It’s hard to believe how fast marketing automation is evolving – and the wealth of information available about the space.  If you have a Google Alert set for “marketing automation,” you know what we mean.

With that in mind, we’d like to give a quick shout-out to a few folks that help the rest of us think about demand generation, lead nurturing and marketing automation in new, creative or fun ways.  Each person’s name is a link to his/her Twitter account for easy follow-ability.

Disclaimer: while many marketing automation vendors are posting great information and articles about these topics, we wanted to keep the list vendor-neutral and focus on individual contributors (who are listed in no particular order).

1.    Carlos Hidalgo – with over 1,700 Tweets, you just know that at least once a day, Carlos is going to share something insightful about marketing automation, especially from his clients’ perspective.
2.    Matt Heinz – his blog “Matt on Marketing” is fresh, funny and contains tons of free tips and advice about more than just marketing automation – from lead nurturing emails to print collateral tips, his posts are worth a read.
3.    Laura Ramos – her knowledge and insights about using marketing solutions and technology to cut through the noise in complex B2B sales cycles are delivered in a clean, no-nonsense style.
4.    Jep Castelein – with the promise of helping clients uncover untapped revenue in their database, Jep launched LeadSloth as a resource center with useful marketing automation tips from an unbiased viewpoint.
5.    Andrew Hunt – his Blog “From Clicked to Closed” gives readers practical inbound marketing advice in an anecdotal style that is refreshing, informative and fun to read.
6.    David Raab – an experienced analyst with a keen eye on using the latest technologies to enhance marketing, his blog “Customer Experience Matrix” provides its readers with useful information, especially during the all-important vendor selection process.
7.    Ardath Albee – her book “eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale” is chock full of actionable information and Ardath is a talented and savvy contributor about hot topics such as marketing automation, social media, lead nurturing and more.
8.    Craig Rosenberg – so the name the Funnelholic makes us crack a smile every time, but Craig backs up his “addiction” with great tips and strategies about B2B marketing, lead generation and lead nurturing.
9.    Mac McIntosh – with 20 years of advertising, marketing and sales experience, he helps readers and clients understand the “big picture” of lead management from pre-pipeline to a closed sale.

We picked these 9 experts because they provide great information, but we know this list is far from complete.   If you’d like to suggest your favorite demand gen or marketing automation expert, please comment below or send us a tweet @NetResults and we’ll include them in a future post.  Happy automating!

“The amount of time people spend online has not increased since last year,” according to a CNET News article sourcing a report released by Forrester.  Perhaps more interesting, however, is the reason for the trend – online behavior is changing. “Engagement with the online channel has deepened,” writes Forrester analyst Jackie Anderson. “Web users are becoming savvier and are better multi-taskers.  Many know exactly where they want to go when they log in.”

While people aren’t necessarily spending more time online, the internet remains an absolutely essential part of everyday business and personal life, so what could explain this static usage?

Online users are becoming smarter, more knowledgeable and putting up with less…well…bologna to get to what they want.  Their need for immediate results has created the demand for quick, easy and (oftentimes) free services and tools that help execute and measure social engagement, marketing campaigns, business processes, news distribution, etc.

That said, we’ve come up with a list of free tools we love that make your life easier, whether you’re creating your company’s next email marketing initiative, researching the competition, or just trying to find out who’s going to your high school reunion (so you can make your “non-biased” decision based on anticipated attendance).

1.    Tiny URL.com (or bit.ly.com)
TinyUrl.com is a free website that enables you to take a paragraph long URL and shorten it into well… a tiny URL.  It is especially useful for tweeting when every character matters.  You can create a login so you can easily see how many clicks your adorable, truncated URLs are receiving.

2.    Google Alerts
Google Alerts is a valuable yet often overlooked tool.  Once you’ve established a Google account, you only need to toggle Alerts and add the keywords you want to track, and the frequency in which you’d like to receive information containing your words or phrases via email.  The Alerts tool is helpful for research, brand monitoring, competitive analysis, or just keeping up with any news item that contains the word, “Britney” (we’re not judging).

3.    Picnik
Picnik is an online application for those of us who don’t have our Adobe Photoshop PhD (or a couple hundred bucks for the software). You can crop, edit, resize or adjust your images and photos including converting them into JPEGs, with a few quick and easy clicks.

4.    Hootsuite
Too many social accounts and too little time?  Use Hootsuite to manage it all for you.  See who is following you, manage lists, schedule tweets for the future, track statistics, customize URLs, and much more.  Plus, let’s be honest, the owl logo is incredibly cute.

5.   Lightscreen
Lightscreen is the open source alternative to its not-so open source counterpart SnagIt.  Lightscreen enables you grab screen captures of your entire screen, specific areas, a scrolling screen shot and more.  And it saves all of your images as editable JPEGs on your desktop.

6.   dBusinessNews
dBusinessNews.com is a daily news site that makes it easy to get free press release or news distribution.  The site is updated on a daily basis, and it has great local and national reach to get your message out…without draining your bank account.

7.   Klout
Ever wondered whether your social media efforts are a bunch of hooey and virtual glad-handing?  Well, Klout has developed a scoring index that measures your reach, amplification and network influence to generate a score or number.  Spark a friendly office rivalry to see who has more clout…according to Klout.

8.    StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is a great social media internet community that promotes sharing and recommending useful web pages, articles, photos and videos.  Users can also post original articles and press releases to distribute company or personal information cost-effectively.

With the speed of communications moving more rapidly every day, and prices increasing faster than you can say, “inflation,” having free and easy tools at your fingertips is just one way we’d like to make your online marketing life easier (and enhance your multimedia search for Britney Spears).

Have a favorite free tool or app that you can’t live without?  Leave a comment or tweet it @NetResults.com.

Soccer fans, sports enthusiasts or pretty much anyone who owns a TV knows the 2010 World Cup is well underway in South Africa.  In addition to the amazing athleticism and intense displays of national pride, this World Cup will likely be remembered for another phenomenon – a three-foot trumpet-like instrument, the vuvuzela.  If you’ve watched a World Cup match, you know the sound – something like a swarm of locusts that got stuck in a ceiling fan stuck on high speed.

We’re not here to take sides regarding whether the instrument is a traditional part of African soccer or a heinous ear-splitting nuisance – but we did see a parallel between the beloved (or maligned) vuvuzela and marketing automation.  Think it’s not possible?  Read on…

Last week, in response to literally hundreds of complaints, Britain’s BBC announced that it is exploring a way to give its viewers using digital service a mute button for the vuvuzelas.  Sounds like a great idea, right?  Viewers who like the vuvuzelas can enjoy the sound and everyone who doesn’t care for them can mute them.

But wait a minute…if viewers can suddenly, at will, mute certain sounds from their television sets, do you think TV show producers or advertisers will be very happy?  Annoying commercials, theme music, TV hosts, etc. could be controlled with the click of a button.  But that’s a topic for another day…back to how the vuvuzela debate relates to the concept of marketing automation.

It reminds us that people want to control what they see – they want to control their viewing experience, whether online, TV, their smart phone, etc.  And that’s what marketing automation can help you do so well.

By communicating based on a viewer’s unique interactions with emails, web sites, blog posts, etc, a marketing automation solution can educate and qualify leads about what subject matter they find interesting.  In turn, the viewer is not subjected to a myriad of communications they have zero interest in receiving.  When executed properly, marketing automation can be like the proposed BBC mute button.  Leads can listen to what they like and find interesting, but tune out the rest.

As an organization, you can track the ones who are “listening” and further qualify them.  Those who don’t engage – who mute, or in this case, don’t interact with communications, can receive less attention. So grab your soccer spirit, vuvuzela, mute button and start automating!

While it’s a no-brainer that your hottest leads are the highest priority and warrant attention, what about the rest of your contacts whose interaction with your email campaigns is just so-so? With email interaction becoming an increasingly important consideration in keeping your status as a white-listed email marketer, should you continue to send emails, even though their lack of engagement can chip away at your reputation as an above board email marketer?

This question is a tricky one, because removing them from your list could eliminate these leads from becoming a potential customer, but keeping them on your list could damage your email marketing integrity. While you rarely want to completely remove a contact from your database (unless of course, they’ve opted out), you can use your marketing automation software to create segments of “cooler” contacts that you communicate with on a less frequent basis.

Right now, stop what you’re doing and take a moment to define what constitutes a more (or less) qualified prospect in your organization. This discussion can be quite ‘animated’ to say the least because sales may be rejecting leads from marketing as unqualified, while marketing thinks sales should be…well…selling. Once you’ve navigated this slippery slope, bridged this communication gap and defined the characteristics of qualified leads (ta da!), it makes sense to segment these leads from the cooler ones. With differing levels of interest, these segments within your database should receive customized streams of communications. Leads that are cooler could receive more educationally focused information such as newsletters and product updates, while more qualified prospects could go into a nurturing campaign to receive more frequent communications that are relevant to their areas of interest.

By thinking of more than just your hottest prospects, you’ll be able to further segment your database into lists associated with different levels of interest and readiness. Once these lists are in place, you can send communications at a pace that feels more comfortable and tailored to each segment of leads. Your lead database will remain in good shape, you’ll keep your integrity intact as an email marketer – and the most interested prospects will rise to the top – making your lead nurturing efforts shine.

I’m not sure anyone really asks, “What’s your sign?” as a pick-up line these days, but with the rising popularity of marketing automation, perhaps more people should be asking, “What’s your score…lead score, to be exact?”

Isn’t it every sales person’s dream to know exactly how qualified a prospect is and the intended purchase timeframe?  By knowing this information, sales could focus on the hottest prospects – the ones that are in the buying phase and judged most likely to close.  The remaining leads could receive additional follow-up communications until they move closer to the decision-making process.

Using the lead scoring feature within a marketing automation system, this dream scenario can become reality.  Lead scoring tracks the leads’ interaction with your website, emails, online events, etc, and then automatically assigns a numerical value.

The guesswork associated with a prospect’s level of engagement is substantially reduced, if not eliminated, because you can assess interest based on a finite value…the lead score.  Additionally, the score is adjusted automatically by the system so you don’t need to login each time an event occurs and adjust the score manually (although that can be done if an offline action occurs that necessitates a change in the score).

To get started thinking about how lead scoring applies to your lead database, imagine the different actions, attributes or behaviors a lead might have that would make him/her more qualified.  Here is a quick list of lead criteria that we’ve found particularly helpful:

Visitor attributes

• Referred by a high-value lead source such as a technology partner, application exchange website, etc
• Searched for a specific keyword strand that implies familiarity like brand or product name
• Came to the website from a specific geographical area where your company is well-positioned

Website activity

• Clicked on a high-value link such as a white paper download
• Viewed a certain amount of pages or spent a specified length of time on your site
• Returned to the website multiple times
• Submitted an inquiry form such as “Contact Us” or subscribed to your Blog feed

Emails

• Clicked on specific links within the email or went to landing pages
• Interacted with a specific number of emails received

Online events

• Registered or attended an event such as a webinar

As you can see, the possibilities of assigning and adjusting a lead score based on a lead’s attributes or actions are limitless and provide a great way to identify the most qualified leads without adding manual bulk or processes.  Here’s to knowing your leads’ scores instead of their signs!

Why is segmentation so hot right now?  Simply put, it helps you send the right message to the right people.  While you have been diligently growing your opt-in database, pipeline and customer base, you’ve been adding names to your internal database.  Sending those members identical communications is certainly easy and convenient – but, by virtue of creating a generic message that is applicable to your entire list, it probably lacks the razor-sharp focus to make it very relevant.

Database segmentation can help!  Many marketing automation platforms provide list segmentation tools that vary from simple sorting to complex conditional statements.  But, thinking about segmentation can be a little overwhelming so we’ve provided a few ideas to get you started…

New Clients
While you still want to keep the lines of communication open with your new clients, once a contact has become a client, it’s time to move them to a different list, where they receive emails that are designed for clients – and not prospects.  As you can imagine, it’s pretty disconcerting for an existing client to receive an email communicating a special deal for new customers.  It smacks of the Triple Play cable deal where that awesome rate is only available to new customers, right?

Product Purchase Patterns
If you provide a multitude of distinct products or solutions, it makes sense to communicate with prospects or customers about their demonstrated areas of interest. You can then provide this segment specific offers or content relevant to the product line they are interested in or purchased in the past.

Industry or Title
Different vertical markets have different pain points that can be addressed through email campaigns and special offers.  Similarly, personnel holding different titles within the organization may have different needs or objectives.  For example, messages to a VP of Sales may differ from a VP of Marketing.

Interest Based Preferences
If you’ve conducted surveys over the past year, then you know that certain contacts have different interests that will help you classify their interest levels in various offerings related to your core product or service.

Open Rate/Click Through Rate
It’s a fairly simple concept- email list members who open your newsletter or click on a link on a frequent basis are clearly more engaged than members who do not open or click.  Therefore, you can try sending a higher frequency of communications to your most engaged members to increase conversion or response.

Channels of Acquisition
Where your email members came from is known as an ‘acquisition channel’ and different acquisition channels have different characteristics. For example: Co-registration email list members will likely respond or convert differently than organically acquired email members. Communicating with your prospects with regards to how they became prospects will increase your chances of starting a conversation with them.

Geography
This is also a simple concept of segmentation that is often overlooked or used improperly. Segmenting your contacts out by their geographic location gives you the opportunity to offer local specials, events and promotions. You can also integrate local news and current events  into your communications to increase their relevancy to each individual on your email marketing list.

Generic mass communication by design, is practically built to be overlooked, and by not segmenting out your audience, you are approaching all of your prospects and leads in the same manner and not addressing individual issues. Unfortunately there is no singular effort that can appeal to all types of leads and all stages of readiness, but by intelligently segmenting out your audience into specific and targeted groups, you are able to respond with appropriate marketing strategies that satisfy the many preferences of each identified segment, to eventually improve overall revenue.

With celebrity tweets about botched Botox, personal agony over the tanning bed tax and Justin Bieber as a trending topic, it is sometimes hard to see the legitimacy of using social media as a way to communicate with your prospects. While it’s easy to get frustrated with the noise of social media and give up on it entirely,  it is a cost-effective and engaging way to communicate with prospects, customers and technology partners.

The question we’re tackling today is, “How do you establish a strategy that enhances your brand — without ruining your street cred?” Read more

Doesn’t it seem like it is easier to get into Buckingham Palace then to get into your prospect’s inboxes?

Unfortunately, many people still do not have a clear understanding that your subject line is your meal ticket when recipients are deciding whether to interact with your email.  Because so many dishonest e-mailers have filled inboxes with free Viagra solicitations, trips to Paris, and requests for funds sent to Pakistan, they have discredited the rest of us who have legitimate messages we’d like to share. Read more

As specialists in the field of marketing automation, it is easy to assume everyone is using email to communicate with prospects, customers and technology partners.  When you stop and think about it, however, is that assumption really accurate?  Are most businesses really using email – and using it effectively? Read more