Marketing Automation Weekly Wrap-up - 2009/08/31

More great posts over the last week-and-a-bit from the marketing automation and B2B marketing blogging community. Some good analysis of data in this week's set - data from surveys, data on FriendFeed usage, and data on how data ages. I hope you enjoy these posts as much as I did:



Laura Cross (@lauracross) from Marketing Insights draws a comparison between direct marketing teasers and the relationship between emails and landing pages in this quick but insightful video:

http://marketinginsights.eloqua.com/2009/08/25/using-email-as-a-teaser/


David Raab (@draab) at the Customer Experience Matrix looks at the Pedowitz Group’s Sweet platform which ties social media and marketing automation together:

http://customerexperiencematrix.blogspot.com/2009/08/pedowitz-groups-sweet-suite-builds.html


Lauren Kincke on the B2B Lead blog provides some interesting and surprising stats on how quickly data gets dirty and hence why it should be a key priority for marketers:

http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/6-scary-dirty-data-stats/



Brian Carroll (@brianjcarroll) from Start with a Lead discusses what is actually lead nurturing vs what many execs think is lead nurturing. A focus on helping the prospective buyer better understand the space and solve their pains is key, not just a repeated attempt to sell:

http://blog.startwithalead.com/weblog/2009/08/what-is-and-isnt-lead-nurturing-.html


Steve Kellogg (LinkedIn) from Crowds2Crowds writes a letter to sales introducing all that marketing can do for them. A great foundation for thinking about how to get buy-in from your sales team to marketing’s efforts:

http://crowds2crowds.blogspot.com/2009/08/but-waittheres-more.html



Mike Damphousse (@damphoux) from Green Leads shared a few results from his recent poll of sales and marketing execs. Key takeaways: outbound marketing is still more common than inbound, for now, and at least 1/3 of senior execs will delegate down to directors when looking to understand vendor offerings:

http://www.damphousse.org/2009/08/poll-demand-gen-experts-use-equal-mix.html
http://www.damphousse.org/2009/08/b2b-appointments-third-of-cvp-execs.html



Jep Castelein (@jepc) from Lead Sloth starts a good discussion by looking at the top reasons that marketing automation projects fail. Typical causes are unclear business focus, and relying on technology alone, rather than people, process, and technology:

http://www.leadsloth.com/blog/marketing-automation-projects-fail/


Dharmesh Shah (@dharmesh) at Hubspot provides some very interesting stats on FriendFeed and how it’s used. Surprisingly experimental and early adopter usage profile:

http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/5026/State-Of-FriendFeed-14-Things-You-Probably-Don-t-Know.aspx