the angles report · follow-up total 8.90 marketo overall 38 (out of 100) marketo overall, the...

The Angles ReportTM: Marketing Automation

(310) 954-9710 | Angles-Inc.com | © 2015. Angles, Inc. All Rights Reserved 1

ke1 8

Marketing Automation

PAUL ANGLES

September 2015

Angles-Inc.com

The Angles Report™ Marketing Automation

(310) 954-9710 | Angles-Inc.com | © 2015. Angles, Inc. All Rights Reserved iii

Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 5!

Industry Scorecard and Analysis ............................................................................................... 8!

Summary ........................................................................................................................... 8!

A Big Budget Without a Great Process Is Worthless. .................................................... 10!

Not All Winners (or Losers) are Created Equal. ............................................................... 11!

How to Be a Winner. ....................................................................................................... 15!

Company Scorecards & Analysis ............................................................................................ 24!

CallidusCloud ............................................................................................... 25!

Constant Contact ......................................................................................... 30!

Eloqua .......................................................................................................... 36!

Emma ........................................................................................................... 41!

eTrigue ......................................................................................................... 46!

HubSpot ....................................................................................................... 50!

iContact ........................................................................................................ 55!

Infusionsoft ................................................................................................... 60!

Leanplum ...................................................................................................... 66!

MailChimp .................................................................................................... 71!

Marketo ........................................................................................................ 76!

Pardot �� ........................................................................................................... 82!

RedPoint Global ........................................................................................... 88!

Sailthru ......................................................................................................... 92!

Salesfusion ................................................................................................... 97!

SALESmanago ........................................................................................... 102!

SharpSpring ............................................................................................... 107!

Silverpop .................................................................................................... 112!

StreamSend ............................................................................................... 118!

VerticalResponse ....................................................................................... 123!


(310) 954-9710 | Angles-Inc.com | © 2015. Angles, Inc. All Rights Reserved iv

Zoho �� ........................................................................................................... 128!

Methodology ............................................................................................................................ 133!

What We Do. ................................................................................................................. 134!

About . . . .................................................................................................................................. 135!

Paul Angles ................................................................................................................... 135!

Angles, Inc. .................................................................................................................... 135!



Introduction As an online marketing agency that guar-antees performance, “How do we trust what you’re recommending?” is one of the most common questions clients and pro-spective clients ask us.

This is exactly the right question and you should be asking it of whoever manages your online marketing, even (or especially) if it’s you yourself.

Our answer is this book.

Over the years, we’ve had documented successes for many clients in many industries. In paid search, we grew one client’s sales by 20x. In email marketing, we’ve doubled and tripled sales, even growing one client by 45x in just one year. All good, but we obviously can’t discuss the specifics of client programs without violating non-disclosure agreements. However, we can share the lessons and insights that have allowed us to achieve such dramatic results.

No one has ever attempted a book like this before. We’ve taken the thinking and the strategies that have worked consistently for our clients and systematically applied them to an entire in-dustry. In doing so, it becomes readily apparent which companies have their act together and which ones don’t. Who’s following best practices and who’s just a follower. Who’s a winner and who’s a loser.

Presenting The Angles Report™. The Angles Report is a simple idea with pro-found implications. We’ve zeroed in on a highly competitive industry. Documented how each company markets itself. Applied the rigorous analysis that we conduct on our own work for our own clients1. Determined objectively which companies market best at every step of the process. And shared the findings.

So that by seeing what works and what doesn’t, you can apply our findings to your own pro-gram and quickly improve your own performance.

1 Technically, we only applied a subset of our standard analysis in The Angles Report because we only used publicly-available data. For our own clients, we use their confidential analytics and other data and our reports and recommendations go into far greater depth.

“The results are shocking. Companies we expected to do well didn’t and flopped for rea-sons that we hadn’t consid-ered.”

“A simple idea with profound implications.”



To ensure that our first issue is of maximum benefit to our readers, we’ve started with the mar-keting-automation industry, those companies whose very value proposition is to make it easier and less expensive for other companies to turn online traffic into leads and then into custom-ers2. They make the tools that we and our clients use daily, so it stands to reason that they should be better at using those tools than anyone in the world.

We followed the paths from 21 marketing-automation companies’ ads on Google AdWords to their landing and confirmation pages to their email and phone follow-up with leads. We docu-mented every interaction with screen shots and voice transcripts. We then scored and ranked each company to determine who does what best – and worst.

The results are shocking. Companies we expected to do well didn’t and flopped for reasons that we hadn’t considered. While one company was a clear winner overall, even it fell short on a number of dimensions. All of the companies profiled could, by refining just a few parts of their marketing process, dramatically increase their scores and their business results.

And, by extension, so could any marketer reading this report.

Why The Angles Report™ Matters. Web marketing is a winner-take-all proposition. Being in first place overall is a tremendous strategic advantage because you’ll acquire more customers than your competitors and a tre-mendous financial advantage because they will be more profitable customers.

Getting our clients into first place is the reason our agency exists, but getting there requires more than just outspending the competition. It requires a fully-optimized, four-phase process, each of which can be broken down into numerous smaller pieces:

2 We deliberately did not include display advertising, social media, retargeted advertising, organic search engine optimization, affiliate programs, Yahoo! or Bing search, Facebook, email prospecting, real-time bidding, content marketing, and native advertising. The marketing campaigns of many of the companies profiled in this report are so extensive that documenting them adequately would require entire book or even multiple books per company. In-stead, we’ve focused on the narrowest program that we felt is representative of the whole. Companies that get this process right can confidently project the results onto other areas of their marketing.



As the following example illustrates, increasing the website conversion and lead conversion rates by just 10 percent, a marketer can receive much more sales from Google (and other sources) while generating far more profit on each sale:

This ultimately is why The Angles Report matters: by applying best practices across the board, even small marketers can cut costs, increase sales, and maximize profits.

− Paul Angles



Industry Scorecard and Analysis

Summary If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the world of marketing automation, wary of vendors’ extrava-gant promises, and confused by the buzzwords and jargon, take heart: You’re not alone.

In the first-of-its-kind study of the online marketing programs of 21 top marketing-automation vendors, we came to an inescapable conclusion: Most are just as confused as everyone else.

Here’s some of what we found after 12 weeks of research:

• A big budget isn’t enough to make a search program successful.

• Most marketing-automation companies don’t practice what they preach.

• Almost every company does some really dumb things that cost them a surprising amount of sales and revenue.

• Companies that sell software for inbound marketing are pathologically allergic to out-bound marketing, to picking up the phone and calling prospects.

Marketing Automation: A Relevant, Growing Industry. We focused on marketing automation for the first issue of The Angles Report™ for a very sim-ple reason: We and our clients use marketing-automation software every day for online market-ing, email distribution, lead capture, data collection and analysis, so the methods and messag-es they use are designed specifically to work on people like us. Marketing-automation compa-nies tend to be thought leaders in this space and they have exposure to a wide range of cam-paigns, techniques, and tricks every day. Simple osmosis should make them great marketers.

Marketing automation also has become big business, with a range of companies large and small. This corresponds nicely to a lot of marketers. You may not have a six-figure budget to work with but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn from companies that do. Or, you may have an eight-figure budget in which case you’re right to be paranoid that smaller companies are out-performing you right and left.

Industry: Marketing Automation Average Unique Visitors/Month 2,181,695 Total Unique Visitors/Month 37,088,807 Average Monthly Budget $119,228 Total Monthly Budget $2,503,790



Each month, our survey set of 21 companies attracts approximately 37 million unique visitors and spends $2.5 million on Google AdWords. (See above.) Most, but not all, of these compa-nies purchase the very expensive category keyword “marketing automation” for as much as a $16.40 cost per click. Each day, there are about 400 searches conducted for “marketing auto-mation.”

On average, the monthly paid-search budget for the companies researched was $119,000; with one spending as little as $4,750 while another shelled out $711,000. The average number of unique visitors each month was 2.1 million; there were 25,000 at the low end and 25 million at the high end.



A Big Budget Without a Great Process Is Worthless. No matter the company size or scope of its online marketing program, we as-sessed how well each executed a well-established process: Advertise, capture data, engage and convert. (See p.6.) To evaluate that process, we examined companies’ paid-search ads, landing and confirmation pages, and their follow-up with leads.

We scored each company for 200 metrics that were designed to be as objective as possible. (See Methodology for details.) The total scores for all 21 companies researched produced The Angles Report™ company rankings, a profile of the average marketing-automation vendor (See average score below.) and companies executing best practices (See winners below.):

Average Score Winners

Paid Search Program Scope 3.86 Constant Contact, Infusionsoft, Zoho Category Keyword 8.14 Eloqua, Marketo Category Focus 3.29 Emma, Leanplum, Marketo Paid Search Total 15.29 Marketo

Landing Page Technology 2.64 HubSpot, Marketo, VerticalResponse Page Attributes 6.57 iContact Form Design 1.19 8-way tie Landing Page Total 10.40 Marketo

Confirmation Page Copy 1.19 Zoho Design 2.26 Marketo Confirmation Page Total 3.45 Zoho

Follow-Up Email 8.23 Marketo Phone 0.67 Constant Contact Follow-Up Total 8.90 Marketo

Overall 38 (out of 100) Marketo

Overall, the companies we researched performed best with their search programs, the first of the four-phase online marketing process. The weakest part of their downstream processes, on average, was the confirmation page. Marketo ranked first in three out of four categories, scor-

“We scored each company for 200 metrics that were de-signed to be as objective as possible.



ing 69.2. That’s well above the average company score of 38. (See Company Scorecards & Analysis.)

Not All Winners (or Losers) are Created Equal. As we analyzed our findings, clear winners and clear losers emerged. Top-scoring Marketo, for example, led its closest competitor, Constant Contact, by 15 points. StreamSend came in last with 11.5 points and RedPoint Global nipping at its heels.

A surprise surfaced too: Winner or loser, budget alone doesn’t matter that much. The amount of money a company spends on search advertising has little to do with the quality of the down-stream process it has it place to convert unknown prospects to known leads and ultimately, customers. A big budget isn’t enough to make a search program successful. Conversely, a great email program isn’t enough to make up for a paltry budget. It takes a fully integrated, well-executed, four-phase online marketing process to make an impact.

We found many companies significantly overspending on marketing and under-investing in their marketing process. We call them Gamblers, because they’re betting that spending more is enough to win. Other companies underspend on marketing and overinvest in marketing process. We call them Investors, because they’re too cautious and are wasting opportunity. Both Gamblers and Investors, along with Losers that don’t get much of anything right, have work to do.

The Angles of Impact™ illustrates the impact of a company’s online marketing program based on how much it spends and on how good its program is. (See below.) We mapped AdWords position, a proxy for how much a company spends, against the score of its overall program.

“A big budget isn’t enough to make a search program success-ful. Conversely, a great email program isn’t enough to make up for a paltry budget. It takes a fully integrated, well-executed, four-phase online marketing process to make an impact.”



Of the 21 companies we studied and scored, No.1-ranked Marketo with its 69.2 score also was the clear Angles of Impact Winner for both marketing process and ad position.

Winners in the upper right have an above-average marketing pro-cess and an above-average ad position on Google. Constant Con-tact, Eloqua, iContact, InfusionSoft, Marketo, Silverpop, VerticalRe-sponse and Zoho are Winners. Leanplum and Pardot are right on the line.



Losers in the lower-left quadrant have the worst marketing process and are bidding the least on their paid-search advertising of the 21 companies surveyed. They are CallidusCloud, eTrigue, RedPoint Global, StreamSend and, industry golden child, HubSpot.

Gamblers in the upper-left quadrant are placing big bets that a big budget will make up for a suboptimal marketing process: Sailthru, MailChimp, SALESManago and Sales-fusion. In the short run, they’re probably right, but in the long run, the house always wins.

Investors in the lower right have put time, effort and money into quality marketing processes but are cautiously sitting on the side-lines while the Gamblers outbid them. It’s easier for an Investor to become a Winner than it is for a Gambler. But both Investors and Gamblers are squandering opportunities.

Marketers Must Strike a Balance Between Process and Budget. Is it better to be an Investor or a Gambler? You can have the best marketing process in the world, but if you’re not spending enough to promote it, it doesn’t matter. Similarly, you can outspend your competitors, but if you don’t support that outlay with great follow-up with leads, the money doesn’t matter. What does matter is balance, the balance between how good a marketing process is and how big the budget is to promote it.

In assessing how balanced the companies in our survey set are, we divided them into five groups

Five-star companies are in the top 20 percent for both market-ing process and AdWords position. Theoretically, in a group of 21 companies, there is room for two five-star companies. Only Mar-keto made the cut.

Four-star companies are the top 40 percent for either marketing process or AdWords position, but they’re still performing well in both areas. Eloqua is spending too much money while Constant Contact, iContact, and Zoho are spending too little, making Infu-sionsoft the Goldilocks of the bunch; its spend is just right.

★★★★★

★★★★



Three-star companies are in the top 60 percent for both market-ing process and AdWords position and often rank much higher for one measure. Salesforce.com, IBM and Deluxe − big, multina-tional companies − own Pardot, SilverPop and VerticalResponse, which may explain why they’re spending more than they should.

Two-star companies like MailChimp, SALESManago and Sailthru are hamstrung by a poor marketing process or, like Em-ma and SharpSpring, by a small budget. All two-star companies either spend too much on advertising or invest too much in pro-cess and are very imbalanced.

One-star companies are in the bottom 20 percent of either ad position or marketing process − or both. There could be one-star Gamblers and one-star Investors, but here all of the companies are Losers, underscoring how little impact HubSpot and the oth-ers have.

(Detailed findings about each company researched are available in Company Scorecards & Analysis.)

★★★

★★

★



How to Be a Winner. Companies with a low ranking and few stars aren’t doomed to being shut out of the Winners corner. They need to dissect each phase of their four-part online marketing process and assess what’s below average and start fixing it. Once that’s done, optimization follows. Again and again. The key word here, no pun intended, is process. It’s a marketing process that must be continually reviewed and refined.

Our research revealed a pattern of neglect and poor execution, across all four phases. Disci-plined marketing operations, however, can break the cycle. Here’s how to get started fixing some of the major deficits we observed:

1. Paid Search: You Don’t Have to Write a Big Check, but You Do Need to Write Well. Search advertising jumpstarts the process by getting the attention of valuable prospects that self-qualify by providing their contact information. However, we found that marketing-automation companies generally aren’t the best marketers. Those that are:

Strike a balance between ad spending and marketing process. Gamblers and Investors are wasting money or opportunity, and Losers are wasting both, because their spending and mo-dus operandi are out of whack. (See below.) Companies must constantly measure their ROI and adjust their bids accordingly.

“Our research revealed a pattern of neglect and poor execution, across all four phases. Disciplined marketing operations, however, can break the cycle.”



If a company’s ranking in the first column drops in the second, its process quality exceeds the size of its budget. If the ranking in the right-hand column goes up, budget exceeds quality. Companies with balanced programs would have the same ranking in both columns.

Demonstrating that money isn’t everything, Marketo, the top-ranked company in The Angles Report only spends 13 percent as much as Zoho, the fourth-place company, but Marketo has a great landing page and follow-up with leads. StreamSend, meanwhile, came in last overall

Marketo 1Constant Contact 2

iContact 3Zoho 4

Emma 5Infusionsoft 6

SharpSpring 7Eloqua 8

Leanplum 9Silverpop 10

VerticalResponse 11Pardot 12

Salesfusion 13HubSpot 14

SALESmanago 15MailChimp 16

CallidusCloud 17Sailthru 18eTrigue 19

RedPoint Global 20StreamSend 21

1 Zoho ($711,000)2 iContact3 Constant Contact4 MailChimp5 Infusionsoft6 Eloqua7 StreamSend8 VerticalReponse9 Pardot10 Marketo ($81,600)11 CallidusCloud12 Silverpop13 RedPoint Global14 SALESmanago15 HubSpot16 Emma17 eTrigue18 Leanplum19 Salesfusion20 SharpSpring21 Sailthru ($4,750)

Angles Report Ranking Monthly Search Budget

Leader: Marketo has the best

process and an average budget.

Ouch: StreamSend is spending big to market an awful

process.

Smart: SharpSpring has a good process and

a tight budget.

© 2015. Angles, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

A Big Budget Doesn’t Determine Quality.

If quality equaled budget, companies would have the same ranking in both columns. Marketo and SharpSpring demonstrate that executing a superior process doesn’t require spending the most money.



among the 21 companies researched but is in seventh place when it comes to spending. There was nothing at all good about its online marketing.

Before spending more than $700,000 a month on search ads like Zoho, though, make sure your landing page measures up and your team follows up on leads. Similarly, once your down-stream marketing components (i.e., landing and confirmation pages, follow-up) are as good as Emma’s, don’t let a small budget lower your expectations.

Write good copy. A successful paid-search ad convinces people to click through while setting up a more expansive message on the landing page that follows. (See below.) Yet we found many bad ones.

Good Ad

!Try Email Marketing Free www.verticalresponse.com/ (3.5 star advertiser rating) Trusted by 600k+ for Reliable Email Marketing Since 2001. It's Free!

Vertical Response received four points for 1) use of keyword with a benefit/offer, 2) a call to action, 3) a free sample, and 4) an en-dorsement/ranking.

Bad Ad

!Marketing Automation http://www.pardot.com/Marketing-Automation/ Marketing Automation, Email, Lead Gen & More. Learn More from Pardot.

Pardot received zero points. It features no benefit, no offer, no free sample, no ratings, and it has a weak call to action.

The headline should contain the keyword or a close variation along with a benefit or offer. “Free Automation Guide” is better than “Best Marketing Automation,” because it offers something of value rather than empty chest beating.

The first and second description lines should contain at least one, preferably more, of the fol-lowing: benefit, offer, sample or endorsement. “#1 ranked by Yelp” or “$500 free consulting” is far more compelling than “Watch our video” or “Learn what’s new.” VerticalResponse uses a Google AdWords extension that automatically includes independent reviews, but almost none of the other companies did.

Lastly, the display URL should repeat the offer or benefit: XYZ.com/free-offer, which neither company highlighted above does.



2. Landing Page: Make It Easy for Prospects to Want to Do Business with You. The best-performing companies had landing pages that educate prospects, tying product fea-tures to customer benefits and making it easy for unknown prospects to share their contact data and become known leads. While it’s not possible to fully explain a complex product in one landing page, there should be, at the very least, a simple list of features and benefits as well as some third-party validation (e.g., customer testimonials, reviews or endorsements. (See the Marketo, Infusionsoft and VerticalResponse scorecards and analysis for good examples.)

Embed a form, and limit exit paths. Every additional click lowers response rates, so it’s im-portant to put the form right on the landing page and restrict ways to leave the page without submitting any data. Sixty-one percent of the companies researched have an easily accessible one-page form. (See below.)

A one-page form is best because every subsequent click reduces response.

The form should include as few fields as possible to conduct effective follow-up without scar-ing off a prospect with too daunting an initial request. The average number of fields required by our survey set was six. This seems right given the minimal information an inside sales rep would need for initial follow-up, but a smart marketer would use A/B testing to confirm that.

Data Capture on Landing Pages

Most companies have a one-pageform . . .

. . . but 40% makeprospects slog through 2 or morepages.

N=21© 2015. Angles, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

1 page(61.9%)

2 pages(28.6%)

3 pages

(9.5%)



Deploy technologies to gather data for a better user experience. Marketing-automation compa-nies should practice what they preach: Use tech-nology for better marketing that generates better results. But they don’t. By examining tags, web-site code that indicate third-party applications, we found that most use nothing more than Google Analytics to track unknown web traffic. (See be-low.) Six marketing-automation companies didn’t have any marketing-automation tags. Five com-panies in addition to Marketo, however, used Marketo. (While we’re not evaluating specific marketing-automation products, this seems to be a pretty good indication of what experts think.)

There are dozens of third-party technologies to add to a site. Every site should use applications for A/B testing (e.g., Optimizely), heat mapping (e.g., CrazyEgg), retargeting (e.g., AdRoll, Google), social media (e.g., Facebook), conversion tracking (Google AdWords), security (e.g., Iovation), and analytics (e.g., Google Analytics).

Another technology widely overlooked is customer interaction, applications that enable chat or user feedback. Only three sites cared enough about prospects to have someone available to talk to them without a phone call or a form submission. While we didn’t chat with any of the

Five Marketo Competitors Use Marketo for Marketing Automation.

OptimizelyBizo

MarketoAdRoll

Google AdWordsFacebookCrazyEgg

AppNexusGoogle Remarketing

Google Analytics

A/B Testing 5Advertising 5Automation 6Remarketing 6Advertising 6Social Media 6Heat Mapping 6Advertising 11Remarketing 12Analytics 18

Shockers:

• 71% did not have Google AdWords tags, even though they’re advertising on Google and should be interested in tracking conversions.

• 12 companies don’t have any social tags that would make it easier for prospects to share information with colleagues.


“Marketing-automation companies should practice what they preach: Use technology for better mar-keting that generates better results. But they don’t.”



reps from Emma, Marketo or Sailthru, it was reassuring to know that we could have had we wanted to.

Build confidence about data security. Vendors that collect (and enable others to collect) per-sonal data should demonstrate they value security. Only iContact, however, had a security tag; it was for Iovation.

3. Confirmation Page: Build Engagement, and Demonstrate Capabili-ties. The confirmation page that displays after a prospect submits a form is an integral part of the online marketing process, but it is the most overlooked part. The average score of this third phase was 3.45, well behind search ads, the landing page and lead follow-up. It is, frankly, where companies do amazingly dumb things that jeopardize sales.

Here are some smart things to do:

Keep prospects engaged. Someone interested enough in a product to fill out a form should get more than, “Thanks, we’ll get back to you.” Companies have a prospect’s attention at this point; they should work to keep it. Otherwise, a lead that sought out a vendor slips away, leav-ing the page perhaps to seek out a competitor.

Astonishingly, two companies in our survey set failed to offer any confirmation-page engage-ment, while another six offered just one en-gagement activity. (See below.)

“The confirmation page that displays after a pro-spect submits a form is an integral part of the online marketing process, but it is the most overlooked part.”



Only four companies out of 21 include three or more engagement activities on their confirma-tion pages.

There’s a range of engagement activities for companies to include. (See below.) There should be clearly articulated next steps; a point of contact (with phone and email) for more infor-mation; and most important, more content that relates to what the prospect was searching for (e.g., how-to videos, customer case studies, reviews). Real-time apps for chatting or schedul-ing a call with a sales rep are additional, good ways to build a relationship with a lead.

Most Companies Miss a Big Engagement Opportunityon Their Confirmation Pages.


Marketo and HubSpot made the most effort to engage leads.

SharpSpring, CallidusCloud

Emma, Zoho, Salesfusion, eTrigue, RedPoint Global, VerticalResponse, Constant Contact, iContact, Pardot

Infusionsoft, Leanplum, StreamSend Silverpop, SALESmanago, Eloqua

MailChimp and Sailthru made no effort to engage prospects on their confirmation page.

4Engagement

Activities3

21

0



Most companies in our survey set relied on generic content for engagement rather than tech-nology that fosters a one-to-one relationship or communication.

Start demonstrating marketing-automation best practices. All 21 companies in this report sell software designed to make marketing more targeted, more personal. All required personal information on a sign-up form. Only Zoho bothered to personalize the page with the lead’s name. None, from what we could tell, bothered to personalize the page in any other way such as serving up a customer case study from the same industry as the lead. This is a missed op-portunity to show off a software vendor’s capabilities.

4. Follow-Up: Don’t Neglect Leads. When a prospect does leave a confirmation page, it’s up to the marketing-automation vendor, whose feature set includes email marketing, to follow up with leads. Remarkably, three compa-nies didn’t launch any email campaign. Even more didn’t call. (See below.) Don’t make those mistakes.

Email. Immediately. Before a prospect engages with a competitor, start a sequence of email that builds from one to the next, featuring a different but relevant facet of the company. Per-sonalize it, because you can’t build a relationship with someone you don’t acknowledge and who can’t acknowledge you if sent from a generic “team.” And, make sure it relates back to the initial search ad and landing page that first interested the prospect.

Confirmation Page Elements

N=21© 2015. Angles, Inc. All Rights Reserved.Personalization

Chat

Scheduling App

Product Benefits

Contact Information

Links to More Information

1

3

4

11

12

19

Most marketing-automation companies rely on one-to-many content for engagement.

Surprisingly, few use one-to-one technology.



Unbelievably, three marketing automation companies − eTrigue, RedPoint Global and Stream-Send − used no marketing automation to nurture their prospects.

Get on the phone to dial for dollars. No sale of a complex product is going to close without a conversation. Perhaps afraid that they’ll lose some street cred by using 19th century technolo-gy, our survey set of inbound-marketing companies rarely picked up the phone.

Email and phone calls complement one another, however. The caller should always be person-al, helpful, and polite; acknowledge not just the lead’s sign-up but also the most recent email he got; and, as with email, build on the company story with new pieces of product information, industry insights or company service.

Conclusion There’s nothing that the Gamblers, Investors and even Losers in our research can’t fix if they follow The Angles Report™ methodology. Winners must remain vigilant in continually testing and optimizing what they’re doing to stay ahead of competitors.

If anything, it should be easier for marketing-automation vendors than other companies to im-prove their online marketing process since they have access to at least one tool that can help them, their own.

What they must acknowledge, however, is that no one tool or one big budget is enough to cre-ate effective, integrated online marketing. It takes writers and designers, marketing operations staff and analysts carefully and continually calibrating, testing, monitoring and optimizing 200 or so separate, but related, activities. It takes a process.

Marketing Automation Vendors Rarely Combine Email and Phone Follow-Up.

Phone Calls Email N=21© 2015. Angles, Inc. All Rights Reserved.eTrigue, RedPoint Global, StreamSend

CallidusCloud, MailChimp, VerticalResponse

Eloqua, Salesfusion, Sailthru, Silverpop

Infusionsoft, Pardot

Constant Contact

iContact, Zoho

Emma, HubSpot, Leanplum, Marketo,SALESmanago, SharpSpring

0 5

0 4

3 3

1 2

0 2

0 1

00

Only three companies tried to follow-up with leads via phone.

Ten marketing-automation vendors barely emailed leads. Amazingly, three of them neither phoned nor emailed leads.



Company Scorecards & Analysis Twenty-one marketing-automation companies made up the survey set for the research that was the basis of the preceding industry analysis. A company-specific scorecard with accom-panying analysis for each of those companies follows.

After we assessed each company’s best − and worst – practices, we:

• Calculated a score. The score is the total of points a company received for its perfor-mance against more than 200 of The Angles Report criteria. The scorecard captures an overall score (out of 100) as well as individual scores for key parts of the four-part inte-grated online marketing process assessed in the report.

• Applied a ranking. Based on its score, each company received a ranking. The highest-scoring company received the No. 1 ranking; the company with the lowest score re-ceived a ranking of 21.

• Used an Angles of Impact™ label. To characterize the impact of a company’s online marketing program based on how much it spends and on the quality of its program, we mapped its AdWords position (a proxy for how much a company spends) against the score of its overall program and assigned each company to one of four categories:

1. Winners invest in both advertising and a marketing process that supports its lead-gen activities.

2. Gamblers waste money by spending too much on keywords but don’t invest enough in their marketing processes.

3. Investors spend time and attention refining their marketing processes but spend too little on keywords.

4. Losers don’t spend enough on either keywords or process.

• Awarded stars. Stars rank Winners, Gamblers, Investors and Losers:

Top 20 percent for both marketing process and AdWords position Top 40 percent for either marketing process or AdWords position

Top 60 percent for both marketing process and AdWords position Hamstrung by a poor marketing process or a small budget

Bottom 20 percent for ad position or marketing process, or both



CallidusCloud

The Angles ReportTM Ranking: 17 (out of 21)

Overall Score 26.5 (out of 100) Unique Visitors/Month 50,394 Monthly Search Budget $57,700

Score Possible Ranking Paid Search

Program Scope 3 12 9 Category Keyword 2 15 21 Category Focus 3 9 8 Paid Search Total 8 36 16

Landing Page Technology 3.5 5 3 Page Attributes 4.5 11 15 Form Design 0 3 18 Landing Page Total 8 19 16

Confirmation Page Copy 2.5 5 4 Design 3.5 4 2 Confirmation Page Total 6 9 4

Follow-Up Email 4.5 25.5 16 Phone 0 10.5 4 Follow-Up Total 4.5 36 16

Total 26.5 100 17

Summary CallidusCloud has a highly ranked confirmation page and not much else going for it. The other three components of what should be a well-integrated online marketing program are at the bottom of The Angles Report™ rankings. That gives CallidusCloud an overall ranking of 17 out of 21.

For a company selling marketing-automation software, it seems remarkably unfamiliar with the basics of marketing automation such as unique landing pages with targeted messaging and a well-paced, relevant email communications flow.

Its search program lacks focus; lags behind the average budget of the 21 companies re-searched; and gets 63 percent fewer clicks than its competitors for a 30 percent higher cost per click.



Paid Search CallidusCloud has a mix of top-10 keywords, ranging from variations of “lead gen” and “con-tract management” to “proposal software” and the category keyword, “marketing automation.” More of a focus on the category keyword, with the addition of narrow head terms (e.g., “market-ing automation benefits,” “best marketing auto-mation”), would help make the company more competitive in ad position and clicks.

The CallidusCloud text ad for marketing automa-tion is good but not great. (See below.) It in-cludes a benefit and product demo, but there’s no call to action, use of the category keyword in copy to catch the prospect’s eye, or any third-party validation.

Google AdWords Text Ad

Automate Your Marketing www.calliduscloud.com/MarketingSoftware Build Pipeline Of Qualified Leads. Try CallidusCloud For Free Today!

Repeating the category keyword “Marketing Automation” in the headline and URL extension would make this ad stronger.

CallidusCloud spent more on paid search than three of the other four companies in the Angles of Impact™ Losers’ corner. Yet, it gets the dead-last ad position for that investment. It needs to improve its search program and bolster it with an improved online experience for prospects that make that first click. Otherwise, it should just slash its search budget, if not eliminate it.

Landing Page The CallidusCloud landing page is not a landing page. It’s the company’s home page. (See be-low.) It’s missing the boat − and more important, data.

“The CallidusCloud text ad for marketing automa-tion is good but not great.”



By serving up its home page instead of a unique landing page, CallidusCloud distracts users with too many links, potential exit paths. It should instead direct them to a form to supply their contact information.

To quantify the value of its search program, CallidusCloud should have a unique landing page that 1) aligns with the sales-focused ad just clicked by a prospect and 2) includes an embed-ded form for data capture. A page with copy focused on equipping sales with qualified leads would make a sales or marketing executive more likely to share contact information – and be-come a qualified lead.

Put another way, CallidusCloud wasted money. It paid to have prospects click on its ad and leave without getting anything of value in return, like an email address that would trigger mar-keting-automation activities and help move unknown prospects through the pipeline to known, qualified leads.



Confirmation Page The Angles Report top-five ranking for the CallidusCloud confirmation page is a welcome sur-prise, even though it took too much effort to get to it. (See below.) In the absence of a landing page with a form to submit, we clicked the “Learn About Marketing Automation” box on the home page to get someone to contact us.

The CallidusCloud confirmation page covers most of the bases for a good acknowledgement of a prospect’s interest.

The page features copy that is relevant, although it references sales effectiveness more than marketing automation. It also attempts to engage a prospect with various links highlighting the benefits of CallidusCloud technology and with a chat app for real-time engagement. Lastly, the visual is goofy enough to incent interest. But, there is no personalization, a basic marketing-automation feature.

Follow-Up A personalized email follows, but it took nine minutes to arrive, twice as long as the average of the other companies researched. And, there’s not much there, there. (See below.)

Instead of supplying a link to information about CallidusCloud customers, why not feature them in the copy? Has the company received any industry accolades? Showcase them in the email. This is an opportunity to build engagement − or turn off a prospect. CallidusCloud is doing a better job of the latter with this lackluster copy.



This follow-up is a missed oppor-tunity.

CallidusCloud wastes a pro-spect’s time by not telling him anything new or significant about its product.

It’s repeating what was on it confirmation page.

There’s a lot riding on this email. It’s the only one a prospect received. No ongoing email stream. No hustle. No marketing automation at work. Additionally, there is no phone follow-up. Not one call. Lackluster describes CallidusCloud follow-up in general, not just its email copy in particular.



Constant Contact


Overall Score 54.2 (out of 100) Unique Visitors/Month 12,693,270 Monthly Search Budget $289,000



Landing Page Technology 3.5 5 3 Page Attributes 7 11 11 Form Design 0 3 18 Landing Page Total 10.5 19 12

Confirmation Page Copy 2 5 5 Design 2.5 4 7 Confirmation Page Total 4.5 9 6


Total 54.2 100 2

Summary Constant Contact sells email marketing but relies heavily on paid search to sell it, and the re-sults are excellent. In The Angles Report™ ranking of 21 companies, Constant Contact is se-cond to Marketo, trailing it by 15 points.

It bests Marketo, however, with the scope of its search program: an aggressive monthly spend of $289,000 on 17,635 keywords that generates almost 70,000 clicks at a lower cost per click than all the companies researched.

As the third biggest spender, Constant Contact invests in a generally well-designed process for lead gen to make sure it gets something for its money. It stumbles with its landing page but shines with lead follow-up. As one of far-too-few companies that has reps pick up the phone, it sells prospects on product − and service.



Paid Search For its 142 percent above-average budget on paid search, Constant Contact gets 164 percent more clicks than the average of its competitors, and it’s paying 8 percent less.

The quality of its ad copy, however, is not as strong. (See below.) While it includes third-party validation with a reference to its customer base, there’s no call to action, product benefit, demo or new-customer offer.


Email Marketing Automation www.constantcontact.com/Email-Marketing (3.7 star advertiser rating) Over 600,000 Small Businesses and Nonprofits Trust Constant Contact®

One positive about the Constant Contact ad is the inclusion of the category keyword “marketing au-tomation” in the title. It helps pro-spects find what they’re looking for.

The Constant Contact search program loses points because of its focus on email marketing. While email is its traditional base, it needs to evaluate the ROI of keywords like “newsletters” and “business listings” versus potentially more lucrative words where it’s outbid.

Landing Page Constant Contact dropped from fourth in the search category to 12th for its landing page. (See below.) While the copy reads well and the visuals are on brand, the page misses the purpose of a landing page: Turn unknown prospects into known leads.

To achieve that goal, Constant Contact should have a short form front and center, with no more than five fields embedded on this one page − not spread over two pages. That misstep, combined with far too many links on the page, make it too easy for a prospect lose focus and not complete the form.



Constant Contact could improve this landing page by showcasing some of the big-name 600,000 customers it mentioned in its search ad. That validation helps better align the page with the ad for greater impact and for building prospect confidence.

The Constant Contact landing page performs better with what’s not prospect facing: the mar-keting technologies behind it. In addition to its own application, Constant Contact has de-ployed eight apps for advertising, analytics, optimization and heat mapping. The business intel-ligence generated helps Constant Contact continually refine and optimize its online marketing program.

Confirmation Page Once a prospect gets to it, three pages down, the Constant Contact confirmation page is dis-appointing. (See below.) There’s no personalization. No engaging visuals. No reinforcement of the benefits of the Constant Contact product. In other words, no strong effort to build en-gagement, the purpose of the page.



For those leads second-guessing whether it’s worth starting the trial now, or ever, Constant Contact should make this page more engaging, less like a tool and more like an ad. After all, Constant Contact hasn’t yet closed the sale.

For example, instead of instructing the prospect to click “Help & Tips” for assistance, why not have a live chat agent pop up with a personalized welcome and offer to help?

Follow-Up Constant Contact handles following up with leads exceedingly well. It does two things other companies don’t. First, it has an email-nurturing stream for leads that don’t validate an email address after completing the landing-page form. (See below.)



This nurturing email, one of two received in four days, features personalization, the company’s service-oriented approach and additional con-tent.

This email is a good attempt at engaging a lead. It highlights a list of activities that Constant Contact can help with in addition to email, like social-media promotions and events. It helps build the Constant Contact story.

The second follow-up approach that distinguishes Constant Contact is its phone follow-up. It not only captures a prospect’s number, it uses it. There were three voice mail messages, se-quenced around and complementing the nurturing email. (See below.)



Hi Eve, this is Jason calling from Constant Contact. We haven't had a chance to connect yet, but I did wanna make sure that we talked early in your trial. I've helped a lot of other marketing consultant to utilize Constant Contact successfully, not only for their own mar-keting purposes, but for their clients as well. Really, it starts with creating that great-looking email template. Gimme a call. Maybe I can save you some time and get a template put together here based upon your individual needs to that help you achieve success with this send. That's one of the great things about Constant Contact. We're here support you with everything that we can. That's really how we differentiate ourselves from some of the competitors. Gimme a call back. My direct line's xxxxxxxxxxx. Again xxxxxxxxxxx.

Each voice mail was different from the others, but all of them were personalized, targeted the prospect’s job title and conveyed a helpful sincerity, not a pushy sales schtick.

Constant Contact demonstrates very well how inbound and outbound marketing work togeth-er.



Eloqua






Confirmation Page Copy 1 5 8 Design 2 4 9 Confirmation Page Total 3 9 8


Total 41.1 100 9

Summary Eloqua is an Angles of Impact™ Winner. It struck a good, albeit not great, balance between what it’s invested in its search budget and in the process it’s developed for following up with leads. That earned Eloqua The Angles Report™ ranking of nine.

What’s noteworthy about Eloqua online marketing is that nothing is noteworthy. Its landing and confirmation pages are okay, and its search program is slightly better than okay. The worst part of the Eloqua online marketing process is its follow-up with leads. Its email follow-up is poor, and its phone follow-up is non-existent.

Eloqua needs to tighten its focus on marketing automation. Its keyword selection is too diffuse, and it fails to demonstrate any marketing-automation capabilities with its technology-light land-ing page and anemic email program.



Paid Search While Eloqua spent 6 percent more on search than the average of the 21 companies re-searched, it got 13 percent fewer clicks at a 22 percent higher cost per click. A more disci-plined category focus in its keyword selection would help Eloqua get more for its money.

Only two of its top-10 keywords include the cate-gory keyword “marketing automation.” The rest are all over the map: “mobile marketing,” “digital mar-keting,” “mobile device management,” “marketing strategies” and other broad terms. More narrow head terms like “marketing automation strategies” or “marketing automation software” would make Eloqua more competitive.

The quality of its ad for marketing automation is good. (See below.) The copy references the keyword twice, aligning with the prospect’s initial search.


. Marketing Automation Tips www.eloqua.com/oraclemarketingcloud Take the Guesswork Out of Marketing Automation. Access the Free Guide!

In an effort to instill confidence, the Eloqua ad copy uses the URL exten-sion to reference its parent copy, Or-acle.

It also includes an offer of a free guide, a product benefit and a call to action − a good package of information to trigger a click.

Landing Page The copy on the Eloqua landing page that follows aligns well with the category keyword. (See below.) “Marketing automation” is in the headline, sub head and body copy and on the image of the content download. A prospect searching on “marketing automation” knows he’s arrived at the right place.

“A more disciplined cate-gory focus in its keyword selection would help Elo-qua get more for its mon-ey.”



The Eloqua landing page focuses on “marketing automation” and on getting a prospect to share his contact data. The copy makes the content sound valuable, and the only way to get it is to fill out the form. There are few other exit paths from the page.

Missing from the page, however, is any third-party validation about the Eloqua product such as customer testimonials or trust marks to help build confidence. The embedded form is easy to access and has only four fields. However, the field for a first name is missing, and the country field should instead capture a phone number to help with lead follow-up.

Also missing in action are many apps that could help Eloqua improve the user experience and the success of its online marketing program. It uses AppNexus and Bizo for advertising and its own software for marketing automation, but it’s missing many analytics, optimization, heat-mapping and engagement applications that would yield valuable business intelligence.



Confirmation Page If you think the Eloqua confirmation page looks like its landing page, you’re right. And that’s a problem. (See below.) Eloqua just swaps the form for another image of the report that’s already on the page and a download button. For starters, there should be a separate page that thanks the prospect by name.

The Eloqua landing-page-turned-confirmation-page looks bad and does a bad job advancing the Eloqua story.

The confirmation page should feature some of the validation elements missing from its landing page, contact information or even a scheduling app for a prospect interested in setting up a sales call. By repeating the same page, Eloqua is missing an opportunity to make its case with a prospect.



Follow-Up The Eloqua follow-up was lackluster. Just two email (not personalized), with general marketing content. (See below.) This is not a good way to demonstrate Eloqua marketing-automation ex-pertise; to highlight product benefits; or to make a prospect feel like he’ll get any personal at-tention from a company as large as Oracle.

By not focusing fol-low-up email on marketing automa-tion, Eloqua breaks the momentum it generated by align-ing the category keyword with copy in its ad and on its landing/ confirmation page.

Eloqua was more interested in a prospect’s location than a phone number, so there was no additional follow-up. Another missed opportunity and another sign, perhaps, that it’s part of a company too big to care about individual outreach to self-qualifying prospects.



Emma








Total 48.9 100 5

Summary At No. 5, Emma is The Angles Report™ highest-ranked small advertiser. With a monthly search budget of less than $20,000, Emma ties with Marketo and Leanplum for the best category fo-cus and with seven other competitors for the best form design.

Out of the four phases of its online marketing program, Emma performed best with its landing page for a third-place finish. Its lowest rankings were for its paid search program and its con-firmation page; each is in eighth place.

Overall Emma has invested in a great program, but it hasn't spent enough money to be com-petitive. To have more impact, Emma needs to increase its budget.



Paid Search Emma spent 85 percent less than the average of the 21 companies researched, $119,228. For its almost $20,000 spend, Emma got 91 percent fewer clicks and paid more for them too. Its cost per click was $7.28 compared to the group average, $4.52.

For the category keyword “marketing automation,” Emma scored a dismal 18th in its most re-cent ad position. Among its top-10 keywords, the category keyword appears only twice. The rest were variations of “email.”


Email Marketing Automation http://myemma.com/email-marketing-automation Automate Your Email Marketing With Autoresponders & Personalization

There’s nothing redeeming about the copy in this Emma ad. No call to action. No special offer. No third-party endorsement. No customer benefits. Just a couple of product features.

With 872 paid keywords, Emma has less than one-tenth the average number of The Angles Report™ companies. This is another reason why Emma is an Angles of Impact™ Investor. If it had more skin in the game, with a bigger budget and better focus on “marketing automation,” it would better balance its search program with the rest of its online marketing activities.

Landing Page The best part of the Emma landing page was its embedded five-field form, but it took too much scrolling to get to it. The page design was on brand, and the copy was replete with relevant details, but there was too much of it. (See below.) The danger: Prospects click away and leave without submitting their data.



The landing-page copy was strong, but the headline could be better. It doesn’t align with the email-centric search ad that led to the page.

It’s too bad that Emma hasn’t included an optimization application in the mix of eight market-ing apps it’s deployed, including Marketo. Using Optimizely, for example, in conjunction with the CrazyEgg heat-mapping software it already uses, would be helpful to determine the best placement for that all-important form. Data capture, after all, is the purpose of a landing page.

Confirmation Page The Emma confirmation page is a mixed bag of the good and the bad. (See below.)

The good thing about the page is that it’s full of opportunities for a newly identified lead to en-gage with the company. The action button with the unique “Explore content” label says it all − and the striking image grid with content behind each box delivers on that call to engage.

“The Emma confirmation page is a mixed bag of the good and the bad.”



Emma provides leads with reasons to linger: engaging images that serve as teasers for lots of content.

The page, however, falls flat with poor copy. There’s nothing that builds a story about why a prospective customer should pay attention about − and perhaps be excited about − Emma. Like its AdWords copy, it lacks any information about product benefits, customer successes, social proof − anything that helps merchandise the company.

All a lead gets is an acknowledgement that Emma received his data submission, and email’s on the way. Perhaps it will be personalized. This page wasn’t. Another misstep.

Follow-Up Lead follow-up from Emma consisted of five email sent over six days. Curiously, three were personalized (in the subject line as well as the email copy); two weren’t. Not a good display of email best practices from a company that portrays itself as a leader in email marketing.

All the email, however, did help create a rich profile of what Emma can do for customers. One message built on another. Even the email from a sales rep read well. (See below.) This is note-



worthy since most companies researched send acceptable batch email in branded templates with marketing-written copy but then undermine it with embarrassingly bad copy cobbled to-gether by individual sales reps. All the Emma email copy was acceptable.

This email was casual in tone and had too many exclamation points. It was, however, better than most copy that sales reps from other com-panies send.

Given the overall quality of Emma email, it’s disappointing that there was no phone follow-up. With the pleasant tone its sales rep communicated in email, he’d probably be great on the phone too and able to spark callbacks and conversation. This is a missed opportunity to marry outbound and inbound marketing for more powerful impact.



eTrigue


Overall Score 21 (out of 100) Unique Visitors/Month 20,006 Monthly Search Budget $17,900





Follow-Up Email 0 25.5 19 Phone 0 10.5 4 Follow-Up Total 0 36 19

Total 21 100 19

Summary eTrigue is one of five companies in the Angles of Impact™ Losers corner. It’s in a three-way tie for last place when it comes to following up with leads. It’s in the bottom three with a poor con-firmation page. And, it’s one of the three worst small advertisers overall.

Its best ranking is for the eTrigue landing page, which is in the middle of the pack of 21 com-panies researched. It also gets a little credit for using the category keyword “marketing auto-mation,” albeit occasionally.

The eTrigue program needs a dramatic overhaul to be at all competitive. It’s far below the av-erage of the companies examined; it has 99 percent fewer unique monthly visitors, an 85 per-cent lower budget and 92 percent fewer clicks − for an 85 percent higher cost per click.



Paid Search Two of the top-ten keywords used by eTrigue include “marketing automation.” Only two. To better align with its home-page promise of “Marketing Automation Delivered,” to catch the at-tention of prospects looking for marketing-automation apps and to catch up with the competi-tion, it should use marketing automation more and variants of “lead gen” less.

The quality of its marketing-automation ad is below average. While it does offer some content and repeat the keyword, making it easy on the prospect to find what he’s looking for, there’s no call to action, third-party validation or differentiating benefit. (See below.)


!Easy!Marketing!Automation!www.etrigue.com/!!5!marketing!automation!campaigns!you!can't!live!without.!Quick!guide!

The copy can use a rewrite. The refer-ence to its quick guide at the end seems like an afterthought, not the main attrac-tion.

The Angles Report™ ranking for the eTrigue search program is 16 out of 21. Its most recently observed ad position was 21, officially no-man’s land in search display − and for that it’s pay-ing about $3.00 more per click than the average of the companies surveyed.

Landing Page Showing a little more promise is the eTrigue landing page. It could be so good. But it isn’t. It’s dangling what seems like a helpful piece of content, a great quid pro quo for prospect data that will turn an unknown prospect into a known lead. (See below.)

Where’s the embedded form to make it easy for the prospect to part with his contact info? It’s one click away to a lightbox and oddly eTrigue requires the prospect’s country.



One good part of the eTrigue landing page: It keeps the prospect focused on downloading the special content offered. Either click the view-the-guide button, or leave.

Other than its own application and Google Analytics, eTrigue has embedded only two advertis-ing apps to learn more about how to better serve its prospects. Given it’s ranking of 19 out of 21 companies, eTrigue has plenty to learn and would benefit from additional apps supplying it with more business intelligence. Optimization, heat-mapping and analytics apps would be a good place to start.

Confirmation Page If you liked the eTrigue landing page, you’ll love its confirmation page. It’s the same page.

Inexplicably, eTrigue essentially omits the important third stage of an integrated online market-ing program: a confirmation page that enables a company to demonstrate its use of marketing automation and build engagement with a known lead.



Acknowledge the lead’s data submission with a personalized thank you. Offer an on-demand product demo. Include a scheduling app to encourage him to set up a sales call. There are many good choices. Serving up a landing page for a second time is not one of them.

Follow-Up eTrigue does not seem to be serious about online marketing.

If it were, it would follow up with prospects. It would be quantifying the value of relatively low-cost, pay-for-performance, pay-for-click campaigns. It would do that by converting leads to customers with email campaigns, peppered with phone calls, that utilize the data captured online.

Marketing automation may be easy, as the eTrigue ad suggests. But it’s not magic. Get serious about executing an integrated online program, or don’t bother at all.

“eTrigue does not seem to be serious about online marketing.”



HubSpot


Overall Score 34 (out of 100) Unique Visitors/Month 2,913,835 Monthly Search Budget $18,700



Landing Page Technology 4 5 1 Page Attributes 5.5 11 14 Form Design 1 3 9 Landing Page Total 10.5 19 12


Follow-Up Email 12 25.5 7 Phone 0 10.5 4 Follow-Up Total 12 25.5 7

Total 34 100 14

Summary The Angles Report™ findings about the HubSpot online marketing program are surprising. Considered the industry darling that coined the term inbound marketing, HubSpot is in the An-gles of Impact™ Losers corner. It’s in next-to-last place for paid search and is one of the worst small advertisers.

It spent 84 percent less than the average of the 21 companies researched and got 81 percent fewer clicks for a below-average ad position: 22. To be at all competitive with top-ranked Mar-keto, HubSpot must refocus its paid-search program, reallocate its budget, and include varia-tions of the category keyword “marketing automation.”

HubSpot performs better with its confirmation page and ties for first place with Marketo and VerticalResponse for a landing page with a striking use of technology.



Paid Search HubSpot has an odd mix of top-10 keywords among its 5,111 paid keywords. While it gets off to a good start with category keyword “marketing automation” in the No. 1 spot, HubSpot quickly loses focus. “Business list,” “lead gen-erator,” “email software,” and variations of “marketing” follow – including, for some reason, “real estate marketing.”

Its diffuse focus and migration away from the category keyword is evident in its ad copy. (See below.) There’s no mention of marketing automation. For a prospect scanning a column of ads for what he searched for − marketing automation − that’s a problem. It also has a negative im-pact on the Google algorithm that positions the ad in that column.


HubSpot for Enterprise www.hubspot.com/ Get a Free Demo of HubSpot's Marketing Software Today.

While the ad copy includes a call to action and a free demo, it fails to highlight any product benefit or third-party validation.

For cost per click, HubSpot is paying 16 percent less than average overall and 46 percent less than average for the category keyword. But, it’s throwing good money after poor ad positions for ads that don’t align with keyword searches. HubSpot needs to reboot its paid-search pro-gram. ASAP.

Landing Page The HubSpot landing page is a mixed bag of the very good and the mediocre. (See below.) The copy aligns with the ad that led to it, there are no distracting exit pages, and the short, embed-ded form is easy to access and fill out. (It also has a required field for a phone number, which far too few companies do.)

“HubSpot needs to re-boot its paid-search pro-gram. ASAP.”



The HubSpot landing page reflects the company brand and has a relevant visual, but the size of some of the font makes reading the copy difficult.

The page, however, lacks any validation components. In a crowded industry, customer names or testimonials and trust marks (e.g., for performance, security) help separate the winners from the also-rans.

What’s noteworthy about the HubSpot landing page is the technology embedded in it. In addi-tion to its own application, HubSpot uses four advertising apps, four for analytics and others for A/B and multivariate testing. It’s practicing what it preaches about getting smarter about its prospects to convert them to known leads and ultimately, customers.



Confirmation Page It’s curious then that the HubSpot confirmation page isn’t personalized. (See below.) The pro-spect, after all, just submitted his name.

HubSpot could have made this very good confirmation page even better by aligning the copy with its ad and landing page. All it would take is adding a reference to marketing software.

The page otherwise is solid, with relevant copy, more HubSpot content for engagement, and a phone number for prospects to use to contact sales. It even offers a scheduling app and online chat for additional communications options.



Follow-Up HubSpot follow-up with leads earned an eighth-place finish. On the plus side, it had a series of email with lots of content, a HubSpot hallmark. Some of it had engaging copy and visuals, like its how-to-spy-on-your-competitors email. Most of it, however, had no personalization and fea-tured generic content, the latest HubSpot blog updates. (See below.)

HubSpot made an otherwise plain-vanilla email feel topical by leading with the call-out box highlighting its new certi-fication program.

HubSpot failed miserably when it came to following up with a prospect by phone. Although it’s one of a handful of companies to require a phone number on its landing-page form − an im-portant acknowledgment that inbound and outbound marketing complement each other −HubSpot did nothing with that data. A missed opportunity that helped put it in the Losers cor-ner.



iContact








Total 52.2 100 3

Summary The iContact online marketing program places it in the Angles of Impact™ Winners corner. Among the 21 companies researched, it earned The Angles Report™ third-place ranking. And, it tied for first with Constant Contact and Zoho for the scope of its paid-search program.

The strength of the iContact search program overall helped compensate for a very bad confir-mation page and a poor effort capturing prospect data.

As the second biggest spender in the group, iContact should optimize its $300,000 monthly search spend and pay more attention to following up with the prospects search generates to ensure that it stays so far ahead of its competition.



Paid Search iContact spent almost 150 percent more than the average of all 21 companies. For that hefty investment, iContact got more than 76,000 clicks, 189 percent more than the average, and it paid a 14 percent lower cost per click.

The primary iContact search advertising focus is email marketing. (See below.) Its list of top-10 keywords (out of almost 20,000) contains five variations of “email” and a seemingly random mix of other keywords like “advertising agency” and “CRM tools.” It does not, however, include the category keyword “marketing automa-tion.”


iContact Email Marketing www.icontact.com/ Create a Message that Looks & Feels Like Your Business. Sign Up Free!

The iContact ad includes a call to action and complimentary product trial. It fails, however, to highlight any product benefit.

To be competitive with top-ranked Marketo, iContact should change its keyword mix and start focusing on marketing automation, showcasing its newer products.

Landing Page The iContact landing page gets a fifth-place ranking. The copy is tight and engaging, highlight-ing customer benefits and service. (See below.) The page also features relevant visuals and has a short form for data submission, even though it’s not as prominent as it should be.

“To be competitive with top-ranked Marketo, iContact should change its keyword mix and start focusing on marketing automa-tion.”



The iContact landing page has too many links that distract a prospect from the purpose of the page: submitting an email address. Its data-submission form, however, is buried at the bottom of this page or hiding behind a get-started button.

iContact uses a progressive form that starts on the landing page and continues on a second page. The theory is that a request for a little data upfront increases the likelihood of more in-formation being shared later. Progressive forms should always be tested, though. While iCon-tact does have analytics, advertising, retargeting, and security apps embedded to gather data to optimize its program and improve the user experience, it does not have any A/B-testing or heat-mapping app in place.

Confirmation Page iContact has a losing confirmation page. That’s because there is none. There’s a lightbox in-stead that in too-tiny font tells the prospect how to activate his free trial. (See below.)

A confirmation page serves a valuable function, multiple functions, in fact. It should thank the prospect; display basic personalization to warm up that thank you; advance the company story and customer benefits; and offer different modes of engagement − in addition to a trial.



Substituting a lightbox for a confirmation page is a missed opportunity for iContact. To maxim-ize its $300,000 monthly search ad spend, it should make sure its downstream processes take advantage of every prospect touch point.

A better approach to getting a prospect to validate an email address? A page that offers two distinct paths: trial now, trial later.

Follow-Up iContact follow-up with leads consists of three email (in addition to the one for email validation) sent during one week. All are personalized, and the first two are in iContact-branded tem-plates. So far, so good.

The third and last email, though, illustrates a great idea, poorly executed. (See below.) The iContact look and feel has disappeared, not what a prospect wants for his brand. It’s a plain vanilla, (probably) CRM-generated email that’s poorly written. But, it contained a special intro-ductory offer; too few companies offer prospects a carrot to move them through the funnel. iContact should have marketing write the copy and send this email in a batch, branded email blast. Do not leave this to the sales reps.



The first line of this plain-vanilla sales email is an almost indecipherable, run-on sentence. The company should make a better − and clearer −�impression with prospects.

A special promotion also merits phone follow-up, yet iContact did none. Hundreds of thou-sands of dollars spent on search only goes so far. It can efficiently and cost-effectively get un-known prospects to self-qualify as known leads, but only solid follow-up will ensure they also turn into customers.



Infusionsoft





Landing Page Technology 3 5 8 Page Attributes 8.5 11 3 Form Design 2 3 1 Landing Page Total 13.5 19 3



Total 48.5 100 6

Summary Infusionsoft is an Angles of Impact™ Winner due to its highly ranked landing page and the even better ranked scope of its paid-search program. Infusionsoft ties with Constant Contact and Zoho for the No. 1 spot.

Spending almost $190,000 monthly on more than 15,000 keywords that trigger 100 different landing pages, Infusionsoft clearly has skin in the game. It’s buying the wrong keywords, though, and its follow-up on leads is very weak. A successful search program requires more than a hefty ad spend.

To become a more competitive force in marketing automation, Infusionsoft should refine its keyword buys and use marketing technologies more effectively, especially when it comes to email follow-up.



Paid Search Infusionsoft is wasting money on keywords that don’t align with its market positioning or its ad copy. (See below.) Its top-10 keyword buys generally include a variation of “CRM” with a sprinkling of “email market-ing,” “ecommerce” − and very curiously, “weight loss surgery.” What’s missing? Marketing automation.

With no category focus, Infusionsoft pays $12.30 cost per click for an ad position that displays well below the fold. Money not well spent.


Automate Your Marketing www.infusionsoft.com/AutomateMarketing More Success w/ Less of Your Time. View a Demo of our Automated System

This ad does not align with the key-word “marketing automation.” It’s also poorly written, lacks punctuation and doesn’t spell out all words.

In the plus column, Infusionsoft A/B tests multiple ads with various unique landing pages.

Landing Page Its landing pages overall score well but fall flat in a few key areas. Most important, there’s no responsive design. Given the high rate of mobile usage, this is a sure-fire way to create a poor user experience and turn away potential leads. At least, however, the form is designed well for quick and easy (desktop) data capture; it’s above the fold and has just four required fields. (See below.)

“Infusionsoft is wasting mon-ey on keywords that don’t align with its market position-ing or its ad copy.”



Infusionsoft landing pages should be responsively designed to accommodate mobile users. That would do more to attract leads via smartphones and tablets than including an image of a tablet in the upper-right corner.

Infusionsoft wisely includes social proof − quotes from satisfied customers − but they’re not visible until midway down the very long landing page. There are no trust marks at all, no third-party security or performance ratings. This is a missed opportunity to build confidence among prospects.

Also missing are optimization and customer interaction technologies like an A/B testing appli-cation for better landing pages or a chat app to start a one-to-one conversation with a pro-spect. They would enable Infusionsoft to enhance the online experience of its prospects. It’s already using software from The Angles Report™ top-ranked vendor, Marketo, as well as heat-mapping, advertising and analytics applications. Adding a couple more apps would enrich its data set.



Confirmation Page Having the data and putting it to use are two different things. Infusionsoft doesn’t use the in-formation it has about a lead on its confirmation page: his first name. (See below.) Personaliza-tion helps make a page more engaging and illustrates a marketing-automation vendor’s use of, yes, marketing automation. The Infusionsoft confirmation page should be personalized.

Infusionsoft serves up a generic confirmation page that doesn’t even include the obligatory “thank you,” never mind any personalization.

The Infusionsoft confirmation page also misses an opportunity to further educate a prospect about its benefits. The headline and copy immediately following it could apply to any business owner and could come from any vendor. It’s copy that reads well but says nothing with which to engage a prospect.

There are different links for a prospect to explore, but how inspired will he be to bother scroll-ing (and scrolling) to get to them?



Follow-Up Infusionsoft gets an A for effort when it comes to following up with leads. It does email and phone outreach, something many companies do not do. But it does so very poorly and it’s squandering its leads.

The first email a prospect receives states, “we know a thing or two about sales and marketing automation. You might suspect this is an auto-generated email… (sic) well, it is.” Well, then why does it start with a generic “Hi there” instead of the first name that the prospect supplied?

As embarrassingly bad as this first email is, the second is worse. (See below.) The subject line just says, “Infusionsoft,” a missed mes-saging opportunity. The copy begins with a big-brotherish, “It looks like you were looking into Infusionsoft.” If indeed you “know a thing or two about sales and marketing automation,” you also may know − or should know − that people generally don’t care to be told someone’s re-viewing data about his online activity. A better intro, “I’m following up on your interest in scheduling a demo.”

But wait. There’s more. The sales rep asks a series of questions that she should research her-self in order to craft a better, more effective follow-up email. (Message to “lead development expert”: Earn your commission, and answer at least four of those questions yourself.) Oh, and proofread your email; delete that line above your contact info, a leftover from another draft.

“It does email and phone out-reach, something many compa-nies do not do. But it does so poorly. Very poorly.”



Infusionsoft needs sales reps that can write an email.

Now for the one Infusionsoft follow-up phone call, which is one more than most companies researched made. The voice mail from the sales rep says she called “to reach out” and get her questions answered. Again with her questions. What about instead teasing the benefit of an Infusionsoft demo to get the prospect to schedule one?

Infusionsoft is dropping the ball. Its well-funded search program, with an AdWords budget 58 percent higher than the average of the 21 companies surveyed, is not enough for a successful initiative. Well-crafted and perfectly executed follow-up is a requirement that Infusionsoft should not leave to entry-level inside sales reps to improvise.



Leanplum


Overall Score 42 (out of 100) Unique Visitors/Month n/a Monthly Search Budget $14,400






Total 42 100 9

Summary

With a search budget almost 90 percent less than the average budget of the 21 companies re-searched, Leanplum is one of the best small advertisers for marketing automation. The Angles Report™ top-10 ranking of Leanplum reflects the company’s disciplined spending; it ties with top-ranked Marketo and with Emma for category focus.

In addition to its very good paid-search program, Leanplum has a solid confirmation page and does good job following up with leads. The one piece of its four-part online marketing process that fails is its landing page, which is in next-to-last place.

Fixing it and continually optimizing the rest of its online marketing process would move Leanplum into the Angles of Impact™ Winners corner. It would get more ROI from its program and be able to increase its budget to become even more competitive with Marketo and Emma.



Paid Search The small $14,400 Leanplum budget yielded 2,520 clicks in one month while the average num-ber received by all the companies researched was 26,375. Leansplum is doing the best it can with what it has to spend, however. In addition to having only a fraction of what other compa-nies are spending, Leanplum is working with less than 850 paid keywords, one-tenth the av-erage.

Staying focused on marketing automation helps Leanplum get the most for its money. Every one of its top-10 keywords includes “marketing automation,” and its ads reflect that focus. (See below.)


App Marketing Automation https://www.leanplum.com Send highly targeted and relevant in-app and push notifications.

Aligning keywords with ad copy helps prospects easily find what they’re looking for and also contributes to Leanplum get-ting a higher ad position.

Leanplum nonetheless should optimize the quality of its ad copy. It needs a call to action, a special offer or product demo, and some third-party endorsement or social proof to build trust – and its brand.

Landing Page The Leanplum laser-like focus on marketing automation disappears on its landing page. (See below.) It introduces a new topic: mobile app optimization. For maximum results, an integrated online marketing program must rigorously align what a prospect is searching for with ad copy, the landing page displayed by clicking on the ad, the confirmation page and follow-up with leads.

“Staying focused on mar-keting automation helps Leanplum get the most for its money.”



The Leanplum landing page, while lacking category focus, does score well for having a short, embedded form, a customer logo soup for social proof, and no distracting exit paths away from the main attraction: the form it wants prospects to submit.

Leanplum should have served up a page with copy and content about marketing automation. Its page would be more effective if it incorporated its “3 Lean Recipes” about marketing auto-mation instead of mobile app optimization and a visual with the same touch of humor as the one on the cover of the mobile app content.

The page also would be more powerful if Leanplum used more technology to learn about its prospects and create a better user experience that leads to better conversion rates. Leanplum has embedded Google Analytics for aggregate site data and Marketo for marketing automa-tion.



Confirmation Page The Leanplum confirmation page is workmanlike. (See below.) There’s no personalization, no additional content with which to engage the prospects, no way to request a demo. No nothing − except a missed opportunity.

While Leanplum has the attention of a prospect, it should take advantage of it by showcasing more content, like an on-demand demo or customer testimonials.

Leanplum doesn’t even offer a prospect a way to get in touch with sales. Working an email address and phone number into the copy would help. That, plus a real-time chat app, would be even better.



Follow-Up The Leanplum email follow-up is very good, earning it a second-place ranking. The first of five email arrives within one minute. It’s personalized, with well-written, relevant copy and a tight subject line. Each subsequent email helps build the Leanplum story. The fourth one, for exam-ple, focuses on a Leanplum benefit: how it can help reduce shopping cart abandonment. (See below.)

The fourth in a series of five Leanplum email focuses on a cus-tomer problem and includes a plug for its cus-tomer service. All the email arrive within two weeks.

Since Leanplum didn’t require a phone number in its landing-page form, there was no phone follow-up to complement its email effort. A well-timed call in the communications flow, even if it results in a voice mail, would help support the company’s online efforts with a personalized pitch for a callback. When it gets an A/B testing app, Leanplum should serve up an alternate form with an optional field for a phone number.



MailChimp








Total 29.5 100 16

Summary There’s a good reason MailChimp is in the Angles of Impact™ Gamblers corner. Its one of the biggest spenders of the 21 companies researched and has one of the worst online marketing programs.

Only three other companies spent more on search ads than MailChimp for the month re-searched: $274,000, 130 percent more than the average. For that money, MailChimp ads for the category keyword “marketing automation” should display higher than the 14th position. A paid-search program with more focus would help.

Paying more attention to its confirmation page and follow-up with leads would also help. Suc-cessful online marketing requires more than a big budget. It needs a well-designed process to ensure the money spent, generates a return.



Paid Search The MailChimp search program has a huge budget and includes 26,135 keywords, while the average for the companies researched is just under 9,000. At MailChimp, it seems like size matters. But it doesn’t. Focus matters, and MailChimp needs it.

It has, for example, a diffuse list of top-10 keywords that includes “business Internet,” “email marketing,” “direct mail” and “adver-tising agency.” Category keyword “market-ing automation” isn’t one of them, but it should be if MailChimp wants to be compet-itive with other well-known companies sell-ing the same tool set and, in some cases, more functionality. Marketing automation however does show up in MailChimp ad copy associated with at least one of its more than 26,000 keywords. (See below.) The ad would be stronger with marketing automation in the title and with a reference to a MailChimp benefit, offer, demo or call to ac-tion.


MailChimp www.mailchimp.com/automation (4.5 star rating for mailchimp.com) Marketing automation for everyone. All in one app.

Spending $274,000/month for ads that don’t read well is a waste. What does “All in one app” mean?

With more of a category focus, MailChimp should reallocate and even cut its search budget, redirecting monies to the overall design and implementation of its online marketing program. Simply outspending competitors won’t work. Spending less money more wisely is better than just spending.

Landing Page The MailChimp landing page is middling, at best. While the copy aligns with the category key-word to hold the interest of the prospect that began searching for “marketing automation,” the page has too many distracting exit paths. (See below.)

For starters, MailChimp should eliminate the navigation bar and embed a form for data cap-ture. The purpose of a landing page, after all, is to turn an unknown prospect into a known lead. This landing page doesn’t do that. And, again, in return for spending $274,000, getting some data in return is a reasonable expectation.

“At MailChimp, it seems like size matters. But it doesn’t. Focus matters, and Mail-Chimp needs it.”



The orange button in the upper right is not a substitute for an embedded form, where pro-spects interested in more information can share their contact data. A call to sign up could be a turnoff.

Additionally, MailChimp should consider embedding in its landing pages more than its own app and Google Analytics. With so much copy and so many options on a landing page that scrolls forever, heat-mapping and A/B testing apps like CrazyEgg or Optimizely, respectively, would help MailChimp optimize the prospect experience − and its online marketing ROI.

Confirmation Page The confirmation page that MailChimp displays after a prospect signs up for its free offer is a missed opportunity. (See below.) For the prospect that’s got a question or wants to speak with a sales rep, opening an account is overkill.



While the MailChimp effort to get a prospect to engage with its product ASAP is commenda-ble, it shouldn’t be the only engagement effort. The prospect gathering basic information for a vendor bake-off, for example, may not want to jump through the hoops at this point to learn ins and outs of the app. Give him contact information for sales, or supply live chat. Don’t turn him away.

Getting a prospect engaged is good. But giving him more than one option is better. This con-firmation page misses the mark, because it doesn’t give a prospect with a question any way to contact a MailChimp representative.

Another flaw with the MailChimp do-it-our-way-or-leave approach: It’s a missed opportunity to launch a nurturing campaign for ear-ly-stage prospects, the prospects that need some educating, some coaxing. MailChimp has their email and the marketing-automation tech-nology, but it doesn’t use any of it. It’s essentially throwing away the da-ta it paid to get with its well-funded mega search program.

Follow-Up The one activation email received, like the confirmation page, offers no helpful information for the fence-sitting prospect. No contact info. No social proof. No product benefits. Nothing.

“The confirmation page that Mail-Chimp displays after a prospect signs up for its free offer is a missed opportunity.”



MailChimp at least personalized the one email received, demonstrating a product feature.

Since MailChimp neither requested nor required a phone number, there were no follow-up calls. Getting more data for lead follow-up seems like a small price to pay − especially com-pared with a $274,000 monthly ad spend.



Marketo The Angles ReportTM Ranking: 1 (out of 21)




Landing Page Technology 4 5 1 Page Attributes 9 11 2 Form Design 2 3 1 Landing Page Total 15 19 1



Total 69.2 100 1

Summary Marketo is the clear Angles of Impact™ top-ranked Winner. It’s first for paid search, landing page and lead follow-up and is a not-so-shabby second for its confirmation page.

The Marketo paid-search program was outstanding. Marketo dominates the search category for marketing automation, showing how to do more with less: Its search budget is 32 percent less than the average of the companies researched. Its ad copy aligns well with very focused keywords, and it undergoes frequent A/B testing.

Marketo follow-up with leads started off well but faltered. An email with a content download reached a prospect’s inbox one minute after he requested it, but there was no phone follow-up. Omitting an outbound-call component for engagement is a typical misstep among the companies researched. For Marketo, it’s surprising.



Paid Search Marketo sweeps the paid-search category with an aggressive $81,600 monthly Google Ad-Words spend, 60 different landing pages and ongoing A/B testing for continually refined results.

Marketo’s laser-like category focus on “marketing automa-tion” and narrow head terms (e.g. “marketing automation,” “marketing automation soft-ware,” “marketing automa-tion comparison,” “marketing automation platform”) reflects its strategy to be the category kill-er.

That effort comes at a relatively high cost: $29.98 cost per click for its 10 best-performing keywords. Marketo, however, makes the most of that investment by using its keywords in its ad copy. (See below.)


Marketing Automation 101 www.marketo.com/ Learn About Marketing Automation. Download Our Definitive Guide Now!

Marketo uses narrowly targeted key-words in ad copy to make it easy for prospects to find what they’re look-ing for.

Note that “marketing automation” appears twice in the Marketing Automation 101 ad, and combining it with “101” makes it seem simple, yet comprehensive. This also makes it easy for a busy prospect searching for “marketing automation” to find what he’s looking for and turn into a Marketo lead.

“Marketo’s laser-like category focus on “marketing automation” and narrow head terms . . . reflects its strategy to be the category killer.”



Landing Page To make its landing page a home run, Marketo should move up its “Rave Reviews from Lead-ing Experts.” (See below.) The third-party validation it offers falls below the fold. Additionally, Marketo fails to feature some of its truly blue-chip brands. It does a very good job, however, keeping prospects focused on marketing automation and the download it’s offering.

Marketo does a lot right with its landing page. It reinforces the category keyword “marketing automation,” features an easily accessible, embedded form for data capture and helps direct prospects to it by not including other links, potential exit paths from the page.

A prospect won’t see this without some digging, but Marketo does practice what it preaches: It uses display advertising, retargeting, analytics, automation, social media and customer interac-tion technologies to learn more about and better serve its prospects. Some of the apps Mar-keto has deployed are Bizo, DoubleClick.net, Google Analytics and Retargeting, AdRoll, Opti-mizely, CrazyEgg and Live Person. (For more information, ask for the detailed Marketo score-card, available from Angles, Inc.)



Confirmation Page Given its investment in a superb landing page, the use of 11 apps − including its own − it’s surprising that the Marketo confirmation page doesn’t include any personalization, like the pro-spect’s first name or company affiliation that had just been submitted. (See below.)

Marketo does a good job trying to engage prospects with demos and additional content but doesn’t personalize the page, even though it now has the prospect’s name.

The page, though, works well otherwise: It thanks the user, explains what’s next and offers ad-ditional, immediate engagement opportunities (e.g., watch a demo, explore the resource cen-ter). It also reflects the Marketo brand in look and feel and in tone.

Follow-Up The company’s strong performance continued with the Marketo email follow-up with pro-spects. Its Marketing Automation 101 guide hit the prospect’s inbox in one minute, in much



less time than it took competitors’ initial email to arrive. It wasn’t personalized, though. (See below.) That’s odd since the Marketo application enables that smart touch.

While the subject line of the first Marketo email − Definitive Guide to Marketing Automation − was relevant, it too lacked personalization and wasn’t engaging. A more personalized, action-oriented line would be better: Mary, Check out Your Marketing Automation 101 Guide.

The copy in this first email and Marketo email overall was very good: It’s relevant to the pro-spect’s stated need and offers additional com-plimentary content and webinars. In a series of five email, Marketo methodically makes its case by showcasing its benefits in bite-sized pieces. It misses the mark, however, by failing to weave in third-party validation or social proof like the big-name customers featured on the Marketo home page.

The fifth email received in five days was the weakest in the series. It featured “Marketing Sum-mer Reading Guides,” not exactly gripping beach reading. It read as though Marketo ran out of anything new to say. A better approach: Feature a customer case study.

“In a series of five email, Mar-keto methodically makes its case by showcasing its bene-fits in bite-sized pieces.”



It took only one minute for a prospect to receive the re-quested con-tent.

That perfor-mance is much better than Marketo com-petitors.

After filling out forms on their landing pages, prospects re-ceived an initial email, on aver-age, in 32 minutes.

Marketo should optimize its email since it’s hard-pressed to do any outbound calling at this stage − even if it sees a high “Lead Score” (a Marketo activity metric) from a prospect spend-ing a lot of time on Marketo.com. That’s because it didn’t ask for a telephone number on its landing-page form, a strategic albeit puzzling move. Inbound marketing, while important, doesn’t negate the need for outreach to reel in and hook a lead.



Pardot The Angles ReportTM Ranking: 12 (out of 21)





Confirmation Page Copy 1.5 5 7 Design 2 4 9 Confirmation Page Total 3.5 9 7


Total 38.3 100 12

Summary Pardot straddles the Angles of Impact™ line between Gamblers that overspend on paid search and Winners that strike the right balance between spending and executing well-designed online lead-gen activities. The Angles Report™ ranking for Pardot is 12 out of 21.

The worst part of the Pardot online marketing pro-cess is its landing page. Its follow-up also is poor, but it at least does some phone follow-up. Most companies don’t.

To move to the Winners corner, Pardot should tight-en its search spend and beef up the downstream process it has in place to convert leads.

“The worst part of the Pardot online marketing process is its landing page.”



Paid Search The Pardot cost per click is 53 percent higher than the average of all companies surveyed, and it gets 48 percent fewer clicks. It should shift some of its spending to the category keyword, “marketing automation.” It’s underspending on that by 11 percent.

Pardot does include “marketing automation” as one of its top-10 keyword buys but focuses much more on variations of “email,” a throwback perhaps to the roots of its previous owner, ExactTarget. (See below.)


Marketing Automation http://www.pardot.com/Marketing-Automation/ Marketing Automation, Email, Lead Gen & More. Learn More from Pardot.

This Pardot ad is category-focused on marketing automa-tion and earned the third ad position. When it’s less fo-cused, its ad drops to sixth place.

When Pardot uses the category keyword “marketing automation,” it aligns the keyword with the ad copy, making it easy for a prospect to zero in on what he’s looking for. The copy should be stronger, though, detailing some benefit, endorsement or tempting offer.

Landing Page The headline and copy on the Pardot landing page should be stronger too, more relevant and engaging. (See below.) Yes, the page offers a video demo, but should that be the headline? And yes, Pardot is a Salesforce.com company. But what does that mean to a prospect?

Integration with Salesforce.com is a checkbox item in a vendor bake-off. A better approach to hook a potential lead? Spend One Minute. Find out how Marketing Automation Will Fix Your Broken Sales & Marketing Organization.



The easy-to-access embedded form helps boost the score of the Pardot landing page. It should, however, have fewer than seven required fields. Five is the recommended maximum.

Pardot performs better with what’s embedded in its landing page and not prospect-facing. Re-sponsively designed for the increasingly large mobile audience, it’s enriched with advertising, retargeting, analytics and (its own) marketing-automation apps, all of which help inform Pardot marketing and create a more meaningful user experience. Adding optimization and heat-mapping technologies would make it even more powerful.

Confirmation Page The Pardot confirmation page takes a back seat to the one-minute video delivered immediately after the prospect submitted his data. (See below.) This on-the-spot fulfillment is good way to grow engagement. Too bad that effort ends when the video does.



The Pardot confirmation page cum video is unique. While it fosters engagement, it doesn’t do much to connect a prospect with a sales rep. A live chat at the end would help.

The confirmation page revealed beneath the lightbox has much of the same copy as the land-ing page. “Other Helpful Resources,” which with any luck are less bland than this subhead, fill the space previously filled with the form. It has no personalization, aka a Marketing Automation 101 basic, and offers no clear way to follow up with Pardot for more information. (The prospect has to watch the video again to click through to a page with a progressive form requiring two additional data points.)



Follow-Up Pardot follow-up is terrible. For its $94,000 monthly spend that yields 13,600 clicks, it’s sur-prising Pardot makes such little effort to convert them. It took almost three days for the first of only two email to arrive.

The first was woefully lacking in any product information to help sell the prospect on Pardot; the sales rep wanted to book a call on his calendar. Period. The second and final email built on this rep-centric, process-oriented, prospect-be-damned approach. (See below.) After a grand total of one email and one voice mail message, the rep announced in the subject line, “Closing Out Salesforce Pardot File.”

Trying to build ur-gency or just being lazy? Either way, this email sends a poor message to prospects about Pardot sales and service. Instead of relying on “luck” and making as-sumptions, how about some old-fashioned persis-tence with a bet-ter communications flow that Pardot could automate?

Pardot would be better served in the early stages of lead nurturing by limiting the ability of its reps to improvise in email and on the phone. The quality of the voice mail received is right up there with email warning that Pardot is closing the prospect’s file. (See the transcript below.)



Hey, Paul, this is Alex calling from Salesforce. I’m giving you a call in regards to a video of Pardot that you checked out in regards to the demo of it. I’m just interested to see if I can be of any internal resource here for you. If you can gimme a call back. My number is (404) XXX-YYYY. I also sent you over an email yesterday. That's an easy way to get in touch so we can do so that way. Take care. Have a great day, Paul.

The casual message does not highlight any product value or benefits and doesn’t repeat the caller’s phone number or give his email address.

Many companies don’t make any phone calls at all, so this weak attempt is worth noting.



RedPoint Global


Overall Score 15 (out of 100) Unique Visitors/Month n/a Monthly Search Budget $31,000






Total 15 100 20

Summary It’s hard to find anything good to say about RedPoint Global online marketing. That’s because there is nothing good to say. RedPoint has the next-to-lowest ranking of the 21 companies re-searched.

It has a poor search program and confirmation page. An even worse landing page. And, its follow-up is non-existent.

RedPoint online marketing needs an overhaul. It should stop what it’s doing and start again, from scratch. For starters, dig into The Angles Report™ analysis about RedPoint competitors’ best practices.

“RedPoint online marketing needs an overhaul.”



Paid Search The RedPoint search program reflects an identity crisis. Its lack of a marketing-automation cat-egory focus is striking. “Marketing automation” appears only once among its top-10 keywords. Variations of “email,” “data,” “affiliate” and “hadoop” (an open-source, big-data software framework) make up the rest of the list.

That mish mash of keywords drags down RedPoint ads for its top keywords to the rarely viewed 15th position, much lower than the average of its competitors. Its cost per click is about $2.00 less, but it gets less too.

When RedPoint does focus on marketing automation, its ad is mediocre. (See below.) It doesn’t promote any specific benefit or contain any new-customer offer. It instead uses filler copy that could apply to any company: “Next Generation” (sic) and “Learn More And Get A Demo Today!)


!Marketing Automation www.redpoint.net/RequestDemo Next Generation Marketing Platform. Learn More And Get A Demo Today!

This ad aligns with the prospect’s search for “marketing automation.” The rest of the copy, though, is weak.

The very sad and surprising aspect of the RedPoint search program is that the company search budget is more than twice that of some of its competitors that earned a much higher ranking. One’s even in the top five. Memo to RedPoint: It takes a wisely spent search budget, integrated with a well-designed process, to get results. Not just a big budget.

Landing Page RedPoint comes in last for what should be a landing page but isn’t. It’s the solutions page of its website. (See below.) Why pay $31,000 per month to attract prospects and then do nothing to try and capture them?

The copy is banal, and the page is visually uninteresting. It is not going to grab a prospect do-ing a vendor search that will yield at least 20 competitors doing a better job at lead gen.



RedPoint uses a page from its website as a landing page instead of having a unique page de-signed for lead gen. This page has no form for data capture and has too many exit paths.

The worst part of this page is that there is no form to capture prospect data. A prospect must scroll to the bottom of the page, click to request a demo and then fill out 10 required fields of data, twice the recommended number for effective lead gen. This from a company that prides itself on helping other companies manage their data.

Confirmation Page Only a few companies scored worse on their confirmation pages than RedPoint. (See below.) Like the search ad and “landing page” that pre-ceded it, there’s no specific mention of any RedPoint benefits, no effort to engage with a prospect, no third-party endorsements, no nothing.

“Only a few companies scored worse on their con-firmation pages than RedPoint.”



The bare-bones RedPoint confirmation page doesn’t even set a prospect’s expectations about when he’ll hear from a sales rep.

To close on a positive note: The page is brand-compliant.

Follow-Up Perhaps RedPoint doesn’t bother to let a prospect know when he may expect a reply, because there won’t be any. After clicking twice to get to a form and supplying 10 fields of data, there’s no follow-up email. No phone call. And, no demo.



Sailthru








Total 26 100 18

Summary The Angles Report™ ranking of 21 marketing-automation vendors puts Sailthru near the bot-tom, at No. 18. It shows a glimmer of promise only with the technologies it’s embedded in its landing page, a page that otherwise is a kudzu of clutter. That earned Sailthru a third-place ranking. It wasn’t enough, though, to lift it out of the basement.

In its search program, Sailthru spent $4,750 in one month, less than all of its competitors. It also lacked category focus, a one-two punch that resulted in it getting 96 percent fewer clicks than the average of the companies researched. Saying Sailthru is not competitive is an under-statement.

Its confirmation page and lead follow-up are great examples of what not to do.



Paid Search In addition to a competitive budget (the average is $119, 228), Sailthru needs a focused search program. Instead of sticking with the category keyword “marketing automation” and building out narrow head terms that reflect it (e.g., “marketing automation software”), Sailthru has a diffuse and therefore ineffective list of top keywords. It includes variations of “email,” “predictive analytics,” “content marketing” and “marketing segmentation analysis.” A tighter focus would help boost results: more clicks at a lower cost for an ad higher on the page.

Better ad copy would help too. (See below.) While highlighting potential revenue upside is good, where’s the call to action? Any third-party validation or endorsement? A specific offer? A way to get a demo − and engage the prospect?


!Marketing Automation www.sailthru.com/ Increase Revenue Up To 35 percent With Personalized Email.Learn More

“Learn More” takes up valuable space and adds no value. Ad copy should make a prospect want to learn more.

The bottom line for the Sailthru search program? On average, it’s getting 95 percent fewer clicks than its competitors, for ads that display three positions lower.

“Sailthru needs a focused search program.”



Landing Page Continuing in its role as the poster child for poor online marketing practices, the Sailthru land-ing-page design is another great example of what not to do. Instead of being a streamlined, focused page that skillfully coaxes an unknown prospect to turn into a known lead by filling out a form, Sailthru has adopted the kitchen-sink approach. (See below.) It throws anything and everything on this ever-scrolling page, including a rotating .gif of customer logos. It is dreadful.

The Sailthru landing page lacks focus and an easy-to-access embedded form for lead genera-tion, the purpose of a landing page. Conversely, it has dozens too many of exit paths, distract-ing visitors that may want to cut through this kudzu of clutter and actually fill out a form. Wher-ever it is.

It’s remarkable that heat-mapping application CrazyEgg, one of the 10 marketing technologies Sailthru has embedded in its site, didn’t blow up trying to capture the many routes by which a visitor can flee this page.



Confirmation Page For those intrepid visitors who do bother to click through to a page with a form, they get little for their effort. The Sailthru confirmation page is barely an acknowledgement that the company received a prospect’s data and cares about engaging with him. (See below.)

As cluttered as the Sailthru landing page was, that’s how sparse its confirmation page is. There’s only one link to a blog. Nothing else with which to engage a prospect. Sailthru should take some of the clutter off its landing page, and turn it into featured, helpful content here.

This would also be a good place for Sailthru to start demonstrating its expertise in marketing automation by personalizing the page with the prospect’s name that had just been submitted.

Follow-Up Again, there’s no personalization in the skimpy Sailthru email follow-up. In the first of only two email, there’s a generic “Hello.” (See below.) The subject line is another wasted opportunity: In addition to lacking any personalization, its “Sailthru will be in touch soon!” does nothing to move the prospect conversation forward. Or, as the email banner suggests, “flow.” It, like the email copy, simply parrots what the confirmation page said. (A second email from a sales rep



starts with an equally unimpressive, “Hey, Eva.”)

This Sailthru email is a wasted opportunity. It should edu-cate and engage the prospect by including a cus-tomer case study, an on-demand demo or even a link to a scheduling app for setting up a call with a sales rep.

As poor as the Sailthru email follow-up was, however, it was better than its phone follow-up. That’s because there was none. That hole in its online marketing program is another example of a poorly designed and executed program. Sailthru didn’t require a phone number on its hard-to-find form.

“Hey,” Sailthru: Inbound marketing with form submissions isn’t always enough to schedule a call, never mind close a deal. Develop a communications flow that blends email with phone follow-up to ensure that you connect with a lead before a competitor beats you to it.



Salesfusion


Overall Score 36.9 (out of 100) Unique Visitors/Month n/a Monthly Search Budget $11,000






Total 36.9 100 13

Summary There is nothing very good or very bad to say about Salesfusion. With one of the three smallest search budgets of the 21 companies researched, Salesfusion earned The Angles Report™ ranking of 13. Only SharpSpring spends less and ranks higher.

Of the four stages of its online marketing process, the Salesfusion landing and confirmation pages stacked up best against its competitors. Its paid-search program and follow-up with leads were weaker.

By refining its search program and beefing up its follow-up, Salesfusion could get more for its $11,000 search spend.



Paid Search Salesfusion spent 91 percent less than the average of all companies researched and got 95 percent fewer clicks for an almost 70 percent higher cost per click. It also had less than half the average number of paid keywords.

To improve its performance, Salesfusion needs more fo-cus. Its top-10 keywords are too scattered, spread among variations of “email” and “marketing” like “business mar-keting,” with one-offs like “sales management software.” It should look at the Leanplum search program that has a slightly larger budget with a lot more focus, generating better results.

When Salesfusion did focus on marketing automation, its ad quality was good. (See below.) It used the category keyword in the headline, URL extension and ad copy, making it very obvious to the prospect searching for marketing automation that this is an ad to click. Also, it has a strong call to action with an offer of free content. It could use a third-party endorsement or an example of a product benefit.


Marketing Automation 101 www.salesfusion.com/MarketingAutomation Download Our Definitive Guide And Learn Marketing Automation today

Both Salesfusion and top-ranked Marketo used the same “Marketing Automation 101” title for an ad leading to a content download.

Salesfusion also needs more landing pages and additional A/B testing to optimize its program. It has less than half the number of pages as other companies and conducts 63 percent less testing.

“To improve its per-formance, Salesfusion needs more focus.”



Landing Page The Salesfusion landing page is a good one. (See below.) The copy aligns with the ad that led to it, with a clear focus on marketing automation, and the visuals support the copy. As im-portant, there’s an embedded form with a clear call to action and only five fields. Additionally, there are no other exit paths to distract a prospect from filling out the form. Salesfusion built the page to achieve its objective: Turn unknown prospects into known leads by capturing data.

To make its landing page even better, Salesfusion should incorporate some third-party valida-tion, like customer logos or trust markets, to instill confidence.

Salesfusion also works to capture data behind the scenes. In addition to deploying its own ap-plication, Salesfusion uses four other advertising, retargeting and analytics apps to build lead profiles. Given its limited A/B testing, adding Optimizely or another optimization app would be a good move.



Confirmation Page A lead seeing the Salesfusion confirmation page wouldn’t know that any marketing- automa-tion was being used; there’s no personalization, no demonstration of Salesfusion software ca-pabilities. (See below.)

While there are several links to additional information with which to engage leads, the copy is a turn-off: There’s too much of it, and much of it is unnecessary. For example, is “Download your white paper using the button below” needed when there’s a big orange button labeled “Down-load Now”?

The visuals on the Salesfusion confirmation page aren’t any more engaging than the plodding copy.

The copy also breaks the cadence, the alignment, with the “marketing automation” keyword that began with the search ad and the landing page. Marketing automation is MIA here.



Follow-Up Messaging continuity was back in the first of two follow-up email with three references to mar-keting automation. (See below.) There was, however, no effort to build the Salesfusion story with any product information or social proof.

Salesfusion sent only two email to follow up with a lead and made no phone calls.

The second email from the sales rep arrived one week later. This time, the subject line was personalized, but there was no branded template and absolutely no effort to highlight why a lead should do business with Salesfusion. This was a big missed opportunity made worse by the lack of any additional email or any phone follow-up at all. The promise Salesfusion demon-strated with its landing page was undercut by its lackadaisical follow-up.



SALESmanago


Overall Score 33.3 (out of 100) Unique Visitors/Month n/a Monthly Search Budget $23,400






Total 33.3 100 15

Summary SALESmanago has the worst paid-search program of the 21 companies in The Angles Re-port™ research on marketing automation. That makes it the best example that budget alone doesn’t guarantee an effective search program. Emma and Leanplum, for example, spend less on search but score better.

If SALESmanago improved what it’s doing with search and stopped wasting money, it could shift from the Angles of Impact™ Gamblers corner into the Winners spot, because the rest of its online marketing activities are better. It even tied for first place (with seven others) for its form to capture prospect data.

That, however, wasn’t enough to carry the company beyond 15th place.



Paid Search The SALESmanago search program was sloppy. It included poorly written ads with odd mes-saging. (See below.)


Marketing Automation www.salesmanago.com/ email marketing and identification of people visiting your website.

This SALESmanago ad lacks a call to action, offer, third-party endorsement − and a complete sentence.

The sloppiness extended to the SALESmanago mix of keywords. It had about one third fewer paid keywords than the average number of all the companies researched, and its top-10 list included seven variations of “email.” For that email-heavy list, SALESmanago paid 20 per-cent more than its competitors and got ad positions 78 percent lower than the average. The lack of focus on marketing automation and narrow head terms makes the SALES-manago search program completely out of sync with its website home page, which is all about marketing automation.

The company also had just three unique landing pages. The average number for the vendors researched was 32. This is another example of the lack of attention to detail that SALESmana-go pays to its search program.

Landing Page The ninth-place landing-page ranking for SALESmanago would be better − if the company had a unique landing page. Clicking from the search ad for marketing automation, the prospect hit the SALESmanago.com home page. (See below.) The big problem? All the distracting links − exit paths − that a prospect could click instead of filling out a lead-gen form, the purpose of a landing page.

“The SALESmanago search program was sloppy.”



SALESmanago doesn’t have a unique landing page for each of its search ads. It instead dis-plays its confusing home page to prospects.

Another huge deficit with the SALESmanago home page masquerading as a landing page is the lack of marketing technologies embedded in it. Other than Google Analytics and two adver-tising applications, there are no apps deployed that would give SALESmanago the business intelligence it needs to improve that page. It should start with optimization, heat-mapping and marketing-automation technologies.

Confirmation Page

As chock a bloc with links as the SALESmanago “landing page” was, that’s how sparse its confir-mation page is. (See below.) SALESmanago got it backwards.

“SALESmanago got it backwards.”



In addition to lacking content for more prospect engagement, there’s no personalization that would start to demonstrate SALESmanago marketing-automation capabilities.

Its confirmation page should help build the SALESmanago story and prospect engagement, but it didn’t. There’s no additional content or on-demand demo, for example. It’s just a utilitari-an message about activating a complimentary trial.

Follow-Up The SALESmanago email follow-up was aggressive: five email in five days. None was person-alized, some but not all made its way into a branded template, and all of it was poorly written.

The first one was an especially tough slog through bad syntax, several paragraphs too many of copy, and lines of tracking code that may be necessary but don’t exactly communicate a warm welcome to a prospect. (See below.)



With a series of five follow-up email, SALESmanago at least made an effort to cultivate leads by supplying relevant information about its product. The company, however, needs a copywriter. Its email is unprofessional, filled with grammar mistakes and poor syntax.

The SALESmanago follow-up ended with its well-intentioned, bad email. There was no out-bound calling to complement its inbound activities. Given its miserable ad and email copy per-haps it’s a good thing no one’s getting any unintelligible voice mail.



SharpSpring





Landing Page Technology 3 5 8 Page Attributes 8.5 11 3 Form Design 1 3 9 Landing Page Total 13 19 6

Confirmation Page Copy 0 5 14 Design 3 4 7 Confirmation Page Total 2.5 9 15


Total 42.3 100 7

Summary SharpSpring earned a slot in The Angles Report™ top-ten list because of a strong landing page and email follow-up with leads. The rest of its online marketing program is mediocre, at best, and limps along with a search budget that’s a sliver of what its competitors are spending.

To be more competitive, SharpSpring must spend more. Money isn’t the sliver bullet for suc-cessful search programs, but it is an issue for SharpSpring since the average monthly budget among its competitors is $119,000. SharpSpring spends $8,440. Only one of the 21 companies surveyed spends less.

A budget increase would be worthwhile since SharpSpring already has made smart moves by sticking with a category focus in its keyword selection and invested in technologies that demonstrate excellence compared to many of its competitors.



Paid Search Eight of the 10 top keywords bought by SharpSpring include some variation of “marketing au-tomation.” That category focus carries through to ad copy, making it easy for a prospect to spot what he’s searching for. (See below.)

These keywords are so expensive that SharpSpring is spending almost 50 percent more than the average company only to have its ads display in the middle of the pack. It’s going to have to invest much more and bid higher to com-pete.

The lack of aggressiveness in the scope of the SharpSpring search program translates into well-below-average performance. While the average number of clicks per month among its competitors is 26,375, SharpSpring scrapes together a mere 665.


!Marketing Automation www.sharpspring.com/ Powerful & Easy-to-Use Automation. Request a Demo of Our Capabilities.

The quality of this SharpSpring ad is good. It reflects the company’s cate-gory focus, includes a benefit and of-fers a demo.

Along with a bigger budget for more than 194 keywords, additional A/B testing of ads would help SharpSpring. (The average number of keywords purchased by the 21 companies re-searched is 1,546.)

Landing Page It’s too bad more potential leads don’t see the SharpSpring landing page. It’s a good one, ranking No. 6 overall. (See below.) Responsively designed for the mobile market and with few exit paths to lure visitors away from a short embedded form, the landing page copy and design are solid, relevant and engaging.

“The lack of aggressiveness in the scope of the SharpSpring search program translates into well-below-average performance.”



The category keyword “marketing automation” is in the landing-page headline, in alignment with the ad copy. SharpSpring benefits are clear and prominently featured, next to a good ex-ample of an embedded form.

The landing page also is noteworthy for its use of advertising, retargeting, analytics and optimi-zation applications that make SharpSpring marketers smarter and the user experience better. Curiously, however, there’s no evidence of any marketing- automation software being used, not even its own.

Confirmation Page As good as its landing page is, that’s how bad the SharpSpring confirmation page is. (See be-low.) It has an obligatory thank you, more links for the visitor to explore, and an explanation of next steps, but there’s nothing engaging to start building a relationship with a prospect. There’s not even any personalization, a baseline demonstration of marketing-automation capa-bilities.



The SharpSpring confirmation is a missed opportunity. It looks and reads like an afterthought.

SharpSpring wasted an opportunity with its confirmation page to impress a prospect. Social proof − links to customer case studies − would be an easy, but important, way to improve this page.

Follow-Up SharpSpring email follow-up is appropriately persistent with a sequence of five email. The copy, however, is poorly written with misspellings, punctuation mistakes and syntax errors. Additionally, in the example below, the marketing rep fails to point out that there’s an attached PDF, content laying out SharpSpring benefits that may actually help nudge a prospect to schedule a demo. (It’s generally a bad practice to attach a PDF to an automated email for two reasons: 1) it’s more likely to trigger a spam complaint and 2) it’s easier to track a linked PDF than an attachment.)



SharpSpring needs a good writer to overhaul its email market-ing.

Its intentions are good. Its execution is not

SharpSpring is missing another opportunity to differentiate itself from its competitors: phone follow-up. A friendly, informative voice with a relevant message is a rarity in an industry fo-cused on generating inbound activity − and could be an important differentiator.



Silverpop








Total 39.5 100 10

Summary Silverpop is among the Angles of Impact™ Winners, more because it plods along without mak-ing any fatal mistakes than because it does anything superbly well. The decent rankings for its paid-search program and confirmation page help make up for its middling-to-poor landing page and follow-up with leads.

Compared with the average of all companies researched, Silverpop spent 67 percent less for 77 percent fewer clicks, at a 42 percent higher cost per click. It needs to calibrate its spending with a better online marketing program.

That overhaul should include improving its almost non-existent email follow-up. It undercuts money spent generating leads by ignoring them, and there’s no demonstration of the market-ing-automation expertise that a prospect should expect from a subsidiary of IBM. Silverpop should practice what it preaches.



Paid Search Silverpop spends IBM’s money on a high-ranking ad position, and the quality of its marketing automation ad is good. (See below.) The copy includes the category keyword to align with the prospect’s search term. It also includes an endorsement in line three and a benefit in the last line.


!Marketing Automation www.silverpop.com/marketing-automation Top Ranked Marketing Automation Tools for B2C and B2B Marketers.

Silverpop gets the maximum points possible for a category-focused ad.

Its $16.40 cost per click for the category keyword “marketing automation” gets Silverpop a re-spectable fourth-place ad position, better than the average showing of all its top keywords. The Silverpop selection of keywords overall, however, needs more focus for the company to be competitive in search.

While it does include among its top-10 keywords “marketing automation,” it strays from a cat-egory focus with variations of “lead management,” “loyalty programs,” and in a return to its roots, “email.” Silverpop should stop trying to be everything to everyone. Using keywords like “loyalty programs” can waste budget on traffic that’s probably not interested in core Silverpop product offerings.

Landing Page The Silverpop landing page is a mixed bag. It has relevant, engaging copy that drives home the gospel of automation, but it’s missing a strong call to action, offer or benefit other than viewing a marketing video. It has an easily accessible, embedded form, but the form requires too many fields of information. (See below.)

Its one visual seems like an afterthought, mak-ing the customer logo soup tucked below the fold the best design element: The logos, at least, help tell a story that engenders trust and con-fidence in SilverPop’s expertise.

“The Silverpop landing page is a mixed bag.”



The Silverpop landing page covers just the basics and fails to engage the prospect.

It’s the use of technology that helps contribute to the strong ranking of this landing page. It’s responsively designed to cater to the significant mobile audience and embeds advertising, analytics, social-media and (its own) marketing-automation software to get smarter about and better serve its prospects.



Confirmation Page Given its data collection and use of marketing automation, it’s surprising that the Silverpop confirmation page doesn’t include any personalization. (See below.) This is a missed oppor-tunity to show off and start wooing a prospect.

The Silverpop confirmation page reads and looks like an afterthought. It also fails to demon-strate any of the company’s marketing-automation capabilities.

The copy doesn’t help either. It’s bare bones. Thanks, here’s your video and some links. There’s no scheduling app to facilitate setting up a personalized demo, no chat app for inter-acting with sales, no contact info for a prospect to use. The page conveys the impression that Silverpop isn’t interested in building any relationship with the prospect.



Follow-Up Silverpop follow-up reinforces that impression. Its email follow-up consists of two email. Ironic for a company that began as an email-marketing provider. As if that weren’t enough of a poor performance, the first email arrived almost three days after a prospect filled out the form and expressed interest in the company. That’s almost 800 percent later than the average for all companies surveyed. Plenty of time for a prospect to check out more proactive competitors.

Additionally, that email did not align with the marketing automation-oriented ad, landing page and confirmation page that preceded it. (See below.) Silverpop broke any messaging momentum it had estab-lished by shifting focus to bench-marking email marketing.

It had captured the prospect’s indus-try in the form submission. Why not send a case marketing automation case study about a similarly situated company? A second and final email arrived almost 11 days later, also fo-cused on email marketing.

“. . . the first email arrived almost three days after a prospect filled out the form and expressed inter-est in the company. That’s almost 800 percent later than the average for all companies surveyed.”



Silverpop email follow-up is limited and seems to re-flect a corpo-rate identity crisis. Is the company an email-marketing pro-vider or a mar-keting-automation vendor?

Silverpop phone follow-up was even worse. There was none. A prospect that took the time to share his data in a seven-field form slips away. A search program that began with some prom-ise crumbles without a comprehensive process built to connect a prospect’s search with a sale − or at minimum, a conversation with a sales rep.

Silverpop would benefit from revisiting the headline of its own landing page: “Effectively man-age and nurture your leads, maximizing your marketing budget, with Silverpop.”



StreamSend








Total 11.5 100 21

Summary StreamSend is a great example of how to waste money. In one month, it spent $99,000 for search ads and got 23 percent fewer clicks than the average of the 21 marketing-automation companies researched.

It’s also a great example of what marketers should not do. The combination of its poor paid-search program with an equally bad landing page, a missing confirmation page and non-existent follow-up with leads put StreamSend in The Angles Report™ Angles of Impact™ Losers corner. It has a ranking of 21 out of 21 companies.

StreamSend should stop what it’s doing and start again. It should balance its budget with a more rigorous process to justify it, and it will generate more results.



Paid Search Only one of the top-ten StreamSend keywords references the category keyword “marketing automation.” It focuses instead on variations of “email.” This lack of category focus contributes to less-than-compelling ads. (See below.)

Instead of mirroring in copy what the prospect is looking for − marketing automation − its main ad features “behavior email marketing” and “behavior-marketing.” Effective paid-search pro-grams require a strict alignment of keywords with copy for maximum results.


Behavior Email Marketing www.streamsend.com/behavior-marketing Track customer activities, profile, & action trigger email-marketing

In addition to lacking a call to ac-tion, an offer or third-party en-dorsement, the last two lines don’t even make any sense.

The cost per click of the category keyword that StreamSend paid was 33 percent less than the average of the companies researched. And that yielded a worse-than-average ad position. To be competitive with the dozens of other companies offering email marketing as part of a mar-keting-automation suite, StreamSend should reallocate its ad spend to include narrow head terms (i.e., variations of the “marketing automation”).

Landing Page The StreamSend landing page is additional evidence that its online marketing is out of align-ment. The beginning of the prospect’s search started with “marketing automation” and led to ad copy with “behavior email marketing” and “behavior-marketing.” Then, clicking through to a landing page revealed the return of “marketing automation” and the debut of “behavior market-ing automation.” (See below.)



Using the word “engagement” in copy doesn’t make a page engaging. An on-demand presen-tation, scheduling app to set up an appointment with a sales rep or chat app for a real-time conversation would help. Moving the StreamSend form higher on the page would make en-gagement more likely.

This leads a prospect to wonder, “What is it exactly that StreamSend sells?” It needs more fo-cus for a cohesive online marketing campaign and less word play that muddies a prospect’s view of the company.

StreamSend also should practice what it preaches. Its copy talks about tracking and profiling and personalizing, but does nothing do to track, profile and personalize on its own site. It doesn’t even have Google Analytics embedded in its page.

A solid landing page should encourage data capture and enable marketers to learn more about unknown prospects that have turned into known leads. That’s how StreamSend could continu-ally improve its dead-last-in-the-rankings program and get increased ROI from its $99,000 monthly spend.

Confirmation Page As the StreamSend program goes from bad to worse, there’s its poor excuse for a confirma-tion page. StreamSend acknowledges the prospect’s form submission with two lines of copy in a lightbox. (See below.) There is no confirmation page.



After a prospect shares his contact data, a confirmation page is an opportunity to build more engagement with him and learn more about his interests. The lack of a StreamSend confirma-tion page is a missed opportunity.

While StreamSend has a prospect’s attention (which at this rate may not last long), it should showcase product benefits, customer success stories or another piece of content. A white paper explaining the differences between “behavior email marketing,” “behavior marketing” and “behavior marketing automation” might be a good place to start.



Follow-Up Despite being told that StreamSend received the data submitted, the prospect never heard from the company. StreamSend never followed up. Not even one behavior-email-marketing-automation-powered email. Never mind a phone call. And, yes, we did check the spam folder.



VerticalResponse


Overall Score (38.5 out of 100) Unique Visitors/Month 1,038,749 Monthly Search Budget $99,200






Total 38.5 100 11

Summary VerticalResponse is a solid C student, spending a lot on advertising and investing too little in an integrated online marketing program to be competitive in marketing automation. VerticalRe-sponse is an Angles of Impact™ Gambler. It’s hoping that a reckless media plan will make up for a lack of a well-considered follow-up plan.

The company, with a ranking of 11 out of 21, managed to tie with Marketo and HubSpot for a technology-rich landing page, but that wasn’t enough to compensate for its remarkably bad follow-up with leads.

A better selection of keywords, outbound calls to qualified leads, and demonstrating it can ef-fectively use the email marketing technology it sells would help shift VerticalResponse to the Winners corner.



Paid Search Its ad copy is clear and rich with third-party validation − if anyone looking for marketing-automation vendors happens to see it, which is unlikely. (See below.) A search for “marketing automation” does not include VerticalResponse in the first 10 ads served.

It should start including “marketing automation” in its keyword buys to compete with the other companies offering email technology. The VerticalResponse singular focus on “email” and “newsletter” marginalizes the company.


Try Email Marketing Free www.verticalresponse.com/ (3.5 star advertiser rating) Trusted by 600k+ for Reliable Email Marketing Since 2001. It's Free!

The number of customers and its 14-year history highlight company credentials but not VerticalResponse marketing-automation expertise.

VerticalResponse should increase and reallocate its $99,000 budget. It’s spending about 17 percent less than its peers for 30 percent fewer clicks − at a 19 percent higher cost per click. With math like that, no wonder VerticalResponse in the middle of the class.

Landing Page The VerticalResponse landing page, the best part of the company’s online marketing program, scores well, because it makes it easy for a prospect to engage with the product, quickly. (See below.) By submitting only his email address, a prospect can start creating a no-cost email campaign. VerticalResponse, in turn, can start gathering data about that prospect and tracking his activity.



The VerticalResponse landing page makes prospect engagement quick and easy by requiring only an email address. Too many exit paths, though, risk distracting a visitor and not getting him to submit that all-important piece of data.

That’s because VerticalResponse uses several advertising, optimization and analytics applica-tions, including The Angles Report™ leader, Marketo, which also has email marketing function-ality. This positions VerticalResponse well to follow up with these qualified leads, but the com-pany doesn’t. (See the Follow-Up section below). Again, as with keyword buys, there’s money spent with self-limiting returns.

The VerticalResponse landing page would be stronger if there were fewer exit paths or links, thereby better directing visitors to the free trial. Additionally, including social proof points like those squeezed into a little-viewed text ad (above) would make a fence-straddler more com-fortable in parting with an email address.



Confirmation Page VerticalResponse skips a traditional confirmation page with a generic “thank you” and a hand-ful of links to additional content by immediately enabling a prospect to trial its product. (See below.) That’s a great way to spur engagement.

To improve its confirmation page, VerticalResponse should include user benefits in its headline and copy.

It could be better, though, with a few additional elements to ensure that the prospect sticks with the process and gets the pay-off of an easy-to-build email. A chat app with a rep offering help is one example. Social proof such as quotes from satisfied customers is another.

Follow-Up The VerticalResponse follow-up after capturing a prospect’s email address is almost non-existent and seems to reflect its reliance on (and confidence in) its trial program. It sent only one email to confirm the prospect’s email address in order to create a trial account. (See be-low.) More important, that mail completes a validation process so VerticalResponse can start building an activity profile of the email owner.

The problem is that VerticalResponse limits follow-up only to those who confirm an email ad-dress. After confirmation, a “Welcome to VerticalResponse” email does arrive, the first in a se-ries of solid email. But for those that don’t confirm, there’s nothing. VerticalResponse should add unconfirmed email addresses to a general nurturing campaign; bouncebacks can be de-leted, and if in the future, a prospect does confirm or otherwise identify himself, Marketo will do



a reverse append, thereby delivering a rich activity profile of a lead.

VerticalResponse follow-up focuses only on prospects that want to trial its product and vali-date their email.

In addition to sparking more inbound queries, a nurturing campaign to the unconfirmed can include smart forms that tease out additional contact info. This would enable VerticalResponse to embark on complementary outbound calls that can help increase conversion.



Zoho The Angles ReportTM Ranking: 4 (out of 21)







Total 51 100 4

Summary Zoho is an Angles of Impact™ Winner. In fourth place overall, Zoho came in first for the scope of its paid-search program, in a three-way tie with Constant Contact and Infusionsoft. It also has a first-place ranking for its confirmation-page copy.

As the biggest spender among the 21 companies researched, Zoho invests almost 500 percent more in paid search than the group average. It also gets more for that investment: 522 percent more clicks than the average company. That’s because Zoho has a tightly focused search pro-gram that is well integrated with a generally well-done lead-gen process.

The one Zoho weak spot in this four-stage process is its landing page, which can be improved with a better use of technology and better copy.



Paid Search

For its whopping $711,000 one-month spend on search, Zoho got 164,000 clicks for a lower-than-average cost per click of $4.34. It spends more, but it gets more.


Zoho CRM Sales Automation www.zoho.com/SalesAutomation Manage & Automate Sales Campaigns. 15 Day Free Trial. Get Started Now!

This ad would be stronger if it in-cluded the category keyword, some third-party endorsement and a prod-uct benefit.

In terms of focus, Zoho bounces around with keyword selection and bidding, which reflects, in part, its broad product mix. For “crm” it ranks No. 3, while for “customer relationship manage-ment” it ranks No.15. Other top keywords that it bids on include “accounting software,” “help desk” and “hr software.”

Landing Page The Zoho landing page makes a poor first impression. (See below.) Its minimalist copy tells the prospect nothing (Why will he love it?), and the space-filling headless body does nothing to communicate anything either. Yes, scrolling leads to more copy and a couple of better visuals, but this top-of-the-fold real estate is too important to waste.

“The Zoho landing page makes a poor first impression.”



In-your-face copy and stand-offish visual aside, the social proof from three leading brands on the Zoho landing page is good. So is the one-and-only exit path from the page: the start button that leads to a form for data capture.

The form on the following page is a good one. Too bad it wasn’t embedded where the head-less man stands so prospects wouldn’t miss it. It’s brief and includes an optional phone num-ber for following up with leads. It also includes a newsletter sign-up opportunity for additional engagement. All good.

A huge miss, though, for a company that spends almost three quarters of a million dollars in one month on search is the lack of technology it’s deployed. It’s using only Google AdWords and Google Analytics. No automation app, nothing for optimization or customer interaction. No heat mapping. Nothing.

Gathering prospect data and then acting on it − Zoho’s business − would strengthen the com-pany’s big-ticket online marketing program. It would enable Zoho to nurture those lookers that aren’t yet ready to tinker with a product trial.



Confirmation Page For those prospects that did fill out the form for a trial run, Zoho marketing automation kicks in. Its confirmation page was one of the few of the 21 researched that includes any personaliza-tion. (See below.) It started to demonstrate Zoho capabilities and build a relationship with what’s now a known lead.

As skimpy as the Zoho landing-page copy was, the information and links on the confirmation page strike the right balance: Educate and engage, but don’t overwhelm.

To increase the comfort level of a lead starting to trial a product, that missing chat app from the landing page would be a great addition here. Similarly, an app enabling the lead to sched-ule a call or screen-sharing session with a sales rep for a product walk-through would be an-other sweetener to an already solid page.



Follow-Up Zoho follow-up with search-generated leads is mediocre. For the $711,000 spent on getting them, Zoho should email more and start dialing for dollars. Its phone follow-up was non-existent, despite capturing phone numbers on its landing-page form.

The four email Zoho sent in one week were serviceable. (See below.) The copy was crisp, with additional links to information, and despite arriving in such a tight sequence, the email seemed more helpful than nagging. They focused on connecting the lead with a named account man-ager.

The Zoho email is per-sonalized, the copy is clear and relevant, and there’s a way for the lead to get ad-ditional infor-mation or help.

A natural next step, given the availability of a phone number, would be for that account man-ager to get on the phone and ask how the Zoho trial is going (and offer to help). That level of hustle and service would differentiate Zoho from its competitors. Spending six times more than the competition is one way. Pulling every lever to improve the ROI of that spend with a higher conversion rate is another.

Disclaimer: Angles, Inc. is a Zoho customer.



Methodology Selling products and services online is a complicated process that often starts with paid search to bring prospects to a website (e.g., Google AdWords, Microsoft Bing), capture their contact information and follow up with email and/or phone calls to close the sale. Miss just one of the-se steps, and the entire process is a huge waste of money. However, when all are fully opti-mized, online marketing is at its most efficient and effective.

In fact, a fully optimized paid-search campaign is the ultimate strategic advantage: In the win-ner-takes-all online world, the company with the highest ROI earns the most advertising expo-sure, enabling small companies to compete with big companies and market leaders to block competitors.

That’s why The Angles Report™ research teams focus on:

Paid search

Website optimization and conversion

Phone and email follow-up

For these activities to generate ROI, a program must integrate:

• Messaging, branding and offers that meet prospect wants and needs. We believe that companies that treat prospects as mere transactions and not relationships are in a race to the bottom with low prices, low service and low satisfaction.

• Search-specific landing pages for more data capture. A prospect that is not sure where to go or what to do will leave a site within seconds.

• Engagement-oriented confirmation pages. Once someone completes a form, he should feel better for it, knowing what to expect next and how to get more information.

• Technologies that enable personalized prospect experiences. No marketer gets it right the first time. But, those who conduct thoughtful, systematic testing measuring prospect response do get it right over time.

• Cross-channel follow-up to close sales. Every communication, every email, every voice message, should advance the buyer-seller relationship. Some companies ignore their prospects while others obsessively send the same message, word for word, with the hope of boring prospects into action.



What We Do. We can’t determine everything about a company’s online marketing program without insider information – like its conversion rate – but we can learn a lot with our research protocol. Here’s what we do:

• Experienced marketers, analysts and writers produce The Angles Report™ research. No member of the research team works for any of the companies being researched, and none of the companies are Angles, Inc. clients.

• For each industry that we research, we select the top companies (based on search spend) purchasing their category’s primary keyword in Google AdWords, the world’s largest paid-search provider. For the marketing-automation industry, we used the key-word “marketing automation.”

• The 21 companies we researched self-identified as “marketing automation” or “email marketing automation” companies by bidding on those keywords in Google AdWords. (For the list of companies, please see the table of contents.)3

• Since Google AdWords is the largest paid-search provider and data about AdWords is more readily available than others, we analyze only AdWords programs.

• We try to quantify as much as we can. We think that’s fair. When we need to assess something qualitatively, though, we lay out our criteria. You can agree or disagree. We think that’s fair too.

• When filling out forms on landing pages, our researchers supply a fictitious name, valid physical and email addresses and a Google phone number. We do not supply real or fake Social Security or credit card numbers, and any sites that require one are automat-ically excluded from our research.

• Phone calls go to voice mail; email goes to a group inbox. We’re not assessing one-to-one personal interactions but rather one-to-many programmatic interactions.

• To find out which third-party marketing technologies a company uses, we look at the source code of that company’s website as well as third-party information. Since some sites use cloaking technologies to hide which services they are using, we can’t guaran-tee 100-percent accuracy.

We compile our findings in a report that includes a series of scorecards and analysis. The in-dustry scorecard summarizes overall performance so you can benchmark your company’s per-formance against competitors. Individual company scorecards with details about what we found (e.g., website screen shots, email, transcriptions of voice mail) can help you decide whether our assessments are valid. You can also see what your competitors are doing. 3 We excluded companies like Microsoft and Harte-Hanks that didn’t offer these specific services as well as consulting companies and ad agencies that implement marketing automation. We also excluded a number of very fine companies that do not appear to be advertising on AdWords.



About . . .

Paul Angles Paul is a marketing innovator who’s worked in advertising, online media, data analytics, paid search and email for almost 30 years. Always ahead of the curve, Paul received two patents for personalized, demographic targeting and pay-per-click advertising (U.S. Patent Nos. 5,933,811 and 6,385,592). As founder of Los Angeles-based Angles, Inc., Paul specializes in paid-search advertising (including email and landing page optimization) and regularly achieves double- and even triple-digit results for clients in a range of industries that includes publishing, energy, financial services and health care.

He began his career as a copywriter for Ogilvy; launched a ven-ture-funded start-up in the 1990s and has been a consultant to Apple, Adobe and other well-known brands. In 1995, he set up the first team-sanctioned website for any NFL team, the Oakland Raiders.

Angles, Inc. Angles, Inc. is a Los Angeles-based online marketing agency that guarantees high-performance paid search, landing pages and email. The analysis and advice found in The Angles Report™ demonstrates a fraction of the expertise and rigor we share with our clients. Our proprietary methodology optimizes campaigns to achieve maximum performance, quickly. If you’d like to discuss getting the most from your marketing investment, please email [email protected] or call (310) 954-9710.

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