seen it all. They can assess your need and design a tailor-made integration in no time. Just ask.

a) Packaged Integrations: CRM and Web Ana-

CONTENT: Whats the process for migrating content?*

lytics integrations have really proven their value to our clients, so weve made these integrations as convenient as possible to establish. The price is fixed, and the scope is clearbecause weve done these integrations so many times, we can have them up and running in under a week. Popular packages include Salesforce.com, Omniture, Coremetrics, Webtrends and NedStat, and our application also offers on-screen integrations with Baynote, Certona and 8Seconds.

(*like email templates, landing pages, Web forms, etc.) Bringing ANY content over to Silverpop couldnt be easier. Silverpop Engage can import .zip files of HTML content for your email templates. That means you can upload just one file to have every component of your email template loaded into Silverpop Engage and ready to go. Same goes for landing pagesthey can be designed in any tool outside of Silverpop Engage, and by importing just

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one .zip file the entire landing page is ready to go. Web forms migration is even more amazing. With our Web form import wizard, you can import the HTML for your Web forms and easily map all the input fields to your Silverpop Engage database from right inside our user interface. It really just takes moments of your time to transition your Web forms from anywhere else right into Silverpop Engage.

programs. And its easy to report on how people are flowing through the program at any point in time. Still, if you have concerns about your ability to get your previous campaigns up and running in Silverpop, we have Product Consultants who are basically ninjas at Silverpop Engage. They can quickly and efficiently coach you through building a Program, or if youd prefer they can build it on your behalf.

ongoing opportunities to get trained on how to best utilize all our powerful features.

DELIVERABILITY: Whitelisting is a challenging process. Will my deliverability suffer because I switch providers?
The best way to control your deliverability destiny is to have your own dedicated IP address, and thats why Silverpop makes this standard practice for every client. Its true whitelisting is necessary when you get a new IP address, but fear not Silverpop has whitelisting down to a science. During our introductory welcome call, a Silverpop representative discusses the different whitelisting requirements for each ISP, and explains which parts of the process Silverpop can handle on your behalf and which steps require your participation. And nobody understands whitelisting better that our dedicated Deliverability department. The experts on this team all have deep relationships with ISPs and years of experience specifically in deliverability. If you ever encounter any bumps on the road to the inbox, theyll be proactively troubleshooting your issues and resolving themoften before you even know what happened.

My Web forms are hosted on our corporate website, and I worry about integrating them with a new provider.
Using the import wizard described above, you can bring these Web forms into Silverpop Engage, map each field to your Silverpop Engage database, and then simply copy the HTML code from Engage and host the form anywhere you want. The submitted form will still send all the relevant data to Silverpop Engage. Once again, it couldnt be simpler.

TRAINING: My team is already familiar with our current application. Would there be a steep learning curve to get comfortable with a new platform?
Silverpops intuitive user interface helps us win new clients every day. On top of that, our Training department offers more than 100 hours of live classes a month. In addition, we constantly survey our training classes to measure satisfaction, and our trainers consistently get more A-pluses and As than any other grades. And in case you find yourself needing to learn about a specific feature right this minute, most of our classes are available in an ondemand, Web-based-training format. Finally, theres also easy-to-access inline help sprinkled throughout the application. In other words, Silverpop offers you an extremely easy-to-use application paired with

I have set up a lot of automated campaigns that Im concerned about rebuilding in a new system.
Using Silverpops Programs feature is the easiest way in the industry to build an automated campaign. The movie-editor-style controls make it simple to map out and build your multitrack

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Finally, with every release of Silverpop Engage, were finding new ways to move the whitelisting process into our product so our clients have the smoothest ramp-up process possible.

sure youre able to set up and configure Silverpop Engage to meet your needs. Packages are available for 30 or 90 days of additional guidance.

No matter how good the plan is, there are always bumps in the road.
Whether youve been a client for three days or three years, if you encounter any challenges day or night with Silverpop, you can always count on our highly-rated 24x7 support. About 40 percent of all support cases are resolved within two business hours, and our client support surveys consistently give our reps exceptionally high marks on their ability to resolve problems and deliver excellent service. If this document didnt answer all your questions, please feel free to contact your Silverpop representative to learn more about how powerful our Silverpop Engage platform is and how quickly and easily we could have your organization up and running.

RESOURCE CONSTRAINTS: Im just one person. Would someone be available to help me through the transition?
We understand, and your position is not uncommon. Thats why Silverpop encourages new clients to take advantage of one of our onboarding programs. With these programs, youll have an assigned Silverpop Sherpa to help guide you through the process of transitioning over to our Engage platform and getting up and running. These experts are part Account Manager and part Product Consultanttheyll work with you to understand your business goals and help make

My organization has multiple divisions that will need to migrate over to Silverpop in a staggered fashion, and Im worried about coordinating these efforts with all of the stakeholders.
Silverpop Engage has the power and scale to support even the largest and most complex businesses. We understand that some larger companies can have extremely complex organizations, and we have just the experts for the job. Our Integration Consultants have years of experience understanding business needs, as well as building and managing transition plans to ensure that every need is met and every organization accomplishes a smooth and timely transition.

Silverpops digital marketing automation platform was designed to make it simple to build hyper-personalized campaigns, creating individualized experiences for every relationship. Watch our demo to see our product in action, and contact Silverpop to see how we can help you accomplish your marketing goals for 2013.