Email is #1 but WSJ “Email Does Not Rule” / Marketing Automation and Indirect Leads
At the B2B University in Palo Alto yesterday (sponsored by Silverpop),’profs and students’ shared their views on B2B customer buying process and implications for lead strategy, alignment and supporting technologies.
A few points for B2B marketers:
- Content is King – I absolutely agree here; and I think the point is ‘fresh content’; it’s just not that hard to do
- Email Delivery is #1…but the Wall Street Journal described just 2-days ago that Email No Longer Rules; I do believe email is (and will remain) the primary digital delivery medium for B2B marketers; social media may indeed replace email although the use of these SN tools and relevance seems to be increasing quickly (almost by the minute!)
- Scale the dialogue: select, deploy and optimize Marketing Automation solutions (mostly SaaS vendors) – agree here too.
During the classroom sessions, several of the participants agreed that the Marketing Automation industry’s focus is largely almost exclusively) on companies with a direct sales model. Many companies have to deal with the added complexity to create, deploy and measure demand generation with and for partners. The complexity of analyzing partners sales productivity is just that much more difficult d in 2 or 3-tiered distribution model. Moreover, it is very painful to do!
In response, Silverpop walked us through some great insights how some of their customers are using the B2B Engage solution to drive leads (and measure) them through and with partners.
It seems that marketing automation is not just for the direct sales team but can be highly productive for the indirect channel. Kudos Silverpop!