Category Archives: Blog
In his keynote address at the Eloqua Experience conference, Eloqua CTO and co-founder Steve Woods looks at the big changes in how buyers are buying, and how marketers can understand and reach them. Steve explores social media, marketing analysis and business trends and offers up plenty of stories that illustrate how the marketer’s world has changed.
To learn how Relationship One can help you identify your prospects’ digital body language, please fill out our Contact Us form or give us a call at 763.355.1025.
Laura Ramos of Forrester Research talks about the enormous pressure marketers face to reach decision-makers, justify spending and deliver high-quality leads to an increasingly dissatisfied sales organization. Laura addresses how marketing organizations must transform themselves. We’ve added the video series below of Laura’s discussion.
To learn how Relationship One can help you take your marketing to the next level, please fill out our Contact Us form or give us a call at 763.355.1025.
The BMA-Minnesota will welcome Steven Woods, co-founder and chief technology officer of Eloqua, to host “Marketing Automation Best Practices” this Wednesday, September 24, 2009. The session will focus on how to increase campaign efficiency, effectiveness and accountability through marketing automation.
The goal of the session is for attendees to walk away with knowledge on how to use marketing automation to drive revenue through more qualified leads, increase efficiency and effectiveness of marketing campaigns, align marketing and sales, and demonstrate value and accountability.
EVENT DETAILS
Speaker: Steven Woods, CTO Eloqua
Time: 7:30 a.m. Registration Registration and breakfast
8:00 – 9:00 a.m. Presentation
Location: Metropolitan Ballroom
5418 Wayzata Blvd
Minneapolis, MN 55416
Cost: Members $30 / Non Members $45
For more information or to register, visit the BMA-MN Web site.
We all need a little help from time-to-time. That’s why, relationship | one invites Eloqua users to learn how to get the most out of your Eloqua system. For a limited time, take advantage of one of the following services free-of-charge*:
- Eloqua Application Review - Are you using Eloqua and its multi-channel capabilities to their greatest potential? Have questions about forms, events and surveys, or print mail? We’ll answer your questions on how to configure and leverage Eloqua’s robust functionality.
- Best Practices Review – have questions about best practice approaches to develop lead scoring or lead nurturing programs? Want to learn how to leverage templates included within Eloqua? We’ll compare your current programs against best practicies and make recommendations on how to leverage Eloqua more effectively.
- Email Marketing Review – let us answer your questions about subscription management, refer-a-friend, activity driven content functionality or discuss email marketing best practices.
- Half-Day Training Refresher – have new team members that need a quick Eloqua tutorial or just need a refresher on key functionality? We’ll create a half-day training session customized to fit your unique needs.
- Metrics and Reporting Review – we’ll answer questions you have about dashboards, activity reports, custom reports, filters, real-time notifications or integration with external dashboards.
To sign up for a customized training or review discussion, please click here and complete the registration form. Be sure to sign up soon, this offer is available until October 15, 2009.
(*relationship | one offers these consulting services free-of-charge and will meet with existing Eloqua customers at their location (travel charges and expenses may apply) or remotely, as appropriate)
In this time of economic challenge, the most commonly asked question we get is “how do I do more with less?” Less is relative – less marketing budget; less marketing staff; less sales team members; less confidence in the effectiveness of existing marketing programs. Regardless of which “less” you are dealing with, or all of the above, there are things you can do to optimize your marketing efforts. Here are a few places to start:
- Centralize and clean up your data – most organizations have more data then they know what to do with. It comes in all shapes and sizes – trade show attendee lists, email newsletter recipients, webinar participants, purchased lists, targeting lists, etc. To be effective, centralize, purge, and de-dupe this data. It’s not a difficult task, but depending on the tools and support you have, it could be a tedious one. Just keep in mind the old rule of “garbage in, garbage out” – if you don’t start with valid information, you’ll end up just wasting dollars.
- Rank your leads/contacts – not all leads are created equal. In fact, your sales team is potentially spending 25% of their time talking with people that will never buy from you – that’s one lost FTE for every four sales team members. Additionally, marketing may be providing sales with lots of names, but how many have been qualified enough to act on? Make your sales team more effective by providing only qualified leads – the definition of “qualified” will depend on your business, but try using a scoring program based on explicit information (like title, industry, company size) and implicit data, like visits to your Web site or receptiveness to your emails, to rank and order your leads. Send only those with high lead scores to the sales team to accept or decline.
- Nurture, nurture, nurture – upwards of 50% of your leads may have high purchase potential, but just aren’t ready to connect with a sales person. Don’t dump them – nurture them. Use a series of various communication tactics, such as emails with whitepaper offers, webinars, and RSS feeds, to develop an ongoing dialogue with a prospect. Make it easy for them to “raise their hand” and contact a sales team member when they are ready. Don’t let all your hard work evaporate. Give your sales team all the information you know about prospects (implicit and explicit) and ensure that they are making personal contact and following up with the all those newly qualified leads.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll post some more ideas of nurturing, scoring and lead/customer development programs and approaches. Can’t wait? Fill out our Contact Us form or call our office at 763.355.1025.
