Who are the top Marketing Automation Vendors?

Sarah,
That, of course, depends on what you are looking for. I'm with Eloqua, and we've often been called top (but of course I'm biased...).

Marketing automation spans from very basic (sending basic sequences of emails) to much more advanced (being able to observe online behaviour, determine what that means the buyer is interested in, and either cater communication accordingly, or get a salesperson in contact with that person).

If you want to see what the best marketers in the world are doing with marketing automation, have a look at the Sirius Decisions summit as one of the best examples (http://www.siriusdecisions.com/live/home/document.php?dA=Sirius2010SummitAgenda). That gives you a good sense of what the top marketers are doing, and the platform that every presenter there is using is Eloqua.

However, there are a number of great platforms out there that allow you to do many of the basic capabilities of marketing automation, and get off to a good start.

In doing your evaluation, three of the most critical "basics" to look at are:

a) can the platform handle your campaigns, upload lists without failing, and sending campaigns on time. Here's a quick way to evaluate that in any demo: http://digitalbodylanguage.blogspot.com/2009/12/evaluating-marketing-automati...

b) can the platform manage data well (this is *key* to being successful) - again a quick way to evaluate this in any demo - http://digitalbodylanguage.blogspot.com/2010/02/evaluating-marketing-automati...

c) does the platform actually get emails delivered (vs in the spam folder). Look at their ReturnPath sender score, and make sure they have a team on staff who knows what they are doing - see here for some detailed thoughts: http://eloqua.blogspot.com/2009/12/email-deliverability-health-check.html

Hope that helps, and enjoy your journey towards marketing automation.

Steve

Hi Sarah,

Shameless plug (because I work here) but I really like the Net-Results marketing automation platform http://www.net-results.com. It is a solid tool with plenty of features, easy to use and a very reasonable price-point.

In my past marketing positions, I have used various marketing automation systems, and while others have great functionality and feature sets, they require a lengthy commitment of time and resources just to get out of the gate.

Regardless of who you choose, I agree with Steve and Carlos that a deliberate process and clear objectives are essential to getting the most from your marketing automation initiatives.

As a marketing automation customer, not a vendor, it looks to my consumer-focused mind that Eloqua and Marketo are the top tier. (They're certainly priced like it.) We are also considering Marketbright, TrueInfluence, Silverpop, Genius, and Pardot.

Before doing my research, I focused on Eloqua, Marketo, and Silverpop. I discovered the others through recommendations from former colleagues, or through attending marketing events. The two most important items for me are the ability to integrate with the organization's CRM system (bi-directionally, not just push), and the user-friendliness/abilities of the campaign design tools.

For SMB companies like mine, the difference between 99.9% uptime and 99.9999% uptime is negligible, and every vendor says their email deliverability is tops in the industry (and has a different set of statistics to back it up).

Dear Sarah,

Agree with Steve, it completely depends on the criteria you set for top vendors. Size of the company, number of clients, service offerings,technology advancements etc.

Sorry for the biased view - but my personal experience as a marketer using LeadForce1 is great. The kind of insights I get on my various campaigns help me optimize my resources and the marketing channels I use. It also helps me measure the marketing ROI for the company.

LeadForce1 maybe the youngest entrant in this space, but it offers its clients next generation marketing automation solutions, enabling them to know the intent of their enterprise visitors which helps not only marketing but also sales in driving more customized campaigns.

I would say, a marketing automation vendor should not be chosen - based on who has a larger market cap, but on what you expect from the solutions offered and the level of customization you will require for your company.

Any marketing automation solution you choose should not only automate the marketing and lead generation process but also enable your sales teams with insights and data, to ensure a higher rate of conversion, better ROI and also real marketing & sales alignment within your organization.

Cheers
Merlin
LeadForce1

My top choices are Marketo and Eloqua. Genius.com and Pardot are also good. There are numerous others that are pretty good.

Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor
President, Find New Customers "Lead Generation Made Simple"
http://www.findnewcustomers.net

Here is Forrester's take on the industry: http://pages2.marketo.com/forrester-market-overviewconvertedpage.html

I consider Eloqua and Marketo to largely be at the top of the list with the likes of Pardot, Genius and Silverpop as viable alternatives depending on budget and specific requirements. Keep an eye out for Hubspot though who are quickly building out specific functionality that will have them competing in this space. This, coupled with their excellent inbound marketing solution could make for a great "one-stop-shop" play for organizations or those looking to provide this type of solution through consultancy.

Sarah:

I would agree with Steve that it depends what you are looking to do with the software and the things that are important to you.

The Top 3 are Silverpop who just announced their Engage 8 product, Eloqua and Marketo.

We are a strategic partner with Silverpop and are very excited about the announcement of their new platform -http://www.silverpop.com/news/press/engage-8.html and do recommend this to all of our clients as we did our research before partnering and chose them.

Regardless of who you select I would highly recommend you ensure you have a documented lead management process in place that will then be enabled by your automation technology. By not having a lead management framework in place you will only realize a fraction of the value from your technology investment.

Hope all continues to go well as you seek the best solution.

I can agree with use of Eloqua if you have a technical team that can implement and a robust plan for utilizing your database through email. I've used Eloqua on a DB of 500,000 subscribers and instantly improved deliverability of emails and insight to our audience. Connected the data through Salesforce so that sales teams can access (Eloqua reporting gets a little technical).

Eloqua and Marketo. I have worked in several Eloqua installs over the past 4 years and can attest that Eloqua is extremely powerful with few limitations. This product is SMB and Enterprise level

Eloqua is the leading platform, have a look at this infographic to find out more about big players: http://www.marketingtechblog.com/marketing-automation-top-20/