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!

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!

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

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

One question we hear quite often from our clients is, “How often should I be sending emails and communicating with my database of leads?”

While we wish there was a hard and fast rule on this topic, like so many other marketing questions, the answer really depends on many variables.  Take a moment to think about your database and answer the following questions… Read more

I met with a client this morning who currently uses Net-Results to track website visitors and identify companies coming to her site. When she sees one who could be a good prospect, she picks up the phone and attempts to call the person who came to her site. She doesn’t always get to the right person, but she does typically make contact with someone in the organization and has a good initial prospecting call. When I asked her how she normally follows up with those prospects, she said she generally handwrites notes and mails them. I thought that was a great idea – very few people do that because email is just easier – so it really makes her standout. But, I felt that the combination of handwritten notes and automated lead nurturing could further enhance her follow-up strategy and give her greater insight into the actual interest level of her prospects. Read more

As Net-Results made its debut trade show appearance at ad:tech Chicago, 2009, we were extremely pleased and excited at the turnout and fantastic response to us and the growing response to Marketing Automation. Although ad:tech Chicago is regarded as the least attended in the ad:tech conference series, we were pleasantly surprised at the amount of attendees that had their hands on the latest in marketing technology strategies, tactics and tools. Read more

The term marketing automation has been around for some years now, and many (like us) in the industry believe this term to be pretty commonplace.  Truthfully, however, I can’t tell you the number of times we get blank stares or bits of awkward pauses when we say ‘marketing automation’ with prospective customers, and even prospective channel partners. Then I will say something like “What if you could identify the real prospects who are visiting your site, the things they are interested in, and how often they are visiting? Then you could follow up with an integrated email campaign targeted at a variety of segments based on their interests, behaviors and feedback? And provide scoring and nurturing of these leads within your system, all the while tying it into your CRM system and passing it on to salespeople to turn that information into revenue?” Read more

By Elizabeth Sklaroff, Access Marketing Company

I’m a pretty laid back person. I don’t get excited about much – and not much impresses me. But I have to say that I’m jazzed about lead gen again, and it’s because of the web intelligence I’m able to get now. With the help of a smart demand generation “solution” (forgive me for this grossly over-used term in marketing – but in this case, it truly fits), our clients know what their leads are doing and when they are doing it – and most importantly WHO their leads are.  After installing the snippet of Net-Results code onto our clients’ websites, I have been amazed, intrigued and slightly addicted to the intelligence. Read more