Demand Gen Solutions Share Spotlight With Social Apps At Dreamforce
- Written by Andrew Gaffney
- Published in Feature Articles
With most physical events struggling to draw attendees, it was a bit mind-blowing to be at an event where the aisles were literally packed and you had to wade through traffic to get to your next meeting. That was the scene at last week’s Dreamforce event where more than 15,000 people “gathered in the clouds” to hear about and see the latest integrations with salesforce.com. There was growing momentum for the marketing automation space as well, with each of the major solution providers enjoying packed booths and generating “hundreds” of leads during the three day expo.
Although rumors were swirling heading into the event that Salesforce.com would move further into the marketing automation space with an acquisition of an Email Services Provider, the big news from the cloud computing giant actually came in the social space. Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce.com, used the grand stage of the Dreamforce keynote to unveil Salesforce Chatter (http://www.salesforce.com/chatter/), a new enterprise collaboration application and social development platform. Benioff predicted Salesforce Chatter will revolutionize the workplace by leveraging popular social networking models such as Twitter and Facebook, allowing companies to collaborate in real time with a secure, private social network for their business.
Since the Chatter application isn’t scheduled for availability until sometime in calendar 2010, the buzz around social media benefitted Genius.com, which was showcasing its URL shortener specifically designed to track both structured marketing campaigns and ad-hoc social-media “conversations.” The Genius URL shortener (GURL) enables customers to include trackable links in their Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, blog, or other social-media posts. The tool is designed to help organizations measure the impact of social media activities.
Upping the Ante On Usability
In addition to integrating with social media channels, marketing automation vendors have also raised the bar significantly in terms of their user interfaces and the ease of use of the tools. Manticore Technology used the Dreamforce event to debut Manticore VII, the company's seventh generation marketing automation platform, which features a configurable user interface (UI), email and landing page folders, an email delivery wizard, and drag-and-drop list building functionality. The configurable UI allows users to personalize their environment to address the unique needs of their business.
Eloqua was also offering attendees a sneak peek at its new user experience, which is expected to be released in Beta by March and general availability by Summer 2010. Eloqua executives are calling the new release a “game changer” and customers who seen the demo compare the user interface to a Powerpoint like experience with easy to follow workflows and HTML editors. The new Eloqua release is reportedly being built on a platform used by Google and Apple and Eloqua’s CEO Joe Payne predicts it will be “transformational” when it hits the market next year.
Payne also pointed to the company’s creation of SmartXchange, a new on-demand resource that gives marketers instant access to marketing best practices, programs and assets right as a strategic advantage for its customer base. SmartXchange, which is currently in beta, is designed to offer marketers a wide variety of tested marketing assets that range from simple email, newsletter and landing page templates to sophisticated lead generation and lead management programs.
The Revenue Connection
In addition to making marketing automation easier to adopt and deploy, leading solution providers have also stretched to the later stages of the revenue generation cycle with new sales intelligence tools. Considered the trailblazer on the ease-of-use front, Marketo used Dreamforce to spotlight its Sales Insight solution. CEO Phil Fernandez refers to the tool as a “sixth sense” for sales people by prioritizing key moments that signal real buying interest. Since Sales Insight works natively within Salesforce CRM, Fernandez says it has the lack of a learning curve or need to install new tools is appealing to clients.
Silverpop Engage B2B also addressed sales intelligence and social networking areas with the launch of its Activity Insight solution. The application provides sales with a snapshot of each contact’s complete marketing history and behavior, as well as the ability to capture a social networking profile for a contact. To further fuel the Activity Insight tool, Silverpop Engage released the Who’s Online application, which integrates with Salesforce to summarize who visited during the last few minutes as well a summary of the past week.
Since the need for speed is becoming more critical with sales intelligence, vendors addressed the delivery of alerts with their new tools. At Dreamforce, Pardot introduced its LeadDeck Prospect Monitor, which provides sales and marketing with real-time alerts of visitor and prospect activity. The application pops up small notifications on the user’s desktop, allowing them to access more information about the prospect’s history.
The release of eTrigue SalesPro also addressed the need for alerts. The new sales acceleration tool (see sidebar) is designed specifically for sales teams to track an individual Web site visitor’s ongoing activity history. By sending real-time lead alerts with visit information, lead scoring and historic activity specific to each individual visitor, eTrigue SalesPro is designed to enable sales representatives to make timely and informed calls.