the rebellious marketing blog that challenges conventional thought

January 20 2010

Marketing Automation Sucks

As a buyer of sales and marketing automation, I cannot help but getting seriously wound up about the over-hyped solutions on offer today. One solution doesn’t integrate with mainstream CRM systems, the other requires an entirely separate data warehouse environment to actually take it through the required workflows and yet another charges an arm and a leg for the e-mail portion of the lead nurturing process. It seems that practically every vendor matches my needs by 50-80%. Which leaves me with 20-50% manual tweaking or bridging the void with yet another ‘gap filler’ solution or app. That’s hardly ‘automation’…

So, can automation really be achieved? Are sales and marketing needs too varied by industry and/or product for vendors to provide a 90-100% match every time? Tell you what, that’s who I’m grilling next: senior execs of marketing automation vendors here I come.

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9 COMMENTS
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Mark
January 20, 2010
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We just went through exactly the same integration with a vendor and the implementation is still ongoing – 6 months after purchase. It’s a nightmare…

Jocelyn Grant
January 20, 2010
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I think it depends whether you’re a small/medium vs. large enterprise. The more complexity there is, the more likely it is that your integration will take time…and cause you headaches.

Christopher Doran
January 20, 2010
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I’m ready for the grillin’. Happy to explain the intricacies of marketing automation and syncing with CRM platforms

Christopher Doran
Vice President, Marketing
Manticore Technology

cdoran
January 20, 2010
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@valgenton Ready for #thegrilling on marketing automation

Maria Pergolino, Marketo
January 20, 2010
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I whole-heartedly disagree with your post. And I do so not only as someone who works for a marketing automation company, but as a serious B2B marketer who has achieved success with marketing automation. Let me be very clear- I kicked some competitor butt using a marketing automation system, helping make my previous company the leader in their industry. Not leader because they said they were the leader. Leader because they were driving the deals (revenue dollars) and taking over the space.

Maybe this post about how I picked a solution will help: http://blog.reachforce.com/sales-and-marketing-tips/who-is-marketo-marketing-automation-who%E2%80%99s-who/

I’m happy to discuss further, and can connect you with hundreds of other B2B marketers that would agree with my thoughts. (Note: about 1500 B2B companies have purchased a marketing automation solution.)

Nina Rowe
January 20, 2010
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I’d be interested to hear from those B2B marketers. Maria’s article looked interesting, but I have heard some real horror stories on the integration front. At this stage, I see two eager posts from vendors…

Lance Spear
January 20, 2010
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Great point Val – there are so many intricacies it seems a full time consultant is warranted after purchase to integrate with company processes and CRM systems.

To add some more fuel to the fire, I’d suggest that Maria’s point above about 1,500 B2B companies having purchased marketing automation systems absolutely does not mean there are 1,500 satisfied companies.

It would be great to have a couple end-users on the panel, both happy and unhappy to discuss this with whichever vendors are willing to sit in on your next Grilling!

Perhaps you can title the webcast “The Manual Battle to Achieve Automation…”

Steve Woods
January 26, 2010
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Val,
Great topic! There are lots of tremendous successes in the industry, but there are some less successful implementations too. A good grilling should be able to separate what the best way to achieve success is. Glad to participate.

VPG
February 8, 2010
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Great feedback everyone, I look forward to the round table, which I will probably schedule for March or April. Stay tuned.

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