Blog - Marketing Rockstar Guides

How to Setup an Automated RSS-to-Email Feed in Marketo

July 16, 2014 By Josh Hill

I bet one of the things you were looking forward to with Marketo (or any marketing automation platform (MAP)), is automating your blog newsletter. You built a huge list with near daily content updates and yet – it is entirely manual process. You hired a marketer to help manage this process, but it still takes her 4 hours to format the email, test it, process the list, and make sure everything is agency level perfect.

Now you can go from 4 hours to automatic with Digesto – the latest Launchpoint app for Marketo. This is a very new service launched at the Marketo Summit in April and is saving hundreds of hours of productivity across the marketing world. Before we go into how to setup your Digesto system, I will disclose that I work at Perkuto would love to see all Marketo users with RSS feeds buy this tool. That being said, I do not get a special bonus for this post.

Most marketing and social gurus suggest setting up a corporate blog and asking people to provide an email address to receive updates whenever the blog is updated. Building your house email list is a critical part of successful content marketing, especially B2B nurturing. When I work with clients, I always recommend using the blog email list as the foundation for a newsletter and for further nurturing.

Ultimately, automating your blog feed is part of your revenue marketing strategy because it keeps your list active and it saves you time for other activities.

How to Setup Digesto to Save Time and Money

Setting up your first Digesto feed could take as little as 30 minutes or as long as two hours, depending how much you need to test. For this small investment of time, you get a lifetime of hours back.

Here is a diagram of what happens in the system.

What You Need to Start:

Digesto Account – get one here.

RSS Feed URL

The RSS feed is simply a URL. Digesto supports standard RSS and Atom protocols, so I doubt you will encounter any issues.

If you do not know your RSS feed URL, hover over your RSS icon, Right Click, press Copy Link.

Marketing Rockstar Guides’ RSS feed is:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/MarketingRockstarGuides

If you cannot find the RSS link or icon, ask your IT person or whoever runs the blog to look for you. They can help you turn it on.

In Digesto, a single RSS-to-Email system is known as a “Digest.” That is one RSS feed sent to a specific list of members at a specific schedule. You can have up to 5 Digests per account. If you need separate Digests by language, region, or time, you can do that too.

Marketo SOAP API – how do you get this?

You will need to find the SOAP endpoint and encryption key. The Digesto tool has a video explaining how to find this, but I’ll just tell you:

Go to Admin > Integration > SOAP API

Note: do not share your Endpoint and Encryption Key in public!

If you have Marketo Spark, you do not have access to the API, so you will have to upgrade to use Digesto.

Your Blog/Newsletter List

This can be a smart list, static, or whatever as long as you have one. You do have blog subscribers, right?

If not, start now by adding a simple Marketo Form with two fields:

Note that I disabled pre-fill on the hidden fields, lest my intention be overridden.

Marketo Program

You will need one Program for each RSS feed you want to automate. Standard Digesto accounts allow up to 5 “Digests”.

Email Template

I recommend using the most basic template you have, just 1 column with any standard header and footer you desire. If you have a special Newsletter/Blog Template, you can use that too.

Ok, let’s set this up.

Step 1: Program Setup

Digesto is driven by a combination of Program and Tokens. This program can be an Email Blast or an Email Send program, it is up to you.

Remember to add the items under Setup, especially Period Costs.

Step 2: Tokens

In the Program, go to My Tokens and create the following three tokens:

Rich Text:

{{my.DigestoEmailContent}}

= this brings in the body of your Post as HTML.

Rich Text: {{myDIgestoEmailContentText}} = this brings in the body of your Post as text for the Text version.

Text: {{my.DigestoEmailSubject}} = this places your Posts’s Title into the email’s subject line. You can control what appears here in your Digesto Account.

Each Token should simply say, “Default” in the editor.

I would avoid using Campaign Folder Tokens because these may conflict if you are using multiple RSS feeds (Digests).

Step 3: The Email

Of course, you need an email to be able to send anything. So create an email within the Program. I recommend keeping the Template choice simple, as there are limited formatting options with Digesto. A nice template with your logo, colors, footer, etc. is good. I recommend keeping it to one column if you can.

You can modify the email’s CSS in line, but this needs testing.
You cannot change the DIVs now

There’s not much else to do for the email. Remember to approve it after you tested the basic format. You will get a chance to Test the RSS feed later.

Step 4: The Send Campaign

At this point you will have something that looks a bit like this:

Remember, this is a Batch campaign. Set it to let Leads run through every time. Do not schedule it – it is not necessary.

Step 5: Digesto Account Setup

Login to your Digest account. You can do this with a free trial or with a paid account. Each Digesto account can handle up to 5 separate RSS feeds (you will need 5 separate Marketo Programs).

1. Login to Digesto

2. Click on an existing Digest or Press New

3. Program Name: enter the exact Program Name you created in Marketo.

4. Campaign Name: enter the exact name for the campaign you created to send the email.

5. Test Campaign Name: if you created a Test Campaign and List, enter it here. You can go back to Marketo anytime to add this.

6. Digest Name: what name do you want to see in Digesto?

7. RSS Feed: any RSS feed URL you want.

8. Max number of Posts: how many posts do you want to appear in each email? Normally I recommend 1 per email, but some firms prefer a newsletter approach with 3-5 per email. I only recommend that if you are sending once a week.

9. Schedule

10. Notification – do you want to receive an email each time the Digest goes out? (this will also notify you if a Digest runs without any new content – but it won’t send out an email).

A Word About Schedules

Displayed below is a schedule for a feed that will trigger an email whenever a new post hits your blog. The email can only go out Monday-Friday at any of the three times.

If you prefer to send this newsletter each week at 7:00AM, then change to Weekly and the day(s) you wish to send on.

For a schedule closer to real time, you can add up to 12 hourly sends on every day of the week. There is a great deal of flexibility in this scheduler, so try it out.

Step 6: Digesto Test System

What about testing the feed?

Digesto thought of that too! There is a test system. If you entered the Test Campaign Name in Step 5, you are ready to use the Test button.

In Marketo, clone your Send Campaign and add “TEST” to it so you know it is different.

Now this TEST list displayed should only be a list of internal staff or seeds, so it is a good idea to either use a Static List like I did here, or to use

Email Address = [List of Emails]

To ensure the test works, be sure to take the test campaign name and add it to the Digest as shown above.

Go back to Digesto and press Test:

Here are examples of what the emails could look like:

Step 7: Launch, go have a Strawberry Daiquiri

Once you have finalized your list and are happy with the test results, go into Digesto’s main screen.

Press ON.

Add content to your blog and watch the results fly in!

Here’s a completed system in Marketo:

And that’s it! Now you have automated your blog emails via Marketo. You have achieved end-to-end reporting on new Known Leads through to Opportunities. You can also see how blog emails are influencing Opportunities using smart lists and the Opportunity Analyzer.

Perkuto is offering free, 14-day trials. Let us know what you think in the comments below:

The Quick Guide for Marketing Automation Success

July 10, 2014 By Josh Hill

Whether you are just starting your marketing automation journey or you’re ramping up to crush next quarter’s goals, there are some solid tips and tricks to achieve marketing automation success. I’ve worked in marketing automation for a number of years, and while success requires a lot of moving parts, these tips will help you get there.

Ensure Alignment with Sales and Other Departments

The best project outcomes I have seen are when the project lead is embedded within Marketing and works at the intersection of Marketing, Sales, and Technology. This ensures alignment across disciplines.

Sales and Marketing will be on board quickly, so start there. Billing teams are system critical to the business and will need reassurance and careful work to bring them into marketing automation.

A Phased Approach with a Vision Works Best

Marketing automation is powerful and can touch many functions. Take a phased approach.

Know all the systems.
Which systems and teams need this now?
Which can use it later?
What is the impact?

When I first implemented Marketo, I often found myself a bit out of step with the rest of the firm. And by out of step, I mean I was way ahead because I had fully embraced revenue marketing and the rest of the firm was not quite ready. So I stepped back and courted each group with what was in it for them whenever possible.

Sales – better leads, better information on what they need, and they are closer to buying…at least that was the vision.
Marketing – I will automate all of the drudgery and liberate you to run real programs and nurturing. You will look awesome.
IT – please just setup the CNAME 🙂
Web Technology – we’d like to track lead behavior and setup our own forms so we don’t bug you anymore. We won’t interfere with things like Omniture and Google Analytics – we promise!
SFDC Admins – we need your help with integration and we’ll help you increase usage.

Get Buy In From Sales, then Technology

Obtaining buy-in from each group and each team leader is key to your early success. Buy-in is crucial from the heads of Sales, Marketing, and Technology.

As you can see above, you do need to consider where each team is coming from, what they need, and what their goals might be. I’d like to think the CEO would help align us all, but the reality is each team has specific goals that aren’t obviously linked to your marketing automation project. Help other team leaders make the leap to understand why this is important and why this might even help them reach their goals:

Sales – make more calls and calls that lead to Opportunities and Won Sales each month.
Marketing – save time and focus on content, testing, and nurturing.
Web/Tech – marketing will be able to handle more requests without you. More lead tracking will enhance existing analytics tools. Be careful that you don’t steal their thunder.
Product Management – easier to send out surveys, use tracking data on site and in product. Even trigger in product emails to increase usage.
Operations and Finance – (usually last on my list) – automate invoices and notices.

Include the Client Facing Teams and the Customer

A successful roll out needs to include the customer lifecycle and which teams own each stage of that lifecycle. For example:

Stage 1: Web, Marketing Communications
Stage 2: Demand Generation, Content, and Sales
Stage 3: Customer Onboarding
Stage 4: Account Management and Billing

Remember that your goal is to help the customer do something they believe is critical enough to pay you for. If you just automate emails, you become a spammer. Whenever you design a workflow, form, or page design it with the customer in mind. You are there to help them and any way you can remove barriers for a lead, you both win.

This is why MAP features like progressive profiling and data appending are crucial to the customer experience. If you can make it easier for the lead to fill out less information, or already know who they are, then you saved someone a few seconds. A few seconds over tens of thousands of leads saves a lot of hours of work. Those seconds also take the hesitation out of providing contact information in exchange for content.

Include your CRM Admin

Remember to work with your CRM Admin (if you have one) to map out existing fields, field values, and any new fields required. A few key questions should help the conversation.

What do you need to track?
Who is responsible for what?
Which reports do you want the system to spit out?

Then work backward to determine what else you need in the system.

Let Leads be Themselves

Consider having a free text ‘Job Title’ field where leads provide their real title – the one that makes them feel good. Then ask for a ‘Role’ or ‘Seniority’ field which is your main segmentation bucket. If you really want to take the burden off the lead, run data management flows to map this data automatically. You can use tools like RingLead, Demandbase, and ReachForce.

Clean Your Data Automatically

Dedupe and clean up your CRM before you connect your marketing automation system. Be sure to have the CRM enforce data quality through dupeblockers, ISO Country Picklists, and required fields.

Then make a list of key data that can be managed automatically or standardized to avoid re-work. Common candidates for this treatment are:

Country and State: best to define CRM picklists and Form picklists, but you can automate fixes too.
Lead Source: revise your picklist and make sure your Forms are stamping leads properly. If you have to, data flows can monitor and update bad values.
Subscription Management: design a compliant system and automatically update lists to have accurate counts for easy sending.
Competitors – screen and block competitors.

Aim Toward the Vision, Get Big Wins Done First

If you are starting from scratch, focus on the big automation wins such as lead routing, data appending and management, and lead scoring. These are still the mainstays of marketing automation platforms like Marketo. Don’t let your system become a glorified email service provider – use your MAP to save huge time and then use that time for heavy duty lead nurturing.

Once you’ve mastered these key marketing automation skills, check out the ebook I wrote with RingLead, The Newcomer’s Guide to Marketing Automation, for even more insight.

If you want to hear more, join me for a special webinar to become a Marketing Automation Rockstar.

Marketo Hidden Tricks and Tips

July 8, 2014 By Josh Hill

With the ever increasing array of marketing tools available through Marketo, I thought I’d share a few of my favorite tips and tricks. These are simple ways to work with Marketo that solve some small, but real situations for marketers.

Marketo Tip 1: Favicon on Marketo Landing Pages

The favicon is a cute and somewhat useless icon that have been around since the early web to differentiate bookmarks. Now they are used as the cute icon in your browser’s tab so you can visually see which site you might be on. The code to embed this icon on any web page is:

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.yoursite.com/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">

You can do this in Marketo easily as well. (See Landing Page Tips and Tricks). Note that the ico file likes to be at the root of your web directory, although this is not necessary for Marketo. Simply direct your Landing Page Template to your usual favicon or upload it to Marketo – but use the entire URL.

The .ico file itself can be generated at a 16px square from Photoshop or at several sites. I like Favicon.cc if you don’t have a designer. From what I’ve read in the Community, it may take 1-2 days for the favicon to show up for everyone

Marketo Tip 2: Use a Blank Email Template

Before you spend a ton of time creating dozens of Email Templates, consider not doing this at all.

If each email you send is going to be wildly different and designed by a professional graphic artist and html designer, then it makes sense to use a Blank Template for all emails. This blank template has nothing in it at all, but allows you to create a new email, then to Replace HTML.

Step 1: Upload Images

Before you attempt this, be sure to upload your email’s images to a folder in Design Studio > Images & Files with appropriate names. An “appropriate name” is one without spaces or funny characters:

my-good-file.jpg

Step 2: Copy Image URLs back into your HTML Code

Failure to do this will result in one ugly email.

Step 3: Create an Email based on your blank template

Step 4: Replace HTML

You can ignore the warning about disconnecting the Templates. That’s what we’re here to do.

Notice my HTML replaced whatever was in there.

Step 5: Review Your Work

You may need to make some tweaks after using the Send Sample or Deliverability tools to review the rendering across email clients.

Why do this? Doesn’t this prevent you from taking advantage of Marketo’s template features? Yes…and no…The reality is that Templates are there to help non designers generate quality, on brand Emails fast. If your company has a team of designers, a retained agency, or rely on your graphic originality, then Templates will constrain your creativity.

Marketo Tip 3: Use a Blank Landing Page Template

As you probably know by now, there is no way to “Replace HTML” in a Landing Page Template. So if you want to be super creative with your landing pages, you have two choices:

Create a blank landing page template.

What you do is create a New LP Template. Then remove the code in the BODY section so that the default gray bars disappear. You may also want to strip out the CSS, but be careful with this as it could affect Marketo Forms.

Now save the Template.

When you create a Landing Page based on this Template, you will use Custom HTML to drop in your design. This may not work super well if you have a fancy design, so try it out.

Create custom pages on your site with an embedded Form.

This is the more tried and true method. You create appropriate pages on your main site and then embed a Form or use the API to create a customized form.

Marketo Tip 4: Time Zone Email Sends

The ability to time emails by the recipient’s time zone is a big request from Marketo users. Mailchimp has this already, but that doesn’t help in Marketo. In the meantime, you can do a few things to drop emails by time zones:

First, be aware of how Marketo uses Time Zone. In the Admin > System Settings, you set the System Time Zone. This is the real time all activities and sends happen.

Your personal time zone is set in Admin > Your Account (or go to your name at the upper right). All this time zone does is display dates and times in your time zone. Most of the time, you will see the activity in relation to your time zone. Occasionally, Marketo displays the System Time.

Ok, now let’s talk about two options for sending by time zone.

Smart List or Segmentation by Region or Country. Then use Wait Steps or Batch Time to send out the email at the optimal time by region. Usually I do this by Americas, EMEA, APAC. The system says,

If Member of Smart List IN "EMEA", then Send Email 1

Wait 5 hours

If Member of Smart List IN "Americas", then Send Email 1

Wait 12 hours

If Member of Smart List IN "Asia", then Send Email 1

Streams – it is possible to setup your Streams such that each Stream represents a Time Zone or Region. The Stream’s first send date and Cadence would be set to each region based on the System Time Zone. So if you are in US East Coast, then you will need to send, according to your system time:

UK: 3am

US EDT: 8am

US PDT: 11am

Singapore: 8pm

Marketo Tip 5: Blank User Role to Block Old Users

A quick tip here – if someone has left the organization, you normally delete his user account. That’s secure.

But if you do this, all of his modification history disappears from the system. Thus, I often recommend removing all Roles from that user. If he tries to login, he will be able to do nothing and see nothing in the system. As a bit of a security nut, I would only do this for about 30 days though, then delete his account.

Marketo Tip 6: Scratch Pads

Lately, I have been using a “scratch pad” Smart List to generate quick counts. This way I know this is a Smart List I can modify without affecting other parts of the system. All I do is create a Smart List “scratch pad” in my personal folder or in a Program. This name also warns people not to take this list seriously.

You can use this tool for lists and campaigns.

Marketo Tip 7: Comment History System

Many clients want to timestamp a comment and then keep a history of it. This is surprisingly easy to do in Marketo. You need two fields to do this.

Comments (or you can use Person Notes/Description) This field can be in Marketo only if you want.

Lead Comments History – this field should be created in your CRM first.

Step 1: Create a Smart Campaign

Step 2: Smart List Triggers

Trigger: Lead is Created

Trigger: Data Value Changes IS "Comments" New Value IS NOT EMPTY

Filter: Comments IS NOT EMPTY

Step 3: Workflow to Concatenate the Old and New Comments

The first step time stamps the lead if the history is empty and places Comments in the history.

Change Data Value: Choice 1: IF Lead Comments History IS EMPTY, then Lead Comments History = {{system.dateTime}} {{lead.Comments}}

The second step says if History is already being used, then just append the Comments. This works every time.

Otherwise: Lead Comments History = {{system.dateTime}} {{lead.Comments}} {{lead.Lead Comments History}}

Change Data Value: Comments IS NULL

<–this is important so you can reuse this field again and again on a Form. Otherwise it shows prefill data to the user.

Naturally this campaign is set to run every time. You can do something similar with just about any Text or String field.

Marketo Tip 8: Treasure Chest

The Treasure Chest is a place where Marketo let’s you test beta features out. If you are a Marketo Admin, I recommend checking it out once a month and activating some helpful features such as Landing Page Editor Comments and Undo. They may not be fully supported, but they are super helpful.

Learn more about marketing automation strategy at my first big webinar with RingLead on July 17 at 2pm EDT/11am PDT. Register now.

Marketing Automation Tips From Marketers

July 1, 2014 By Josh Hill

A few weeks ago, I asked you what your best marketing automation or Marketo tip was. Nine marketing rockstars responded with several tips and ideas that I was able to learn from as well. Well done and thank you for sharing.

Understand How and What to Sync to the CRM

Before you sync your CRM to Marketo decide what records should be hidden from the Marketo Sync User because you don’t want records with bad, missing emails, or people who are no longer in business to sync to Marketo, otherwise, your Marketo database will have bad records. Also if your CRM is SFDC, get another SFDC seat for the sole purpose of being the Marketo sync user, and never set it to expire. This will save you a big headache.

Take a moment to fully understand how the sync between the CRM and Marketo works. This was a big problem for us in our first year of using Marketo, but it’s been resolved.

From Rockstar Michelle Tiziani

Celebrate Big Deals and Inform Sales Too

Only sell big deals? Email out the a copy of the Opportunity Influence Analyzer sharing the critical moments influencing the deal to all involved celebrating their success. It helps show how many people and campaigns are involved in getting a deal closed in complex sales cycles.

Test Lead Scoring Models

Create a mock version of your scoring in Excel so you can test the different outputs prior to implementing in Marketo. Test multiple scenarios to make sure all lead scores play out as you expect.

Salesforce Campaigns Help Everyone

Many marketers abandon use of SFDC campaigns or simply duplicate their campaigns here so reps can see what’s going on. Instead, we have deployed SFDC campaigns to hold all the tips for campaign follow-up. For example, the marketing team will look at the details of a tradeshow in Marketo, but the sales reps can go to the campaign for this in SFDC and see a follow-up call script, suggested content, ad suggested next steps for leads from this campaign.

Three big tips from the Original Rockstar – Maria Pergolino

Automate Your Inbound Video

I engaged 2000 C-level execs in the European Software industry in building a series of 6 webinars in pure inbound that attracted a total of 16,000 viewers. One of the episodes hit 3500 live attendees.

All of this was run on Youtube backed by Marketo from end to end. This program still attracts dozens of opportunities each month.

From Rockstar Nicolas Woirhaye

Break up big emails to allow errors to be fixed

If you are a one-man band that is responsible for putting together Marketo email content, images and design as well as formatting your templates and programming Marketo flows and triggers, I would suggest always to split batch emails, especially if it’s complex. That way, if there’s a “programming error” which you have overlooked, you can still correct some minor details after the initial email blast.

From Rockstar from Down Under, Paul Guevara

Walk before you try to run!
Whether you’re just getting started or a seasoned pro, don’t try to tackle everything all at once. Plan incremental changes to build your strategy gradually and increase the complexity of your campaigns along the way. The most successful marketing automation strategies grow with business demands, and this takes place over a period of time.

Marketing automation is not just for Christmas.

From the Rockstar across the Pond, Victoria Goodship

Tokens are Your Best Friend

Keep on your toes! Marketing automation is always changing… there are new releases, “best practices”, techniques, and not to mention your audience’s changing preferences and behaviors.

{{lead.First Name:default=marketing rockstar}}

My advice is to use tokens! Tokens on global and local levels can not only lead to more personalized, tailored emails, and landing pages, they can also simplify your life across programs!

From Rockstar Kim Para

Save Your Work

If your laptop is open, and you have a very complex smart list on screen, and your cat happens to run across your keyboard and mess everything up, you have no UNDO.

I always tried to document complex campaigns with screenshots, but that wasn’t ideal because some may run 2 screens high.

So I just discovered that with the campaign summary view visible, if you click “export” in the bottom right corner, it spits out a one-page summary that has all the details (smart list, flow, activation history, etc.).

From Rockstar Ari Echt

Also, use my handy notation for written Marketo programming. – Josh

Use Webhooks for Unique Needs
We have created a webhook, which creates custom object records in SFDC. This way we can create custom objects records such as “custom web activities” or “POPs”. The major added value here is the ability to add custom fields to it, such as UTM parameters, product type/interest, etc.. And later on report on these custom objects and fields in SFDC.

This requires a SFDC webservice and an error handling mechanism.

From rockstar Shay Assor

Reduce Email Complaints

Tip for reducing email unsubscribe complaints like “Why am I still getting XYZ email?”….One very quick hit is to ensure the email recipient token is in the email footer of all your emails. Let’s you easily troubleshoot if there is a duplicate, email alias or other issues. Other proactive tip is to dedupe personal and business emails and to address email aliases (sales@abc.com)

Know Your Lead’s Birthdate
A little Marketo secret: Marketo doesn’t time stamp the date a lead is created. It’s like not knowing your own birthdate. The “Created At” date is actually the date the lead became anonymous which is likely different than the date the lead became known (e.g. Filled out form). Yes, this is very confusing especially when the “Lead was Created” filter has no corresponding Create Date field.

Here’s how to fix that:

Create a mapped date field in Salesforce like “Known Date” on the Lead and Contact Levels. Then create a simple Smart Campaign in Marketo that populates that date with today whenever that lead is created.

 Smart List: Lead is Created
 Flow: Change Date Value: Known Date = {{system.date}}

Now you can use that Known Date for various filters, reports and campaigns. You can also expose it in alerts and within your Salesforce instance so reps get more intelligence.

From rockstar Jeff Coveney

Great tips everyone! Thanks for participating! If you have more marketing automation tips, please let us know in the comments below.

Learn more about marketing automation strategy at my first big webinar with RingLead on July 17 at 2pm EDT/11am PDT. Register now.

[updated 7/1/14 – removed erroneous line about Lead is Created in RCA]

Marketing Automation Platform Review with Jay Famico of SiriusDecisions

June 11, 2014 By Josh Hill

Today, I spoke with Jay Famico, SiriusDecisions’ Technology Practice Director and author of SiriusView: Marketing Automation Platforms 2014, an important analysis of the state of the marketing automation platforms (MAP) market. Jay was kind enough to share part of the report with me, which led to an interesting conversation on the world of marketing automation.

Josh: Why did you decide to review the MAPs? With automation tools enabling marketers to refine persuasion triggers further, do you believe this report will become the marketers’ and the technologists’ go-to report instead of reports from Gartner or Forrester?

Jay – Our marketing automation SiriusView addresses feature mix, ecosystem, and use cases and requirements to help marketers decide which platform is best for them. SiriusDecisions is not going after Gartner or Forrester. Rather, we are a focused provider outside of technology. We are exclusively focused on business-to-business marketing and sales sector. We are more about the complex sale, buying center, and nuances of demand creation by industry sector.

Josh – You mention the growing divide between marketers who can effectively use marketing automation and those who can’t. I see this divide, too, and am curious if you have additional data on salaries and success of certified experts.

Jay – About 40% of MAP power users have less than two years of experience with the system.

It is one thing to buy a MAP, and another to have someone who can work the system. This skills gap is driving more rapid advancement for skilled MAP power users. Marketers with the necessary technical skills are receiving higher titles faster or more rapid promotions. You can see this on Glassdoor and a 2011 Marketo analysis of marketing automation salaries.

Over the next 10 years, someone who has a resume that lists marketing automation is going to get far more call-backs and command a higher salary. Marketers with MAP skills are more likely to be hired – and be hired faster. Marketers with skills in flow chart creation, process management, and engagement concepts will also do well. Without these skills, you’ll be left behind in b-to-b marketing by 2020.

Every week, I get calls from clients who say, “Hey, I need someone to run my MAP who has 6 to 10 years of experience with MAPs and is director-level or above.”

Josh – [laughter]

Jay – But this person does not exist now. That expertise is rare at that level. My advice to hiring mangers is to roll back expectations of what a good MAP marketer is. Why not pair a junior person with a consultant, agency or senior marketer who can mentor them? Find a smart, driven marketer and give them an opportunity. SiriusDecisions can help with this.

Josh – I also see similar postings and frequently find the company changes their mind about those requirements very quickly. There are not enough people with this skill set to be picky right now.

You mention you believe several MAP vendors will enter b-to-b, but what about established b-to-b providers heading to B2C? Do you see challenges for them when it comes to scaling systems or in having the right B2C skill set?

Jay – I can’t talk about any particular vendor, but in general, there is a scaling issue when moving from b-to-b to b-t-c. Your typical b-to-b database contains 10,000 to 2.5 million contacts, max. A b-to-c database can easily 2.5 million-plus. Firms will have to abandon SQL, which many already have done. Some big questions and issues for MAP vendors and their b-to-c customers are

Testing and quality assurance – what happens when you mis-send? There is a much larger impact with millions of consumers instead of 100,000 professionals.
Does the MAP have workflow and approval steps to reduce missteps?
Use cases – what must b-to-c marketers do differently? Activities and metrics tend to be different: shopping cart abandons, more automation, direct sales and no lead transfers. Vendors will need to educate b-to-c marketers what can be done.
Staffing and users – b-to-c firms use more agencies and external teams, and thus a turnkey approach. Reseller tools will need to be developed further by MAPs. Several are adding an agency login system.
New features like “exchange centers” and pre-packaged playbooks to transfer recipes across instances are appearing more and more often.

Josh – When you discuss pre-packaged playbooks are you talking about recipe books or preset Marketo programs?

Jay – Yes, this is to transfer recipes across instances. I am a huge proponent of playbooks. It always helps to abstract away the ingredients (features) from what the marketer wants to do. Can they standardize requests? Speed up deployment of a program? Adding recipes and transferring them reduces the need for more skilled teams. Newer users can be effective, while the power user does more interesting things.

Josh – Marketo and HubSpot are both increasing use of “Recipes,” so I’m sure we’ll see more of this as it goes beyond consultancies.

On page 6 of the SiriusView, you display the rated vendors’ customer mixes (SMB v. enterprise) against their overall scores. What’s the best way to read this chart?

Jay – Yes, you can narrow down your selection of MAP based on the chart. But don’t make your decision based on the chart alone. It doesn’t factor in organization-specific needs that must be considered, such as use cases, internal skill level, database size, regulatory issues and the CRM.

After looking at the chart, understand the vendors in the landscape. Narrow down your research by looking at similar firms – those whose customer mix matches who you are as a company. Most likely, you’ll find someone who can meet your needs. Consider each vendor’s strength in your area of greatest need.

Then, go into the report to learn more about each vendor that you aren’t familiar with. The report is intended to help you understand the important things that each vendor does differently and what each is really missing.

Josh – What was the most surprising finding you included in the report?

Jay – First, I thought 2014’s report would involve only slight updates to the 2013 report, but huge changes have occurred in just one year; the level of innovation was dramatic. Acquisitions like Neolane and IBM changed the landscape. Consolidation has been a key theme in the past year and will continue to play a role.

The MAP market has also expanded significantly. In 2013, 11 vendors met our requirements; in our 2014 MAP report, we covered 17. There are a number of firms, like Sitecore, expanding from Web to MAP. Vocus is a good example of evolution, too, although we did not include them in the report this year. Vocus moved from PR software to be more MAP-like.

Also, Eloqua is now adding segmentation tools with data that isn’t in the MAP natively. Other vendors are going beyond AB testing to multivariate and automated AB testing.

Josh – As CRM firms like Salesforce acquire MAPs, is there a risk to customers?

Jay – No, there are no risks to the customer. As an example, if you get Marketo and have SFDC, you will be in a better position for negotiation.

Pardot now has access to SFDC’s deep resources and larger client base. Getting that first meeting is easier for them. Getting shortlisted is easier. SFDC AppExchange apps will, by definition, integrate with Pardot.

What does that mean for competitors? SFDC won’t shut down their open APIs because it will damage their ecosystem and trust. MAP integration is not at risk. SFDC is the main integration point for MAPs and is not likely to change in near future. SFDC and MAPs share many major clients and because of this, neither side will risk client relationships.

Vendors are starting to look outside of SFDC now. Several are adding other CRMs to their roadmap and have already started to add that capability to their marketing messaging.

Josh – I see this, too, in the marketplace in terms of negotiation on renewals. I have not seen many outright switches.

Lastly, what advice would you give someone looking to choose a MAP?

Jay – Understand what your needs, wants, and requirements are. Ask the following questions:

What are you trying to do in terms of marketing?
What is realistic and feasible for you in the next year?
What’s your one-year, three-year and five-year road map, given other constraints? If you are just thinking about automation and ignoring things like data quality and content availability, then you may have trouble.
Do you have enough content to power nurturing?
Do you have high-enough data quality to segment well? Enough people with “First Name?”Are your reps putting personal details in fields that might go outside the firm?

Your biggest risk is in not delivering the value expected. With a MAP, you want to immediately show the value.

When you speak with MAP vendors, have standard use cases for them to show during the demo. Be specific about your needs. If you care about nurturing, ask them show you a nurturing plan. The reason is to get them to show you want you want. Don’t let them show you only their best side. Get that comparison point between vendors.

Be sure to speak to other MAP experts. Ask them what they would do again and what they would do differently.

Seek out vendor references from LinkedIn and your peer base, not just the vendor. You want the full story on the system, not just the story from their best clients.

Josh – Jay, great advice, and great to have you discuss this report in detail. Where’s the best place for my readers to see the report?

Jay – If your readers are looking for a synopsis of the report they can read about it and how we categorized each of the vendors in my recent blog post.

If readers would like to access the entire report, Marketo just purchased reprint rights.

Reach Jay @jayfamico

Jay Famico is the Practice Director, Technology at Sirius Decisions. Jay helps clients select and optimize marketing and sales technology, and understand the challenges and opportunities that technology and process standardization present and how individual applications should link to form a unified ecosystem.

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Thanks Jay!

Stay tuned for some very interesting Marketo posts that I’ve been working on the past few weeks. Also, if you’re in the Los Angeles area, I am in town and happy to meet up. Send a note to hello {at } marketingrockstarguides.com.