Lead Management & Marketing Automation

UPDATE 7/14/09: I’ve now put all marketing automation blogs on a single page.

A couple of people recently asked me which blogs I’m frequently reading. So here’s the list. Please send me your favorite blogs, because there must be lots of great Marketing Automation blogs that I haven’t found yet!

BTW 1: Some of these blogs are more about lead generation, demand generation or inbound marketing, so maybe the title of this blog post is not ideal. But regardless of the terminology, these are the blogs that I enjoy most :- )

BTW 2: I have not included vendor weblogs: I will put those in a separate post.

In alphabetical order, these are the blogs that I read most frequently, and that I can heartily recommend.

• Adam Needles‘ Propelling Brands blog (@abneedles)
  Adam – the former VP Marketing of the 451 Group – is finishing up a graduate project on marketing technology and publishes deep insights about marketing automation
• Ardath Albee’s Marketing Interactions blog (@ardath421)
  Ardath is a talented independent marketing consultant who writes about using content to engage with prospective customers; she really gets Marketing & Sales collaboration
• Brian Carroll’s B2B Lead Generation blog (@brianjcarroll)
  Brian is the author of the authoritative book “Lead generation for the complex sale” and has a wealth of interesting articles on his blog
• Craig Rosenberg’s Funnelholic blog (@funnelholic)
  Craig has lots of experience with sales operations and demand generation, and shares his and other people’s knowledge via his blog. Lately he has published 15+ thought leadership interviews that are extremely insightful
• David Meerman Scott’s Web Ink Now blog (@dmscott)
  David’s posts are about content-based marketing, which is an important ingredient of successful lead generation. He’s also a talented writer, so it’s always fun to read.
• David Raab’s Marketing Automation technology blog (@draab)
  He covers lots of Marketing Automation vendors, he offers insights into usability of demand generation systems and covers various other topics.
• Jame Ervin’s @Work blog (@jameane)
  Jame is an experienced demand gen practitioner, who really understands metrics-based lead generation.
• Laura Ramos‘ B2B Marketing posts (@lauraramos)
  Laura is the star analyst at Forrester covering B2B Marketing, and frequently has some very interesting perspectives, such as a discussion around obsolescence of B2B marketing
• Mac McIntosh’s Sales Lead Insights blog (@B2B_Sales_Leads)
  Mac is a leading sales and marketing consultant and award-winning columnist for BtoB magazine. Like no other he understands B2B lead generation
• Maria Pergolino’s Inbound Marketer blog (@InboundMarketer)
  Maria is a demand generation practitioner who covers a variety of topics, from selection criteria to weekly summaries of interesting demand generation tweets
• Scott Brinker’s Chief Marketing Technologist blog (@chiefmartec)
  Scott writes about the technical aspects of marketing, and about post-click marketing in particular.

(oops, that’s 11 blogs)

Let me know your favorite blogs, so I can put them in a follow-up post. Thanks!

Unfortunately the flu got the better of me last week, so my blogging and Twittering came to a halt. But let’s make the best of it, and collect a list of news from the past week. Lots of interesting things happened, and insightful articles were published. I probably missed several things, but these are the highlights:

Top-5 B2B Marketing tips

Jon Miller at Marketo summarizes the key findings of several B2B marketing thought leadership interviews.
1.Start with a solid base
2.Use Push AND Pull Tactics
3.Integrate Your Efforts
4.Innovate
5.Test, Test and Retest

Market2Lead 4.0 released

Market2Lead has launched version 4.0 with a completely revamped user interface. I was planning to write a short review, but haven’t found time for this yet. To be continued…

B2B marketing is Obsolete

Laura Ramos has published the final piece in the “Obsolescence of B2B marketing” series.
1.Build a marketing-only database to capture buyer insight
2.Shift from simply generating demand to managing it
3.Combine digital and traditional tactics to build dialogue around needs and motivations
4.Embrace the groundswell and community marketing principles

Social Media and B2B Marketing

Steve Woods wrote this blog post that gives some great ideas on how to use social media for B2B marketing.
1.Set your information free
2.Focus on being credible
3.Understand their buying process
4.Match your marketing to their buying process
5.Keep interest high through nurturing
6.Only sell when they are ready to buy

10 Tips For Tweeting A Live Conference

Mike Damphousse wrote an interesting article for those who want to use Twitter for PR, in this case for the coverage of an industry conference (the Sales 2.0 conference next week in San Francisco). I will also attend this conference, so let me know if you want to meet up!

Vtrenz changes name to Silverpop Engage B2B

After being acquired by Silverpop, Vtrenz continued under its own name for a while, but now the name has changed to Silverpop Engage B2B. Which makes me wonder: do they rule out using Engage for high-value B2C sales processes? In any case, it’s good they make a clear choice and are developing a new brand for this established marketing automation product.

Marketo 3.0 First Look

David Raab got a sneak preview of  the new release of Marketo and writes about usability aspects of Demand Generation systems in general.

Genius.com announces Genius Enterprise

Apparently it’s the week for new releases: also Genius.com is preparing a new product: Genius Enterprise. Key new features are automated lead nurturing and lead scoring. David Raab again has the scoop.

DemandGen Report Sales & Marketing Alignment Awards

Last week I wrote about the Stevie Awards and complained that few vendors had submitted their customer case studies. This week the DemandGen Report announced the winners of their Sales & Marketing alignment awards. The winners are:

• Enterprise Category: eTrique implementation at Cisco
• SMB category: Eloqua implementation at Sourcefire
• Fast Track category: Genius implementation at ADX

I hope this overview is useful. Please add a comment to give your feedback, or to report important events that I’ve missed. Thanks!