Blog

In the Mafia, clear communications are vital. If different people have different perspectives, the wrong people die. This is just as true in an Eloqua CRM integration; well, except for the actual death part! The first problem is that the word “integration” means different things to different departments and sometimes those ordering (or executing) onRead more

Has marketing automation gone mainstream? We don’t know, but a recent survey by Aberdeen Group suggests that’s the case. Business 2 Community recently published an overview of the survey, 22 Essential Facts About the State of Marketing Automation. The survey suggested, among other things, that 70% of organizations were either already using a marketing automationRead more

Greg Coticchia has published a very helpful article, entitled “What’s a Lead?” in which he relates his own difficulties answering that question, as well as the difficulties that others are having. In our day of “sales and marketing alignment”, when “reducing barriers to transactions” is key, the answer to that question has much higher stakes.Read more

Not long ago, we published a blog post on the topic of Five Reasons to Engage a Partner (while you’re waiting to hire the perfect Eloqua Marketing Expert). Those reasons included: Multi-faceted expertise – the kind that no single person could bring to your department. The ability to get a lot of work done quickly.Read more

VentureBeat News recently reported a study that said “many organizations are underestimating the resources that are required” to effectively implement their marketing automation technologies. Eloqua experts are being promoted quickly and are otherwise in demand, and at the same time, we’re hearing that some companies are having trouble hiring trained Eloqua resources. Even in a goodRead more

What are the main differences between “automation” and “personalization”? The Business-2-Community website recently posted an article that contrasted the two. The article draws a sharp contrast between what’s “personal” and what’s “automated”, and it lists the advantages and disadvantages of each method. The challenge occurs because “customers are individuals and expect to be treated accordingly”.Read more

It would be nice to think your IT department could supply all the services you need for your marketing technologies. IT departments typically focus on getting the programs up and running and making sure they’re secure. If you’re lucky (and many aren’t) your IT department can also support you in integrating your systems. But thisRead more

In part 1, “What Every CMO Should Add to the Marketing Plan“, we talked about what the marketing automation plan (MAP) was.  But why is it important to the CEO that the CMO have one? CEOs are constantly reading, and many CEOs will expect you to be doing the things they’ve just read about. ButRead more

Recently I helped the CMO of a client of ours produce their marketing plan and I quickly came to a realization. The marketing plans we used just a short while ago are out of date. The mainstays of these plans, including target markets, market size, market niche, channels, segments, budgets, lead projections and more areRead more