Who are the top marketing automation vendors focused primarily on the SMB market?

Depends on what you mean by "top," Brian.

I hear a lot in the market about Infusionsoft and Pardot, and also Genius, Marketbrite, Loopfuse, ActiveConversion, Act-On, Manticore Technologies and eTrigue.

Each different in functionality and focus, but it's important to remember that buying technology is easy. It's planning, deploying and maintaining a marketing automation solution that takes discipline, focus and rigor.

Brian, you need to narrow down to a short list, perhaps using David's site to help decide, and then get demos. Make sure that when you set up your demos you have very specific things you want to see rather than just getting their canned demo. These might be things like "show me how to build a drip program accomplishing X', "show me how to build a lead scoring model accomplishing Y". The MA solution is not going to do strategy and that is a whole other ball of wax, but when you have your content and strategy and are ready to execute, you want something that has the power to accomplish your goals in an easy way that requires little training. Having been in this industry since the very beginning, at a minimum you need Manticore and Pardot on your list.

I think it depends on your definition of SMB. We (Pardot) typically work with clients that have 20-200 employees, with 5-50 in sales and marketing. In that segment, we're probably the largest vendor with 500+ clients. It all just depends how you slice up the pyramid. One slice up from us would be another vendor, and there'd be another above that. Infusionsoft (mentioned above) is awesome at a slice or two below us. The nice thing about this space is that vendors (for the most part) have built solutions that really cater to the segment of the market on which they have chosen to focus. That serves both the client and the vendor pretty well.

I'd pay attention to what customers are saying in the market about the tools they use. Here's a link to a similar question that covers several of the MA tools listed here:

http://answers.getapp.com/Anyone-share-hoe-experience-Genoo-Loopfuse-eTrigue-...

Correction: Kim Albee of Genoo reminds me that her system doesn't offer built-in CRM or shopping cart, and better fits into the "small business" segment. Sorry for the error.

Brian: Steve nails it and I would recommend you look at all of the options in the SMB market and perform some due diligence in this area as there are many good choices.

Carlos Hidalgo
The Annuitas Group
@cahidalgo

I would suggest reading David's post about different Marketing Automation services. I have used many of the ones cited including Nurture HQ.

For small the key is support post sale. There are many good "tools" but with Marketing Automation, it is similar to a machine gun. Complicated and harmful if you don't know what you're doing.

Getting set-up and emailing is one thing, impacting your sales pipeline through the automation is entirely different. Advanced actions: Lead Scoring, Nurturing vs Drip, List Segmentation, Content Development, etc. need some thought, best practices and time to bear fruit. If you have a good vendor they can shorten your learning curve to become a better marksman.

I would ask: Who has set-up and consultative services upon purchasing?

From my exposure only a handful from that list do.

The last thing that I have experienced is the endurance with automation services. You have to commit to at least 3 months, with 6 months or longer better time frames to get the full value.

Too many people think of only monthly price and not total ownership cost, sales projections, etc.

I have a colleague with 20K names in his database. He balked at $500/month for marketing automation. Then I asked him how often that 20K is emailed more then once a quarter. His answer 0! If he had a marketing automation service he could touch those prospects for pennies.

I see marketing automation similar to any professional service for a SMB, you have to choose on price, resources, and success with similar clients to yours.

Just picking the cheapest machine gun without learning to shoot is wasteful!

Love this question @crmstrategies since it's so specific to what we do.

Infusionsoft is the leading marketing automation software for a new breed of small businesses that are growing fast using automated and personalized marketing on the internet. Our definition of small business is companies with 2-25 employees.

We understand the challenges that come with growing a small business. We have grown quickly to become the leader in marketing automation software – by using our own software. We have 6500 small business customers and over 20,000 users.

Every small business spends time and money to drive traffic to their website. But they are not converting website traffic into sales in automated way, whether they sell with an online shopping cart or with a direct sales team. The businesses that use marketing and sales automation are really the only companies that are growing in the new economy.

Infusionsoft is designed for the needs of these small businesses. It combines CRM, Email Marketing and eCommerce into one system that small businesses don’t have to manually stitch together. But the real magic is in our Automated Follow-up engine that manages exponentially more prospects and customers by sending personalized messaging and automating repetitive tasks. In the end, Infusionsoft users convert more leads and grow their sales – without having to hire lots of employees.

And since this is still a new thing that isn’t widely understood yet, we even train these busy entrepreneurs how to do this new type of automated marketing and sales. When small businesses are ready for more power than simple email blasts or basic autoresponders like Constant Contact and contact managers like ACT!, they grow up to Infusionsoft.

www.infusionsoft.com
@infusionsoft
@kathysacks

Steve Gershik--you're absolutely right: "It's planning, deploying and maintaining a marketing automation solution that takes discipline, focus and rigor."

You have to be committed, especially small business marketers who want the benefits but can be easily distracted by the moving parts and demands of their business. The payoff is there with marketing automation. It's proven in the success stories we, and other vendors, see every day.

Peter, Your response hits the nail on the head for us. We are very close to purchasing HubSpot and it is primarily for marketing intel, not automation. So I agree - there is a difference. Some of these tools can obviously do both and for us, the question was, can they do both in an integrated way. Can we take that intel and automate the nurture campaigns or take that intel and build better sales tactics. This was a great discussion - before we finalize our decision, I plan to take a look at some of these others that we hadn't heard about - but keeping those two needs clear, is a smart start to the process.

Thanks David and others for your information - been very informative!
I am interested in talking to those companies who are looking to expand into the Asia Pacific region properly!
I have clients and prospects looking for companies that can provide proper presence, good technology etc
We are a sales and marketing organisation with lifecycle or multichannel sales experience
Contact me on either
@SandraPaton
SandraPatton@excelquest.com.au

Brian
Full Disclosure--- I'm a PR guy for TimeTrade (www.timetrade.com)-- who's an "Appointment CRM" solutions vendor serving SMBs (as well as the spectrum from individual consultants to mid-sized, even large enterprises like Sprint, Best Buy, Fidelity Investments, Yale University, and thousands more worldwide.

TimeTrade bridges the gap between outbound marketing activity, lead qualification and conversion, sales automation (including salesforce.com integration) by dramatically simplifying how prospects and customers book appointments with company reps with sales and service people.

Check them out.
Best
--Patrick (Rafter)
prafter@valuecasters.com

A follow-on answer to my earlier response suggesting anyone who's evaluating marketing/sales automation to take a look at TimeTrade.

As various software vendors evolve their product offerings from their initial core value proposition--- the product lines become blurred.
Thus marketing and sales automation products from different vendors may share many of the same features. Similarly applications for CRM, Call Center, Customer Service from different vendors may increasingly be similar.

While the "big" analyst firms (Gartner, Forrester, IDG, Aberdeen, et al) may charge a lot for their comparison of different marketing automation products--- I recently found a free analysis of "Top 40 CRM Software Vendors Revealed" from Business-Software.com which does a helpful break out by feature/function/application and size of organization: Enterprise/Mid-Sized/Small.

Download it at http://www.business-software.com/top-40-crm-vendors.php

There is a fundamental question here.
Marketing Automation was designed for mega corporations who had more leads coming in than they had sales people to deal with them. Marketing Automation was the marketing equivalent of the Press 1 for Sales in telecoms.

But in the B2B mid-market, companies have fewer leads than they can handle. What they need is intelligence on who is thinking of buying so that they can talk to them and take the sale the rest of the way. They need intelligence which gives them the opening to build a bridge with these clients, find out the names of all the key decision makers and get an insight into their buying process.

There is another consideration. Enterprise corporations have silos. Marketing departments who don't talk to sales and sales departments who don't talk to marketing. So Marketing Automation creates a way for Marketing to make Leads for Sales, with arbitrary scoring replacing common sense and intuition into when someone is ready to engage more closely. Smaller companies don't have this divide - marketing and sales work together and share leads, working together to put them in a position where they are ready to purchase.

Smaller companies have a much closer relationship with customers and prospects. They don't want to throw that away just to ape the big boys - that would create problems, not solve them. What they do need is a bit of insight into who's considering them, what will make them purchase, what stage they are at in their purchase process and what help they need to make a decision.

That comes from a marketing intelligence solution, not a marketing automation one.