February 2015 – Lead Liaison

The Future of Marketing Automation

February 24, 2015/0 Comments/in Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

To understand the future of marketing automation, you must understand the importance of the technology and how it can make your marketing process more powerful and efficient. Your competitors have probably already added marketing automation to their business repertoire or they’re evaluating the software for future use. If you haven’t taken steps to look into how marketing automation can change how you do marketing, you’re already one step behind and at a huge disadvantage.

As of December 2013, nearly 60% of top performing companies in the United States were using marketing automation. This number will only increase as the benefits of marketing automation become impossible to ignore. The marketing automation industry is valued around $10 billion so, obviously, something is working. But what does the future hold? Well, for starters, expect to see a significant increase in the use of mobile technology in marketing automation. Today, customers expect to interact with Marketer’s and their favorite brands on the go – and because the majority of customers are on the go – you can’t afford not to take advantage of this technology. Wearable technology use will grow from 22 million in 2012 to 177 million, by 2018. In five short years, marketers can expect that the way they gather data will be substantially changed by wearable technology, creating a significant marketing opportunity.

But marketing automation will also transition to better customer service, based on aggregated data. For example, if you’re a customer who’s just signed up for a freemium trial and you call in on an unrelated question, it’s not a mistake if your customer service representative offers you a deal to extend your freemium offer or offers you a discount to convert to a paying customer. It’s all about good analytics and allowing companies to track where their customers are in the purchasing process to make sure you’re offering the best deals and service available. Software will also become much easier to use with interfaces that are easier to understand and user-friendly. Since smaller businesses might not be as familiar with bigger and more complicated systems as a large company (not to mention that they may not need a large, overly complicated system), smaller businesses tend to need skill development, training, and help with resources.

As technology becomes smarter, you’ll see that marketing automation will use new ways to determine the purchasing habits of your customers. This means that businesses, regardless of size or output, will be able to figure out who their most valuable customers are and how to engage them in ways that make the most of their spending, buying power, and habits.

The Cost of Marketing Automation

February 17, 2015/0 Comments/in Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

Being ready to take the plunge into marketing automation means that you have many questions – and perhaps none is as important as what it will cost. After all, the cost of marketing automation will have to be low enough to convince shareholders to take the leap but high enough that your company is getting the best that marketing automation has to offer. You’ll also need to use the cost revenue and savings that marketing automation will provide as a business case to add it to the repertoire of software you’re already using.

Today, the cost of marketing automation is broken down monthly, quarterly, or annually, based upon a company’s preference. The cost widely varies with prices ranging from a few hundred dollars a month to over six figures a month. Prices will depend upon the different features you add to your plans but, in general, you can expect your price to rise as you add features. The number of leads and contents that your database will hold will increase the price of your subscription dramatically. Other factors that will drive up price include the efficiency of each edition offered. A standard and basic edition of the marketing software will cost far less than a premium version of the same software, but the premium version will contain many more features.

Savings for marketing automation can come in a variety of ways. Your vendor may be able to save you money and may provide discounts if you opt for an annual contract as opposed to a monthly pay-as-you-go contract or a quarterly contract. If you want to give some of your sales team access to your marketing automation, the majority of vendors will provide this access free of charge, up to a reasonable number of users. On average, a safe estimate is that a marketing automation solution will take up between 3-5% of your total marketing budget. Large companies typically spend 3.1% of their budget and 1.6% of their attrition rate. Overall, a company is expected to spend 7% across the board on marketing automation – but this average includes small, medium, and large companies and a variety of industries.

Be aware of add-ons that some companies offer in fine print. These add-ons will increase your cost and may not be necessary for functionality. In many cases, the add-ons are ‘fun extras’ that might be neat to have but you don’t really need. Depending on the vendor you select and your marketing goals, you can get the best value for your buck as long as you read the fine print and get bids from many different marketing automation vendors. We hope this article on the cost of marketing automation was useful to get you thinking and budgeting!

Lead Liaison Named one of the 50 Best Tools to Develop a Successful Marketing Strategy

February 4, 2015/0 Comments/in News, Press Releases/by Lead Liaison

Lead Liaison was recently named one of the 50 best tools to develop a successful marketing strategy along with several other marketing industry leaders such as Moz and Evernote. The list comprises the best solutions that help companies with their marketing strategy, namely with planning, strategy, competitive analysis, outreach, and taking action.

Lead Liaison’s Revenue Generation Software®, which includes enterprise-level sales and marketing automation software and website visitor tracking at small to mid-market prices, is optimized to deliver tremendous value to a company’s operational efficiency. It helps companies attract, convert, close and retain more customers, making it a logical tool for any sales and marketers toolbox. Lead Liaison’s VP of Customer Success, Alan Page, says:

“We’re honored to be included as a top tool that helps companies develop a successful marketing strategy. We’re coming off the heels of a very successful year, growing in 2014 by 171% over 2013, so it’s really appropriate for our software to be in this list as we kick off the new year. Marketing automation is very complementary to many of the top 50 solutions. Take SEO for example, solutions offered by Raven, SpyFu, Moz, SEMrush and others on the list. The main purpose of SEO is to drive traffic back to a company’s website. SEO does a great job of that; however, it’s only half the battle. What happens when a prospect does land on your site as a result of your SEO efforts? There aren’t many tools in the market that give you visibility into which people and businesses are on your website. More importantly, builds up crucial sales intelligence by tracking a prospects entire online behavior as they download documents, submit forms, watch videos, click through social media posts and more. Lead Liaison does this. We’re the other half of SEO. They’re the Bonnie and we’re the Clyde. SEO and sales and marketing automation are essential solutions to have when developing a successful marketing strategy. In this case, the whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts. If companies included just half of the top 50 tools to boost their marketing strategy the whole would be a million times bigger than the sum of its parts.”

Fergal Glynn, VP of Marketing at Docurated, goes on to say:

“The amount of variables in a successful marketing strategy seems to grow by the day. Unless teams are equipped with the right tools they will struggle to bring an increasingly disparate set of marketing activities together. With these demands in mind, we set about creating a list of the Best Marketing Strategy Tools available today. Lead Liaison’s wide-ranging capabilities including content creation, CRM integration, and lead nurturing made them a perfect candidate for inclusion in our list.”

More information on Lead Liaison’s sales and marketing automation solution.

About Docurated

Docurated accelerates sales in companies looking for fast growth by making the best Marketing content readily available to Sales. Docurated works with existing content stores and uses data science to track what content sells and enables go to market teams to find and re-use the most effective content with no manual tagging or uploading. Docurated has been adopted by leading organizations like Acquia, Del Monte Foods, Rocket Fuel, DigitasLBi, Havas, and The Weather Company. For more information on how Docurated helps enterprise sales teams accelerate pipeline with the best content, visit www.docurated.com

About Lead Liaison

Lead Liaison is a cloud-based sales and marketing automation solution that helps businesses accelerate sales by attracting, converting, closing and retaining more prospects. Filling a void in the small pool of marketing automation providers that focus on marketing-centric functionality, Lead Liaison gives equal focus to sales support with solutions such as a hot-lead dashboard, Buy Signals and a live ticker alert of businesses on the customer’s website. Lead Liaison blends ease-of-use, a flexible business model, deep external integration, marketing across social, web, mobile, email and offline channels and powerful functionality, all specifically tailored for mid-sized businesses, into a single platform, called Revenue Generation Software®. Additionally, Lead Liaison provides content creation services leveraged for communication vehicles such as press releases, blog posts, emails, and posts on social media platforms. Lead Liaison is headquartered in Allen, Texas, near Dallas, and employs 22 people. For more information, visit www.leadliaison.com or call 1-800-89-LEADS (895-3237).

Create Marketing Customers Love

February 3, 2015/0 Comments/in Best Practices, Marketing, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

If implemented correctly, marketing automation provides the framework of sending customers and prospects messages that resonate with their specific needs and wants. Ultimately, marketing automation is the tool you will use to drive customers to your website and products. It will keep your customers happy, informed, and connected – and provide you with real-time analytics that are invaluable to a marketer. When done right, you’ll create content that your customers will fall in love with.

Humans make decisions based on emotions – how something makes them feel, what it reminds them of, and what kind of experiences they’ve had in the past with similar products or businesses are all influencers on how your prospects will react to a product. This means that your marketing needs to leverage this to your benefit. When a customer loves your marketing they’re more likely to try and love your products.

How Does Marketing Automation Do It?

Marketing automation makes it easy for you to be aware of where your prospects are in the buying pipeline. This, in turn, allows you to interact with your prospect in a way that’s appropriate for whatever stage they’re at – cultivating relationships with prospects who aren’t ready to buy, networking with those who are in contact with sales, and developing relationships with customers who’ve already purchased.

How Does It Work?

Marketing automation can also give you great details on what your prospects are reading, how they engage, and what they’re doing socially. Using this information, you can see what they like and send them more of it – all because marketing information provides you with segmented information.

Additionally, you’re able to send messages at the right time and on a schedule that works for the customers instead of your marketing team.

Before marketing automation, messages were generally sent during normal business hours or by snail mail. This means that your customers sometimes received communications when they weren’t able to reply. Messages were forgotten or pushed aside. Even worse? Prospects received marketing in their mailbox days after they’d already purchased. Marketing automation creates better timeliness, which increases the appeal of your marketing.

Customizing each interaction, whether it’s through e-mail or your landing pages renders every bit of content is customizable for each prospect. Relevant content automatically makes it more enjoyable and the bonus is that you can also make sure prospects are receiving consistent communications. Prospects and customers don’t want to receive disorganized messages but it’s easy to make this mistake, especially if the customer is interacting with different departments at the same time. Marketing automation ensures that communications and every interaction are smooth and easy.

For marketing automation to work correctly and for your customers to love it, you’ll need to use it intelligently. Following the tried and true tips of successful automation will be key to making your messages and content relevant and personalized. Make sure you’re using your automation software to make the best marketing possible. The Lead Liaison staff is happy to help you make this happen!