Who’s in the wrong room? Eloqua Vs. Alchemy (or Marketing Automation Vs. Campaign Management)

Marketing automation is not campaign management and campaign management is still not marketing automation.  While the gap certainly narrowed in 2010 these two tools were born and bred to do different things.  If you see an Eloqua or Marketo in the room with a Unica or Alterian, someone is in the wrong room.

Understanding the differences begins with an understanding of the tools heritages.

Marketing Automation

Marketing automation was born out of the need to help marketers more tightly integrate their activity across email, website, and CRM (SFA really) channels.  More specifically, however, these tools also focused specifically on marketers chasing the considered purchase, usually B2B, where an individual sale is worth hundred, thousands, or even millions.

Campaign Management

In contrast, campaign management came into being to help mass direct marketers manage and more finely tune their segmentation strategies.  Here the focus is really on list generation and using customer data as branching forks in an effort to get the right number of bodies into a specific bucket.

Common Ground

Where there is overlap between the two, which is a significant commonality – like Presbyterian to Lutheran, rather than Christian to Muslim, is that both are built around the concept of the customer.  With any tool worth its salt, you’d expect to find the customer at the core with campaigns and channels building out.

Key Differences

From there though, the differences mount:

Industry

Eloqua

• Business Services
• Consulting
• Investments
• Real Estate
• Software
• Sports

Alchemy

• Banking
• CPG
• Government
• Retail
• Telecom
• Travel

Scale

Eloqua was built to evaluate and move high worth prospects through the sales process.  Necessarily, the pipe, or size of the prospect universe the tool was intended to serve numbers in the hundreds or thousands.  As trumpeted by a customer quote on the Eloqua site, “… we are sending 1000’s of emails every day …”

Alchemy, on the other hand, was built to handle prospect universes that run well into the millions and consume and serve up environments measured in terabytes (1TB = 1,000GB = huge ass database).  The Alchemy email gun doesn’t break a sweat until you get into the 100’s of millions of emails sent.

Channels

Eloqua is focused exclusively on the online channels.  As described by their CTO Steven Woods, they are all about “Digital Body Language”.  They have tried to wrapper events and “digital to print” services, but really these are shoe horned in.

Alchemy is more channel agnostic.  The focus is on getting the customer into the right bucket at the bottom of a tree (e.g., visually, think of a branching org chart).  From there, campaigns can be pushed out to direct mail drops, email, SMS, mobile, etc.

Integration

Eloqua was built to integrate really with one thing – the CRM, and it does it well.  Eloqua supports 2-way integration to a number of CRM’s like Salesforce.com, MSCRM, SalesLogix, etc.

Alchemy was built to be an agnostic data hub.  As such, it’s very easy to plug it into the variety of data sources you encounter across the enterprise. While you get way more variety, things are batch or trigger driven as opposed to a true 2-way synch.

Flexibility

Out of the box, with Eloqua, you get a prebuilt data model and framework for approaching how you do things.  If what you do maps to their “lead management methodology”, then it can be a great head start.  If, however, you have a different approach, or something customized to your organization, then it will be very difficult to bend Eloqua to what you do.  Part of the value of Eloqua is changing your approach to match the tool.

Alchemy was designed to be a framework as opposed to a platform.  The ramifications of that is that it is basically a blue sky environment.  Alchemy provides the tools and you tell it where to go.  For an organization with a clear vision of process and direction this is a great option.  For one looking for out of the box, plug and play, however, not so much.

Conclusion

Eloqua and Alchemy were built to solve different problems.  They are both head of the class in their respective spaces, and while those spaces have some similarities, they are not the same.  Here are some guidelines to help you decide:

	Eloqua	Alchemy
Focus	Lead Management	Customer Segmentation
Customer Records	100,000’s	1,000,000’s
Scale	Breaks a sweat in the 1M’s	Breaks a sweat in the 100M’s
Integration	2-way with SFDC, MSCRM	Easily connect to data sources across the enterprise
Flexibility	Out-of-the-box lead management tool	Customizable to any campaign management, marketing program
Channels	Online, Social	Online, Offline, Social

Which tool you should pick is a function of what you are trying to accomplish.  Really, if these two tools show up together, someone is in the wrong room.

Optify

It’s been awhile since I’ve done a vendor review, but gosh are they worth it!  This is one of the most exciting companies I”ve come across in quiet some time.

Future of Marketing Automation

What does the future, near future mind you, look like?

Listening + Understanding

• Capture and integrate interaction data from across the 6+ online channels

Planning + Speaking

• Facilitate the evolution towards an inbound marketing strategy for acquisition and an opt-in compliant one for retention

Setup for Alterian’s inaugural SM2 Buzz Bowl

http://bit.ly/Buzz-Bowl

You don’t have to work in marketing or advertising to know the Super Bowl has developed into the largest single day advertising event in the world.  We have all grown familiar with the urban legends, like maybe some of the more outlandish like the risk of “simultaneous flush” or “estimates” of a case of beer consumed for every man, woman, and child.  With a worldwide audience estimated from 200M to 1B it is no small wonder that brands pony up hundreds of millions for the advertising rights every year.  It is the ultimate “reach” vehicle of the broadcast calendar year.

Over the last couple of years, as the interactive and social channels have gained traction, the big three of TV, radio, and print have been hurting – shedding some $10B in ad revenues, or 20% of their annual turnover.  To date, this hasn’t impacted Super Bowl advertising which remains largely unscathed as the iconic symbol of mass media.   And while undoubtedly the competition on the airwaves will be as fierce as that between Indianapolis and New Orleans, there are some changes afoot that promise to make this year different.

For the first time, some of the large brands, like Pepsi, have broken ranks and are embracing social media marketing.  Exiting the Super Bowl is fairly symbolic as it signals that brands are taking social media seriously and view it as an alternative way for engaging with consumers.  Just two years ago, it would have seemed preposterous to think a major brand would walk away from their Super Bowl spot.

Beyond the cost, one of the driving factors behind this shift is the notion of engagement.  While as marketers we’ve long aimed for this, we’ve never really been able to act upon it.  Our problem has been, that while we could speak, we couldn’t listen.  Social media enables a whole new form of communication with individuals that simply wasn’t possible in the past.  Via social channels, consumers not only have a voice – they can be downright deafening.

One of the complaints about social media to date has been the difficulty in measuring it.  This perspective seems uniformed.  Social media is actually more quantifiable and measurable than its traditional counterparts.  As a matter of fact, social media can be used as a barometer for your multi-channel messaging and a real metric for measuring response, message traction and target audience reaction.  Regardless of how an individual receives your message, they are going to share, express, and engage with your brand via social channels.  You no longer have to guess how well your message worked because if you listen people will tell you.

Our goal with the SM2 Buzz Bowl is to bring clarity to the voice of the market and identify which brands were most successful at generating engagement.  In the end, the most successful brands won’t necessarily be ones that focus just on social media, but rather the brand that can foster an emotional connection with consumers that bridges broadcast advertising to the social community.  We measure this by using our proprietary Social Sentiment Engagement Index (SSEI) where we track not only the buzz generated, but then also weight it according to sentiment.

So… who will carry the day on Sunday?  Will it be the socially attuned Pepsi?  Big ad spending In-Bev? Or even another “Rock Star” from Intel?  Either way, check with Alterian, because… we will be listening.

http://bit.ly/Buzz-Bowl

Super Bowl Show Down – Coke Vs. Pepsi Social Style

As the Super Bowl draws closer and closer Alterian continues to find rather interesting data on a number of organizations that are advertising in the big event this Sunday.  To be sure there are a number of brands that are stimulating very interesting conversations, and Alterian’s SM2 social media monitoring solution is listening.  The real interesting data generated through this listening exercise is the competition between Coke and Pepsi.  Coke is certainly ramping up in terms of mentions and conversations, and in positive sentiment, however Pepsi is still ahead of Coke in most categories at this stage.  The simple reason for Pepsi’s performance is that they opted to not run any Super Bowl ads this year and upon announcing their decision in December they received quite a bit of social feedback.  Instead Pepsi is opting to launch their “refresh campaign” through social media channels.

Results can be deceiving as Pepsi’s position is fueled by their early announcement, but what we have yet to learn is what happens after the Super Bowl.  Does Pepsi maintain that leadership position, or does Coke take the top spot.  The real question is what can Coke do to extend and expand its Super Bowl ad spots?  Advertising to date generates a social and emotional attachment to brands, and while the attachment was bigger in the past, it still holds true today.  Consumers still understand what it means to “leave it to the good hands people”, or “like a good neighbor”  If we go back a generation or two, many consumer will identify with “Is it live or is it……?” or “When you’re out of Schlitz…..”  Branding can create attachment as Coke still knows how to generate a smile.  The real win for Coke would be to determine how to take the brand advertising that they ran for the Super Bowl, and extend it and expand into social channels.  If Coke was to really focus on expanding the effect of their advertising they might want to consider engaging in the social conversation.  For, although understanding the voice of the consumer is important, being able to better engage the consumer to develop and extend attachment, to keep the program alive, can be huge.  Next week will be a telling week, the excitement will soon lead to results.  Stay tuned to hear what it is that we’re hearing.

How to Implement a Social Media Marketing Strategy

Again, thank you to everyone for the support and enthusiasm for the presentation. Certainly this is something that has hit a nerve and I’ve heard you loud and clear. Over the coming weeks and months I will be devoting more time documenting the approach we are deploying at Alterian and sharing insights on what is and isn’t working.

To download a copy of the presentation, please visit the Alterian site:

http://www.alterian.com/smleadgen/

December Webinar: How to Implement a Social Media Marketing Strategy

Okay, so yes, on December 17th I am hosting Alterian’s December webinar. My topic for the session will be how to make social media part of your strategic marketing planning.  Yes, I will cover some of the blocking and tackling of deploying to the channels, but the real point of emphasis is how to incorporate in a measurable, accountable way into an overall demand generation program.  Below is the most recent write up…

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What you already know: Your emails are starting to fall on deaf ears; the quality and ROI of your PPC campaigns are on the decline; and your prospects and customers are spending more and more time online, but not necessarily on your site.

What you need to know: Social media can address all of these issues in a measurable, programmable way by taking the brand experience to the community and engaging people where they form impressions and find answers.

In this webinar, I will walk through the steps that can make you a social star. He will cover:

• Tracking customers online and identifying the right social channels
• Creating content that sticks and sells
• Crafting calls-to-action that are tailored to the social media
• Being accountable, and showing straightforward ways to demonstrate lift and ROI
• Developing a search strategy that gives your content the best chance of being found
• Enabling new social channels like LinkedIn, YouTube, and Twitter to cheaply and efficiently spread your brand message
• And much more…

Thursday, December 17, 2009
10am CT / 8am PT / 11am ET / 16.00 GMT
…click to register…

Strong Leaders Core To The Emergence of Customer Engagement Agencies

Alterian has been monitoring and researching the marketing and advertising services landscape for some time now.  We continue to see the emergence of the Customer Engagement Agency; that is an agency that leads with analytics and combines multi-channel strategy along with creative, technology and execution to deliver individualized brand experiences to their customer’s consumer.  Customer Engagement Agencies recognize that the interdisciplinary approach they bring to the market is critical for customer engagement, therefore they often combine skills on every account team to include analytics skills, technology skills, creative skills, strategic skills, and execution skills.  However for the Customer Engagement Agency it’s more than combining the skills its ensuring that team members work together on behalf of a client to ensure that analytic outcomes are feeding the creative process, forming the tone of voice in the creative, and leveraging strategic skills to  ensure that the right audience is receiving the right message through the right channel at the right time while recognizing that engagement isn’t solely about messaging, it requires listening as well.

What does the future of engagement look like?

One of the things that initially attracted me to Aterian was their dedication to advancing schools of thought around the future of marketing without a heavy dose of typical corporate branding bs.  One piece that I find particularly high value add is their annual survey of marketers where they take the pulse of the industry on issues of note.  This year they are covering what the future of engagement will look like.  Check out their survey and join them for results in January.

http://2009alteriansurvey.questionpro.com/

http://www.alterian.com/survey2009