B2B Connection

As account-based marketing has continued to catch the attention of practitioners, marketing technology vendors, and the Marketing media, both the supply of and the demand for ABM technology has skyrocketed. New tools designed around account-based marketing challenges and best practices have entered the market; established marketing technologies have released new features to better address account-based marketing use cases (Marketo is a notable recent example, though the release is forthcoming); and some products have merely re-branded, latching on to the ABM trend. TrustRadius Research recently attended the #FlipMyFunnel Festival in Austin, a roadshow entirely dedicated to ABM. We interviewed speakers and attended sessions to find out more about: How account-based marketing impacts the use of foundational marketing and sales technologies like CRM and Marketing Automation. When it’s necessary to invest in new technologies to support new ABM initiatives. What kinds of software support an ABM strategy, and how vendors, experts and practitioners are categorizing them. ABM & Your MarTech Stack Right Now The Role of CRM and Marketing Automation in ABM Marketing automation and CRM systems are frequently called out for making it difficult to set up account-based marketing programs, since MA is built around leads, associating leads with accounts and opportunities is […]

As more vendors, thought leaders, and practitioners have embraced (and amplified) the account-based marketing trend, specific questions about what is needed for ABM and what type of companies should be doing ABM are becoming more widespread. Best practices for organizational structure, budget share, and technology are growing in complexity. More Marketing and Sales leaders have learned from their early ABM efforts and technology investments, and are willing to share their key learnings with peers. Accordingly, the #FlipMyFunnel Festival has grown from 1 track of presenters in San Francisco in February to 3 tracks in Austin this June. TrustRadius, a media sponsor for the show, attended sessions and interviewed presenters to understand how ABM impacts the overall company strategy and structure, and what is required for this to be effective. One of the biggest takeaways was that interdepartmental alignment underlies all aspects of effective ABM, in terms of collaboration on target account lists, the topics and language of marketing messaging, ABM measurement, and integrated tech stacks. There are two sides to this coin: some interviewees said ABM requires alignment (push), while others said ABM creates alignment (pull). Either way, the consensus is that organizations taking an account-based approach will need to have Sales, Marketing, and […]

B2B marketing leaders and content marketing experts weigh in on challenges & changes in content marketing at the Marketo Marketing Nation Summit. They said content marketers should take action to improve their efforts and maximize content ROI, and shared tips for making Marketing messages more strategic, more relevant, more profitable, and more accessible. The State of Content Marketing in 2016 Content Marketing Programs Have Been Adopted But Are Still Immature Content marketing has grown in popularity as an inbound tactic for B2B marketers. The strategy involves using content to attract, engage, retain, and grow a brand audience by providing helpful information about topics that interest the brand’s universe of ideal customers. At the recent Marketing Nation Summit, Marketo’s user conference, there were several presentations by marketing leaders championing particular approaches to content marketing, as well as by software vendors like ScribbleLive, Uberflip, and Kapost, and consultants who assist with content creation and program design. During the Summit, TrustRadius Research interviewed experts and practitioners to get a pulse on the state of content marketing in 2016. These conversations revealed that although marketers are starting to use content more, effective content marketing remains a challenge. Defining the relationship of Marketing to Sales, determining the strategic value of content, and creating impactful […]

The FlipMyFunnel festival makes its way to TrustRadius home base Austin, Texas next month for a day of ABM-themed sessions, including high-level thought leadership and practical case studies to help attendees “challenge the status quo of B2B marketing and sales.” What is #FlipMyFunnel? #FlipMyFunnel is a movement started by Sangram Vajre, the co-founder and CMO of Terminus, which is an ABM tool that serves ads via mobile, social, display, video and direct mail and provides account-level revenue attribution. The movement, which has gained support from vendors and practitioners across multiple software categories, proposes to reverse the traditional marketing funnel that passes a large volume of leads through various stages of education before a narrow slice of them purchases the product. The flipped funnel concept says you should instead identify the right set of target customers, find more like them, engage them with personalized content, and turn them into loyal fans that stick around, spend more, and advocate for you to a broader base of prospects. The implication is a greater focus on finding the right customers and making them happy. What’s new in ABM? As TrustRadius has observed before, Account-based Marketing is not necessarily a new concept. We talked to a couple of speakers […]

Note: this article was first published 4/1/16 on ChiefMartech.com. TrustRadius Research attended MarTech last month to interview a number of vendors exhibiting there about their perspective on “hot” categories within the marketing tech landscape. Account-based marketing (ABM) was one of the biggest topics at the MarTech conference. Nearly every exhibitor featured a reference to ABM, and many of the presenters touched on the trend as well. Across software categories like predictive analytics, sales & marketing intelligence, and ad serving & retargeting, ABM is impacting vendor positioning, marketing campaigns, and even product roadmaps. The TrustRadius research team checked in with some of the leading vendors to get a pulse on how ABM is shaping their product and business. Here are the major ABM trends that emerged: Vendors that provide contact and account data (sometimes called prospecting tools, data vendors, or sales intelligence solutions) are positioning themselves as the foundation for alignment between marketing & sales teams. Predictive analytics vendors, which use machine learning to determine a company’s “ideal customer profile,” are surfacing best-fit accounts in addition to contacts. Some are also offering their own prospecting and data verification features. In addition to creating personalized content that is relevant to specific target accounts, companies practicing […]

Note: this article was first published 4/8/16 on CustomerThink. Last week (March 21-22), Totango hosted their annual Customer Success Summit, which brought together leaders who manage Customer Success teams and tech vendors whose software products are used to facilitate customer success strategies. Totango provides customer success management software, which includes user monitoring, alerts about customer health, analytics, nurture campaigns, and BPM tools. Their product is part of a growing practice where B2B companies are focused on making sure their customers are deriving continuous value from their product, to ensure retention, growth and advocacy. Several other vendors, like Gainsight, Bluenose Analytics, Amity, Preact, Natero, and Churnspotter, also provide software designed to enable Customer Success teams. TrustRadius interviewed leaders in Customer Success about the trends and changes they’ve observed in the space, their goals for their own Customer Success teams, and learnings about best practices from their own experience and from conversations at the Summit. Mark Roberge of HubSpot, David Apple of Typeform, Matt Oxley of Opal Labs, Dan Adika of WalkMe, and Loretta Jones and Megan Roth of Insightly all had different, valuable lessons to share about customer success. Across these conversations, several topics emerged as important considerations as you build and evaluate your own Customer Success strategy: Customer Success impacts revenue, […]

Content plays a role throughout the buyer’s journey. Content marketing, which is the strategy of creating and distributing useful and relevant content to attract the right audience, is often seen as classic top-of-the-funnel, awareness stage content. Mid-funnel content might be focused on nurturing and demand generation, whereas content for sales enablement, which is the practice of equipping salespeople with the information, assets, technology and best practices needed to sell more effectively, is often seen as bottom-of-the-funnel, conversion stage content. TrustRadius talked to several vendors exhibiting at MarTech who focus on one or more stages of content use. In general, these vendors discussed the importance of thinking about your content strategy across all stages, whether you’re using one tool or a set of tools to support and track your activities. Meet the Vendors The vendors we interviewed span a few different categories: Kapost, a content marketing platform. Content marketing platforms support content creation, publication, distribution, measurement and optimization. Vidyard, an online video platform. OVPs allow users to host and measure the impact of video content. Acrolinx, a tool that helps companies with large writing staffs produce writing with consistent quality and tone, and Persado, a tool that uses machine learning to write targeted, effective content for […]

  This year’s MarTech Conference was abuzz with talk about how to enable agile marketing. The short answer? With data. Marketing thought leaders and exhibiting vendors debated what it means to be a data-driven marketer–what type of data helps your marketing strategy, what too much data looks like, and how marketers can use technology to more effectively manage and operationalize data insights. The Marketer’s Data Dilemma One group of vendors, in particular, evangelized the importance of real-time data, comprehensive cross-channel dashboards, ROI attribution, and actionable insights made accessible to Marketing without intervention from the data scientists. BrightFunnel, Bizible, Beckon, Datorama, Allocadia, Origami Logic, Impact Radius, and Full Circle Insights fit into a subset of Marketing Analytics software that’s specifically concerned with putting BI-style data insights into the hands of marketers, so that the Marketing department can more quickly and intelligently (re)allocate resources to achieve their own goals as well as the bottom-line goals of the business at large. Note that some of these products focus on B2C, while others focus on B2B; some are designed to handle enterprise loads, while others stress usability and fast time-to-value for SMBs. There is not yet consensus around what this subset of Marketing Analytics should be called. Tools have been described as […]

The role of video in marketing was a theme among vendors at this year’s MarTech Conference. We talked to three video platform vendors (Brightcove, Vidyard and HapYak) about the evolution of video marketing—from a brand awareness effort with questionable ROI, to a highly sophisticated, targeted content method that can drive measurable results. Meet the Vendors Brightcove is an online video platform with two main lines of business: media companies looking to monetize video through advertising and other methods, and organizations looking to leverage and measure video content as part of their digital marketing strategies. The company was founded in 2004 and has 5,500 customers. Vidyard is a video marketing and analytics platform for businesses, allowing for hosting, distribution, management and measurement/analytics of video content. The company was founded in 2011, has 700 customers, and recently raised $35 million in a series C funding round. HapYak is an interactive video platform that allows users to add interactivity – such as chapters, clickable buttons, text annotations, quizzing, branching, etc. – to existing videos. The product works with any online video platform. The company was founded in 2012 and has several hundred customers. Video Marketing Trends 1. Video is now being used across the funnel Unsurprisingly, all […]

Scott Brinker – author of the Chief Marketing Technologist blog and program chair of the upcoming MarTech conference (March 21-22 in San Francisco) – produces a marketing technology landscape infographic each year, which plots the logos of most marketing technology vendors by category and function. Brinker’s goal is to illustrate the continuing transformation of Marketing into a technology-based discipline. The supergraphic depicts explosive growth in terms of the number of Martech vendors (and categories): The 2014 version recognized 947 vendors; the 2015 version included 1,876; and Brinker says the 2016 version – not published yet – will include an even larger sample of the roughly 4,000 marketing technology companies that he now estimates exist worldwide. Yet one of Brinker’s most interesting predictions for 2016 is that the number of active vendors will actually finally plateau. The space is crowded, consolidation is happening, and the VC appetite for unproven technology startups is cooling; however, adoption of marketing technology – particularly among leading vendors – will continue to grow as Martech becomes more mainstream. This is certainly evidenced by the growing number of marketers using sites like TrustRadius to evaluate Martech products. It’s also sure to be a topic at the MarTech conference – where TrustRadius is a media partner. Here’s the visual […]

  As we head into 2016, we took a look at trends in the social media management landscape. Here’s the year in review: several vendors gained visibility on TrustRadius over the last year, while others fell in the ranks—and these changes in buyer research activity seem to be a function of continuing social M&A. Check out our stack rank chart, based on changes in website traffic over the last year, below.  Spredfast, Oracle, Sprinklr, and NetBase are Fastest-Growing SMMS Vendors on TrustRadius A Closer Look at Growth, Research Frequency & Company Status Sprinklr, NetBase, Spredfast, and Oracle SRM gained the most traction over the last year, rising up in the rankings for most researched SMMS tools on TrustRadius. Interestingly, over the last few years climbers Sprinklr, Spredfast, and Oracle have all added to their social offerings through M&A, which continues to be a big trend in the social space. Sprinklr, the clear leader in terms of research frequency on TrustRadius, has been particularly active over the last two years. Sprinklr’s recent acquisitions include the Dachis Group, TBG Digital, Branderati, Pluck, Get Satisfaction, Scup, newBrandAnalytics, and Booshaka. Hootsuite, which held steady in second place between 2014-2015, has also been acquisitive—in 2014, Hootsuite […]

SMMS users have spoken! According to user feedback on TrustRadius—ratings and research frequency—here are the top ten social media management suites for 2016: Sprinklr, Hootsuite Enterprise, Sprout Social, NetBase, Spredfast, Adobe Social, AgoraPulse, Oracle SRM, Viralheat, and Shoutlet. (Engagor, which is just shy of Top Rated, and Expion, which is used by agencies, were close runners-up.) But, it can be tricky and time consuming to dig into the nuances that distinguish these products. So, we put together an overview to help you quickly and easily compare leading SMMS tools. Use this chart to narrow down your choices, based on the qualities and features that are most important for your use case. Here’s what you’ll find in this chart: Top-Rated SMMS products for small businesses, mid-sized companies, and enterprises.  Ultimate feature comparison across 38 social media management features, including listening/monitoring, publishing, engagement, marketing, channel coverage/integration, reporting/analytics, and account management. Features marked in green are standouts—they score at or above average among the leading products. Comparison of user ratings for product attributes like usability, support, training, and implementation. Attributes marked in green are exceptional—they score at or above average among SMMS leaders. Alternatives to leading products, based on top buyer comparisons. Top industries using each product (based on reviewer distribution). Compare the Top Ten Social Media Management Suites Best SMMS […]

We talked to Andrew Archer, VP of Marketing at Yesware, about the developing Sales Enablement software space. Yesware combines email tracking, sales intelligence, analytics, and productivity features (such as email templates and click-to-call) into a tool that’s designed to service salespeople as well as managers/ops. A pioneer in the sales email tracking space, Yesware is expanding its core by building out more in-depth analytics and prescriptive recommendations, which Archer said will increase the actionability of Yesware’s data and help improve sales performance. He also gave us a view on upcoming product releases—including how Yesware’s development roadmap fits into larger trends in Sales software and best practices. In addition, Archer responded to reviewer feedback around Yesware pros and cons, explaining Yesware’s approach to common pain points compared to its closest competitors.   Introduction to Yesware Give us an introduction to Yesware—where do you see yourselves in the space, and what is your mission? Our space is evolving rapidly, and it’s been called a couple of different names: Sales Enablement, Sales Acceleration, and Sales Productivity. All of these terms fall under a larger umbrella term—Sales Automation Software. We see Sales Automation as a macro category that contains CPQ software, sales content management tools, sales performance management platforms, […]

Infer’s flagship product is a predictive analytics platform for marketing and sales, which builds predictive models based on a company’s historical pipeline and current customer data. The predictive sales analytics space is heating up, and as vendors become more competitive, they’re developing differentiators. We talked with Jamie Grenney, Vice President of Marketing at Infer, about their new “stealth” product, Prospect Management, which can work with or without a predictive model. Infer Prospect Management is a lightweight app that works with Salesforce, marketing automation, and/or data from a predictive model to produce recommendations about which prospects to target and which content to use. Prospect management helps ops teams, product marketers, demand gen teams, and sales reps get a more intelligent view of segments, personas, and profiles. Grenney also discussed the evolution of predictive technology and weighed in on the possibility of “self-driving cars” (AI-powered marketing and sales ops) in predictive’s future.  Introduction to Infer What’s new at Infer? Over the last year, $242 million in venture funding has flowed into B2B predictive marketing. That is great validation that we’re on the edge of a mega-trend that could be every bit as big as cloud, social, or mobile. At Infer we feel fortunate to have gotten out front and had time to build […]

EverString is part of a relatively new space called Predictive Sales Analytics (aka Predictive Marketing, or predictive analytics for sales and marketing). We’ve found that many people are interested, but not yet ready to buy—honestly, some aren’t quite sure what predictive sales analytics actually is. We talked to J.J. Kardwell, President and Co-Founder of EverString, to better understand their positioning and the evolution of the space. EverString is unique in the space in that it’s architected for Account-based Marketing, designed around the account object rather than the lead object. Kardwell gave us an in-depth view on how buyers new to the space should be evaluating solutions, and how users already familiar with predictive lead scoring can be driving more value with other applications of predictive.  Introduction to Predictive Analytics for Marketing & Sales How would you characterize the space for readers who are early in the buying cycle, perhaps just starting out with their research? A year and a half ago (when we started actively selling), category awareness was still very, very low. My sense is that nationally, awareness was virtually zero, and even in Silicon Valley it was less than 50%. Now, category awareness in Silicon Valley has grown to more than 80%, […]

Performance Metrics Feed Visibility and Engagement: Hoopla is a visual communication platform that specializes in intra-company engagement through shareable content broadcast across mobile, web and TV , including company updates and sales competitions. The company is a Silicon Valley startup, founded in 2010. They take a unique, complex approach to visibility and gamification, which Mike Smalls, Founder and CEO, says can help engage the millenial workforce and create a small company feel at large companies. Hoopla recently launched a new release to open up the platform to other data sources, improving customization options and the ability for more employees and departments to contribute content (such as selfies when they’ve achieved a goal). Hoopla is highly rated by users on TrustRadius. Introduction to Hoopla Who are you as a company, and what is the grand vision behind Hoopla? I founded Hoopla in 2010, and we’ve seen some pretty impressive growth since then. At the time, we were trying to solve a key problem: the challenge of motivating, engaging and driving the right behaviors from salespeople. We were focused on the metrics and dynamics that drive performance. Our team built a platform to bring visibility to key metrics and progress, and create […]

Evan James, Head of Americas Marketing, gave us a view on the Socialbakers approach to social media marketing: cross-channel visibility into a brand’s own social profiles paired with comparisons to competitor performance, including in newer areas like social video. According to James, Socialbakers has the largest social pages database, allowing them to create customized benchmarks for specific industries, geographic markets, and sets of competitors. Beyond their core analytics product, Socialbakers also has solutions to help with publishing and content management (Builder) and ads strategy (Promoted Post Detection). James explained that because Socialbakers has an intrinsically analytic perspective on social media marketing, analytics are built deep into all of these other products. Give us an introduction to Socialbakers—who are you, and what is your value proposition? We started in 2008. Over the years we have developed into a social media marketing company with an emphasis on analytics. Our core product, Socialbakers, gives marketers visibility across their social profiles—across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google+, Sina Weibo, and vKontakte—to understand what’s working and not working. The main piece involves being able to see how they’re performing in context of competitors. Our customers can see how they stack up one-to-one versus their most important competitors, […]

Marc Aubin, CEO and co-founder at AppBuddy, explained that while Salesforce’s complex data structures are well suited for storing data properly, they can be difficult for end-users to navigate effectively, which hinders adoption among salespeople. GridBuddy fills this gap in Salesforce by improving data visibility, context, and actionability. Aubin characterizes its single-screen interface, where related data can be sorted, filtered, and edited, as the marriage between transactional reporting and data management capabilities. Give us overall background on AppBuddy—how long have you been around, and what is your product focus? AppBuddy started about 6 years ago, in 2009. We were first listed our flagship product GridBuddy on the Salesforce AppExchange in 2010. GridBuddy fills a usability and adoption gap in Salesforce. Working with a relational data management system is confusing for end-users. The data structures translate into a lot of complexity, yet this complexity is necessary to store data properly, insuring data integrity so that it can be reported on. It’s a necessary evil. Unfortunately, for a lot of people that user experience is not something they can dive into easily and use effectively. We see problems with sales people not entering their data in a timely fashion. Down the line, these user adoption […]

We talked with Hannon Hill’s CEO, Kat Liendgens, and VP of Engineering, Bradley Wagner, about their approach to content management and content marketing. They explained the inner workings of Cascade Server and Spectate, including the advantage of storing content in small, flexible chunks, and shared their vision for smarter personalization based on customer journey data. Though originally designed for higher education, the company has been gaining traction in new verticals. According to Liendgens and Wagner, the CMS is a good fit for any organization that values self-sufficiency and needs to manage multiple, decentralized sites. Based on reviews and ratings contributed by end-users to TrustRadius, Cascade Server is a Top Rated CMS product for mid-size companies and enterprises. Cascade Server was also featured in our recent CMS Feature Report, which compares user feedback and company and customer demographics across eight leading CMS products. Could you give me an introduction into Hannon Hill’s overall vision and positioning? Kat: Hannon Hill was founded in 2001 by David Cummings, CEO of Atlanta Ventures. Our core product offerings are Cascade Server, a content management system, and Spectate, a content marketing tool. David started developing Cascade Server while he was student at Duke University. He designed the CMS with higher education […]

We heard from Igor Polevoy, President of ExpressPigeon, about ExpressPigeon’s custom integrations, deep personalization, and unique combination of email marketing and transactional email features–differentiators from competitors like ExactTarget, SendGrid, and MailChimp. Polevoy explains how ExpressPigeon, as a recent entrant in the space, has learned from the limitations and successes of older email service providers (ESPs). The company’s focus is now on providing boutique email services that meet the complex demands of B2B corporations. Who are you as a company, what’s your mission, and what is your value proposition? On the surface, we are a typical email service provider. We have tools for users to log in, create messages, send, and run reports. If you dig deeper, though, we are more of a boutique ESP; our tools allow users to produce high quality work very fast. We also take care and pride in our responsive, compatible messages. This is something that an ESP should do, but very few other providers are actually capable of producing a message that is compatible with different browsers and responsive across different devices. We also combine marketing email and transactional email capabilities, which very few ESPs do. Think about MailChimp and SendGrid—we’re two mass email communication services under the same roof. The other differentiator is that we are a […]