Marketing Governance

B2B Marketing annual Conference. Everywhere we look content is coming at us. E-mail, twitter, Facebook and full event calendars. Because of the sheer volume of it its no suprise marketers are left overwhelmed when trying to create compelling and effective content.

B2B Marketing therefore has invited several ‘brains’ from the business to get some exclusive insight ahead of the event. A few names are Dave Stevens, Marketing Director, UK&I at EY; Drew Nicholson, CEO, DNX; Dave Chaffey, CEO, Smart Insights; Caspian Woods, Chief Content Strategist, Editions Financial and Laila Lotfi, Head of Product Marketing, Redgate Software amongst others. They will shed their light on the matter of the Content Avalanche.

B2B Marketings Annual Conference  will take place on 7 ^here

An all too common misperception is that marketing asset management (MAM) and distributed marketing management (DMM) platform technology is only for the “big guys,” the large companies with huge budgets, but it’s not. It’s a statement Saepio makes in their white paper ‘Only for the big guys?’.

Understandably, solution providers (Saepio included) often emphasis their power brand clients in webinars, case studies and sales presentations.  But if your company doesn’t fit the “big guys” definition, don’t overlook the benefits DMM can deliver for you.  In fact, if Small and Medium Business (SMB) describes you, you may derive more value from a DMM solution than the big guys do. Read More

Adestra, which analyzed almost 1.2 billion B2B emails sent within the past 12 months. The study examines performance metrics across a number of subject line themes – including discount, news, and content – and also looks at subject line length and personalization.

Adestra’s subject line study takes a look at subject line keyword metrics across a variety of themes, scoring them by relative open, click, and click-to-open rate.

Parry Malm, Account Director at Adestra says:

Our new subject line research has produced some incredibly interesting stats. It’s only one aspect of your email marketing arsenal, but when approached in the correct way subject line optimisation can prove to be an effective, and quick, tactical winner to help drive response rates.

The report covers 6 sectors: Read More

Emedia. The UK-based research firm surveyed 200 businesses from various verticals about their lead generation effectiveness.

While 83% of respondents ranked lead generation as either extremely important or important for their marketing plans, the researchers conclude that an overall, strategic planning of how lead generation and content marketing can best achieve their mutual goals is mostly lacking.

From the report:

This sentiment is clearly visible in the fact that, although lead generation is of great importance to B2B marketers, very few have a separate strategy and/or budget for creating the content that’s going to drive it. Read More

B2B buyers are doing more research than ever before. Which means  that the initiative no longer lies with the B2B marketer, but with their customers. How to adapt to this new situation? A helpful little video about effective B2B marketing.

With buyers looking for engaging and persuasive content, make your content engaging and persuasive. The old adage applies: content should be king. Whitepapers are a good way of getting your message across 80% of B2B buyers say they get their information from these. But keep it short, because were all on a schedule. And videos, too, are effective they reach 75% of your audience. Mobile and social of course also play a part. But dont oversell your message be informative as well.

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Forrester. The business intelligence company conducted an online survey of 864 B2B marketing executives. Among the results is the discovery that across various industries, gaps in marketing investment growth have narrowed from levels reported in 2011:

• High-tech services firms still lead the industry pack in 2012, but with a much more modest growth plan of 9%, compared with the 17% reported in 2011.
• Manufacturing firms are second with a 7% increase as they invest in digital channels. Thats up 3 percentage points from 4% in 2011.
• Pharmaceutical, medical device, and biotech budgets are showing a sharp change of direction, shifting from a 3% cut in budgets in 2011, to a 2% increase in 2012. .

Read More

Improving the relationship between marketing and sales has become an important objective for many business-to-business enterprises. Changes in the way that business buyers access information and evaluate potential purchases make it essential that both work collaboratively to create and deliver compelling messages and materials.

Most of the efforts to improve this relationship have focused on the content of demand generation messages and materials and on the responsibilities of each in the lead generation/lead nurturing process. These are important issues that deserve the attention they’re receiving. But, there’s another component of the marketing-sales relationship that’s often overlooked—the reliability and responsiveness of the supply chain for marketing material (Sales collateral, promotional items, and point-of-sale materials). Read More

Marketo last November. Neolane announced the funding will be used to expand the company’s presence in the global marketing technology industry, particularly in North America, by bolstering its own sales, marketing and product development efforts.

Battery Ventures Vice President, Morad Elhafed, said:

Neolane has successfully carved out an impressive footprint within the marketing technology space. We are optimistic about Neolane’s expansion goals and the overall future growth trajectory of this category. Read More

Hubspot Blog collected some facts and figures about this growing area of Marketing Operations. Have a look at the stats below and youll get an idea of whats going on in the industry at the moment: the successes, but also the challenges.

1. The adoption of marketing automation technology is expected to increase by 50% by 2015. (Sirius Decisions)
2. Marketing automation has seen the fastest growth of any CRM-related segment in the last 5 years. (Focus Research)
3. By 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationship without talking to a human. (Gartner Research)
4. 50% of respondents to a 2011 Focus survey stated they have not realized the full value of their marketing automation investment, and less than 25% use their platforms to their full potential. Read More

Whether its a coincidence or not, marketers seeking to improve the relationship with the Sales department are offered a choice of two events. As the two departments are dependant on each other in Business-to-Business marketing situations, the need for good communication and alignment of the two departments is self-evident. Marketing needs to create the right leads for Sales to follow up on. Attending these (or one of these) events may help Marketers and Sales executives to optimize the alignment of their departments. Read More