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Steve Woods

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CTO, Eloqua

493 points

CTO at Eloqua and author of the book "Digital Body Language" which focuses on the transformation under way in our buyers and how we as marketers can respond

Steve Woods and 6 other people answered this question

Jan. 27, 2011

What marketing automation software integrates with CRM systems?

Lauren,
great question. I'm with Eloqua (www.eloqua.com), so let me answer on behalf of us. Yes, we have deep, out of the box, integration with all the leading CRM systems (Salesforce.com is by far the most common, with many hundred integrated clients, but also Oracle CRM ... more

Steve Woods recommends this answer by Joe Chernov

Jan. 26, 2011

What's it like to work at Eloqua?

I've only been with Eloqua for about 14 months, but here's my relative "newbie" analysis: Culture may vary among offices, but holistically, the company is very competitive -- not with one another per se, but it's a competitive industry and there's a real drive to ... more

Marketing Automation

Work Environment

Steve Woods recommends this answer by Marcus Tewksbury

Jan. 17, 2011

What are/will be the biggest impediments to the marketing automation market reaching its potential?

From my perspective, there is a chain effect of issues...
Is starts with:
1.) Demonstrable impact on a companies ability to close more deals. This is definitely going to be top of mind. If the tools can't show how they are impacting the needle everything else is ... more

Steve Woods answered this question

Dec. 7, 2010

What is your favourite workflow to load RSS into emailmarketing messages?

Jordie,
Good question, and an interesting advanced topic for many marketers. If there is a relevant RSS feed that you can use to provide relevant information to your audience it can be immensely valuable.
As for workflow, it really depends on the provider you're using. In ... more

Email Marketing Newsletters

Marketing Automation

Steve Woods and 12 other people answered this question

Nov. 23, 2010

Lead scoring best practices: what are your 3 tips for successful lead scoring?

Lots of great advice here, so I’m definitely chiming in with advice that has already been given. However, if I had to pick the three most crucial elements of success in lead scoring, they would be:
1) Split Your Score Between “Fit” and “Engagement”. Fit is ... more

General Management

Steve Woods and 6 other people answered this question

Nov. 5, 2010

Do you require engineering support for your marketing automation solution?

Candyce,
thanks for the comment - just to clarify, there's no need for scripting with Eloqua (I'm with Eloqua). It's very easy to launch basic campaigns. There are many advanced processes that can be built in Eloqua, and those can get complex, but basic campaigns are ... more

Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation Best Practices

Marketing Automation Solution

Steve Woods and 2 other people answered this question

Nov. 4, 2010

How has social media affected marketing automation?

Great question. I would agree that you can't "automate" social media, but I've always found the term "marketing automation" to be a terrible name for the space (but it's stuck, so we'll go with it). To me, marketing automation is mainly about understanding the buyers ... more

Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation Features

Steve Woods and 7 other people answered this question

Nov. 4, 2010

Your Marketing Automation budget just got an extra $10,000. Where do you spend it and why?

Agreed with Jame. Next to content, I would suggest taking a good look at the quality (completeness, consistency, accuracy) of the data in your marketing database, and ensuring that you have the tools in place to handle cleansing that data automatically as it flows in ... more

Budgeting and Expenses

Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation Strategy

Steve Woods and 3 other people answered this question

Nov. 4, 2010

What is the market share of the leading marketing automation vendors?

David,
great point. Eloqua is at around 800 active customers right now, and over 55,000 users. Customer counts are always a measure that we find entertaining internally though as there are those in the space who are avidly trying to claim "biggest", and therefore count trials ... more

Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation Industry

Marketing Automation Vendors

Steve Woods recommends this answer by Carlos Hidalgo

Oct. 6, 2010

What is the state of branding in today's marketing? How is it different?

Craig: All great answers and I will try to add my two cents to what has already been written. I do not view brand as dead but actually view brand as a key part of good lead management and demand generation.
One of the key ... more

Steve Woods and 5 other people answered this question

Oct. 3, 2010

What metrics should I look at as part of marketing automation?

Mike,
a few areas to look into metrics on, many of them are covered in my blog in this piece (http://digitalbodylanguage.blogspot.com/2009/09/marketing-dashboards.html) and a few others:
Lead handoff to sales - numbers of MQLs, quality of MQLs (A1s vs B3s), distribution (by geo/rep)
Lead follow-up - time to follow-up ... more

Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation Campaign

Marketing Automation System

Steve Woods recommends this answer by Steve Gershik

Sept. 28, 2010

Reseller exclusivity in the marketing automation market: Is Eloqua making the right move?

When companies like Eloqua expose their long-term product lifecycle to their partners in such a fast-changing industry, they need to take the proper steps to ensure their IP doesn't leak out to their competitors. As nimble as cloud companies are, having your long-term roadmap out ... more

Steve Woods and 9 other people answered this question

Sept. 26, 2010

How will social media change lead nurturing?

While I agree with all the above, I would say that social media also adds a very interesting "passive" metaphor for discovering all the great content - whether through a Facebook or Twitter feed, or LinkedIn discussions, lots of great content can be chanced upon ... more

Lead Nurturing Tools

Marketing Automation

Steve Woods and 7 other people answered this question

Sept. 17, 2010

What marketing automation vendor provides the most flexible custom fields?

Stephen,
great question. There are a few aspects to dig into if you really want to select a vendor that has built custom fields the right way. To be fully upfront, I'm with Eloqua, a marketing automation platform, so I can tell you how we do ... more

Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation Campaign

Marketing Automation Features

Steve Woods and 8 other people answered this question

Sept. 17, 2010

What marketing automation features do you really use?

Good discussion - let me quickly clarify my comment. I agree that campaign email, landing pages, etc are more commonly deployed than nurturing and scoring. I was focusing on the "automation" side of the features, although most marketing automation platforms do of course include both ... more

Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation Features

Marketing Automation System

Steve Woods and 6 other people answered this question

Sept. 16, 2010

Email deliverability is part art and part science, what are some best practices for marketers?

Howie,
Dennis Dayman, who is one of the top experts in the field on that subject, wrote a fairly detailed post here http://blog.eloqua.com/get-your-email-delivered-demystifying-email-deliverabi... that also has a good set of links to other resources. Worth looking into as there are lots of important things to know ... more

Email Deliverability

Email Marketing

Steve Woods answered this question

Sept. 16, 2010

What percentage of subscribers do you keep by offering an email preference center?

Rebecca,
from what we've seen, this really depends on whether you really have the breadth of content that a subscriber will care to choose between. We've seen success with this strategy in areas such as the publishing industry (quite a breadth of content obviously), and in ... more

Email Marketing Campaign

Email Preference Center

Preference Center

Steve Woods and 7 other people answered this question

Sept. 16, 2010

Is marketing automation really about automation or is it about visibility?

Adam,
I'd have to say that the term "marketing automation" really doesn't do much to accurately describe the industry. The point, as Carlos and Barbra mention is to get the right information to the right buyer at the right time. Much of this is about ... more

Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation Features

Steve Woods and 4 other people answered this question

Aug. 4, 2010

How long does it take to implement a marketing automation solution?

Great question, and if I can paraphrase a bit from the responses above, it comes down to a definition of what "implementing marketing automation" is defined as. This is both the amount of business process change you are looking at and the complexity of the ... more

Marketing Automation

Marketing Software

Steve Woods and 2 other people answered this question

June 29, 2010

How has lead nurturing changed the motion of your inside sales team?

Jenny,
agreed with many of the points above. The only thing I would add to that is that lead nurturing, when done well, also provides a much richer array of content for prospects to interact with. When they do, and marketing presents this information to the ... more

Marketing Automation

Steve Woods and 4 other people answered this question

June 4, 2010

Lead nurturing & management: what metrics matter?

Michael, great question. Carlos and Tom make great points on the upside of lead nurturing - measuring leads passed over to sales, and I agree with those metrics.
Let me take a stab at another set of metrics - the downside.
(full discussion of this topic ... more

Business Metrics

Lead Management

Steve Woods and 7 other people answered this question

May 18, 2010

Do you use a software for lead nurturing?

Mary,
Good question, and I would agree with Howard's comment. Lead nurturing is all about the overall strategy for engaging your customers, and that includes great content, a relevant reason to be in touch, and of course technology to get the job done.
Lots of good ... more

Information Technology

Steve Woods answered this question

April 15, 2010

Are there marketing automation solutions for small businesses?

Sarah,
Great question and excellent topic. I'm with Eloqua, and we have experience with both SMB, mid-sized, and Enterprise companies. It surprises some to learn that we have the largest, and most successful group of SMB customers of any of the marketing automation providers (http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Eloqua-Delivers-Enterprise-Marketing-...).
The differences ... more

Information Technology

Marketing Automation

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