We expanded our Marketing Automation feature coverage in Ombud this May. The result? Ombud’s Marketing Automation category now highlights NEW top-rated solutions.
Not only did we improve coverage of existing differentiators between Marketing Automation solutions, but we also incorporated Marketo and HubSpot’s new features into the Marketing Automation solution fit.
Below, I’ve used our new feature groups and features to demonstrate how solution categories within Ombud are expanding to reflect industry changes as they happen.
New Marketing Automation Features Announced this May
When HubSpot announced their new marketing grader app, we quickly created a new feature group, Competitor Marketing Measurement, and associated it to Marketing Automation and HubSpot.
Competitor Marketing Measurement: New features listed within this feature group include those features used to track your competitor’s marketing strategies. For example, products might alert users to drastic changes with Competitor Social Media Alerts or, more specifically, might track the number of Competitor Facebook Fans or Twitter Followers. Solutions could track Competitor Marketing Trends via Inbound Links, Indexed Pages or even (as HubSpot does) give your competitor an overall Marketing Grade based on the previously mentioned variables.
We’ve already associated these new Competitor Marketing Measurement features to the Marketing Automation solution fit. And you can see the impact on how HubSpot’s features now stack up amongst the top five Marketing Automation competitors in this side-by-side feature comparison.
Later in the month, Marketo shared some big news of their own. CEO Phil Fernandez announced Marketo’s new Social Marketing Suite at the Marketo Summit 2012. This set of applications is now integrated with its Marketing Automation platform. As a result, Marketo’s coverage has extended past Marketing Automation and into Social Marketing. (Thus the advantage of associating products to more than one category in Ombud!)
We’ve therefore incorporated a total of 23 new features to our Marketing Automation and Social Marketing solution fits and associated them to Marketo’s product page in Ombud.
New features include, but are not limited to existing feature groups. Social Network Leads, Landing Page on Social Networks and Social Media Sharing of Reviews are among the new features adding to existing feature groups. We also added three entire feature groups with new features.
Social Marketing Automation: This new Marketo-inspired group highlights the integration of social network activity into marketing automation activities. All-new features include the following:
- Influencer Nurturing Track
- Lead Scores with Social Activity
- LinkedIn Profile Alert
- Share Alerts
- Tweet Triggers
Social Campaign Measurement: Our Campaign Measurement feature group is now joined by its first cousin, Social Campaign Measurement. New features – already associated to Marketo and awaiting association to other solutions – include the following nine features:
- Customer Attribution to Social Campaigns
- Lead Attribution to Social Campaigns
- Revenue Attribution to Social Campaigns
- Social Campaign Clicks
- Social Campaign Funnel
- Social Media Campaign Reach
- Social Media Share Counter
- Social to Traditional Marketing Measurement
- Visit Attribution to Social Campaigns
Also prompted by Marketo’s announcement, this next feature group is comprised of social promotion features.
Social Network Promotions: These features enable promotions on social networks, including sweepstakes, referrals, group offers and contests. Marketo’s integration of traditional email marketing messaging with social media promotions especially highlights its extension from Marketing Automation into the Social Marketing category (where this feature group can be found). Individual features are listed below:
- Social Like Gate
- Social Network Promotion Compliance
- Social Network Referral Reporting
- Social Network Referral Tracking
- Social Sweepstakes Entries
- WYSIWYG Social Promotion Builder
Associating those features to Marketo has impacted how Ombud visitors are viewing Marketo in comparison with other Marketing Automation solutions, as you can see for yourself in this side-by-side comparison of the top solutions.
Marketo’s emphasis on social this month prompted us to take a look at Silverpop’s PlacePunch and add a new feature group to Social Marketing, Location Based Marketing, as detailed below.
Location Based Marketing: Targeting your marketing strategy to customers based on their current locations is promoted through product integrations with FourSquare, Facebook and Twitter. Specific features include Location-Based Offers, Scheduled Offers, Contests, Rewards Programs and Scavenger Hunts. Also included in this feature group is the ability to automatically tweet customers when they check in to a certain location.
As I mentioned before, we not only associated new features and feature groups to Marketing Automation, we also associated the following features to existing feature groups in Ombud.
Marketing Outreach
- Automated Testing Segmentation
- SMS Mobile Marketing Campaigns
- Multiple Suppression Lists
Personalized Marketing
- Personalized Email Delivery Schedule
Landing Pages
- Landing Pages from HTML import
Web Forms
- Activity-Based Web Forms
Those additions have created a plethora of new opportunities for vendors to highlight their product’s differentiators. Also, users can now rate and review those specific features.
Want to associate these features to a product?
We’ve laid the foundation; all you have to do is complete the last step – sharing your experience! Click here to join, and we’ll happily lend a hand.
Note-worthy Marketing Automation blog posts from May
- 4 Reasons No One Likes Your Email Campaigns – Blog post by Eloqua’s Jennifer Talcott
- The Rise of “Influencer Relations”: 3 Ways to Cut Out the Noise – Blog post by Eloqua’s Sheila Lahar
Do you know what’s been going on in the Enterprise Social Network scene this past month? Wednesday, let’s take a look.
