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By: Sanjay Dholakia Posted: February 19, 2015 | Engagement Marketing When we first started this series on the next era of marketing, we brought you the marketing pundit point of view through conversations with visionaries like Seth Godin and Aditya Joshi, but only recently did I discuss your opinions on the future of marketing. We asked the Economist Intelligence Unit to survey nearly 500 marketers and then shared the results on the many observations about marketing’s future, including organizational change and technology advancement. But to kick off our deep dive into all of the interesting data from the survey, I want to pause and talk more about one of the key concepts to emerge from the research—engagement. Every marketing team’s goals are to bring in new customers, grow their lifetime value and convert them into brand advocates who can influence their network to become new customers. But today’s constantly-connected world of digital, social and mobile has changed the way customers behave— and, consequently, how brands need to speak to their customers and prospects. As brands evolve, they’re learning that engagement is the critical next step. If they’ve not already started, brands are starting to shift from an era of mass marketing and advertising—where we talk at people for a single moment in time—to an era of engagement marketing where we begin to take time to learn more about our customers on a personal, individual level and engage with them over a lifetime. A New Definition of Engagement An interesting foundational fact that emerged from the survey, was the shifting definition of what it means to “engage” someone as a marketer going forward. Engagement used to be bandied about in terms of the emotional connection or quotient that a brand was creating with customers. How do they feel about you and your company? Did the Super Bowl ad with the puppy make them cry? Were they engaged? That all seems to be becoming the horse-and-buggy version of marketing (while of course still being incredibly cool). The new definition of engagement marketing seems to be broader, more strategic, and more oriented toward the bottom-line. Amongst marketers in the survey, the term engagement seems to have a decidedly action-oriented focus—asking questions like, “are we driving purchases, renewals, and revenue?”. Here are some interesting statistics: 63% of marketers view engagement as customer renewals, repeat purchases, and retention. 78% of respondents think engagement occurs in the middle or end stages of the marketing funnel. 22% of marketers consider customer engagement to be a brand awareness tool. Only about 20% of marketers seemed to define engagement as a top of the funnel awareness or emotional brand building tool. The reality, of course, is that if real engagement exists to drive purchases and renewals, there must be an emotional connection at some level. Engagement, it appears, has ascended from an emotional destination at disconnected moments in time to something that happens over a long period of time to drive business outcomes. The Shift Towards Engagement Marketing When we asked marketers what their top areas of investment were likely to be over the next 12 months, the #1 answer was “Shift to Digital Marketing and Engagement”. Engagement marketing is more than a series of transactions or click-through rates, it means building a real individual relationship, floor by floor, continuously over time, seamlessly across all of the channels and devices they use. It means paying attention to your customer and observing what they do, learning what they like, learning what they don’t like and guiding a journey that helps them get where they want to go (in a way that is consistent with your own business goals). Your approach and enthusiasm for your relationships with customers should channel the same approach and feelings you have when interacting with a friend in your personal life. Think about it: would you want to interact with a friend or person that is difficult to get a hold of, or never listens to you, is always talking about themselves, or is always stereotyping you based on just a few facts? Chances are, you wouldn’t want to keep giving business to a company that does those same things. On the other hand, when a company treats me the same way my friends seem to treat me, I can’t wait to give them more business. For example, emails from Amazon are relevant and helpful to me because they include smart recommendations based on my previous purchases—and because these products are clearly in line with what I’ve liked in the past, I look forward to hearing from Amazon on a regular basis. I get an email that says, “Hey Sanjay, just wanted you to know that those boots you were looking at just went on sale.” And, what do I do? I buy the boots and say “thanks so much for letting me know”! In a conversation with Seth Godin, he stressed the value of direct interactions with clients. While other departments can also provide insight, nothing is quite as valuable as direct feedback from customers using your products. Brands can now better track these insights and interactions across multiple channels thanks to the growth of marketing technology. I think, ultimately, this will become the new basis of competition. It used to be that firms competed on price—then, they competed on brand awareness—then, they started competing on experience (think, “my visit to Starbucks today”). But, now as customers increasingly want companies to get to know them and continue to advance the relationship, they will choose brands (and more specifically, people at those brands) that engage with them most effectively. Those companies will win, and the others will lose. Engagement is Putting Marketing in the Driver’s Seat The function that owns engagement within organizations is quickly changing. Our survey of marketers revealed that 75% of CMOs and senior marketing executives expect to own end-to-end customer engagement for their companies as the steward of the customer journey in the next three to five years. That’s up from just over a third who say they have that responsibility today! That puts marketing squarely at the center of revenue generation and company strategy. This is a giant and bold claim, and probably a little controversial too. But, I don’t see how it doesn’t happen if the goal for a company is to build a continuous, ongoing relationship with someone that shows them that we understand the broadest context of our relationship together. As a company, I want the people in functions like sales and service, for instance, to be very transactionally focused on creating a delightful experience for the customer in a single moment. I actually don’t want them spending their time thinking about the broad relationship and the arc of future interactions as that might compromise their ability to deliver right now for the company and the customer. Marketing will be uniquely suited to get above the transactional focus that is necessary in other functions—working in strong coordination with them—but, as the architect of the overall journey. It’s an exciting time to be a marketer because we get to have a closer relationship with customers and prospects than companies could in the past. How do YOU define engagement? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. And if you’re just joining us, learn what nearly 500 marketers see as the future of marketing, or read thoughts from visionaries likeGavin Heaton, Jim Stengel and John Hagel. Next week, we’ll talk about exactly how to bring the marketing department to the front of the customer engagement process.

By: Sanjay Dholakia Posted: February 24, 2015 | Engagement Marketing​ We’re living in a Marketing First world. If you haven’t yet experienced this shift for yourself—bear with me; it’s coming. Over the past few weeks, I’ve dug deeply into the results of “The Rise of the Marketer,” a survey from the Economist Intelligence Unit on behalf of Marketo, to highlight some of the study’s key insights. Last week, we explored the changing attitudes towards customer engagement. This week, I’d like to explore another finding from the survey—how marketers will play a larger role in company strategy. This is a huge development, and a dramatic shift in many organizations from how marketing was asked to contribute in the past. Marketers Will Earn a Position on the Starting Line In our survey, when asked if marketing would shape company strategies over the next three to five years, roughly 80% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that it would. As we heard in our previous conversation with visionary Seth Godin, marketers have historically been like runners in the final leg of the relay race. We take a product or service and determine how to help it reach the intended audience. But this approach is going to change. In fact, the race will be redesigned entirely, and it will no longer be a relay. Instead of being handed the baton, marketers will be in the race from the beginning, playing a greater role, and having more influence in setting strategy to determine which product, service, or market a company should even pursue. Why is this happening? Because, the shopping and buying process has changed forever. Buyers have more information at their fingertips than ever before and they are using it to self-educate. They’re reaching out to companies later and later in their decision-making cycles. As a result, if a company hopes to engage and influence that shopper, they have to do it earlier. This new digital, social, mobile world, is the domain of the marketer. That means that marketing is the only function that has a chance to influence buyers before they have all but made their decisions—putting the marketer in the driver’s seat, or at the starting line—either way, it’s Marketing First. Marketers everywhere should be excited about this. Across the board, marketing has the chance to play a bigger role in company strategy than ever before. Validating this fact, in our survey, “Strategy and Planning” was nearly tied for the top spot in terms of skills that marketers felt like they needed to develop in their organizations . When you look more closely at the data, you can see this change emerging even further; marketing teams are doingfar more, and they expect to expand their reach in the future. Here’s more from our survey: 75% of marketers believe they will be responsible for the end-to-end engagement and ownership over the customer’s lifetime—not just marketing, but support and continued engagement as well. More than 80% of marketers agree with the statement, “We need to change the structure and design of our marketing organization to meet the needs of our business over the next three to five years.” When asked which areas of business areas marketing teams will drive in the next three to five years, the answers were also intriguing: The focus on advertising and branding will decrease compared to today. More than 70% of respondents indicated that marketers are currently focused in these areas. When asked if their focus would remain the same in the future, only about 40% believed they would even have a person focused there. Instead, marketers will put more energy, time, and effort into areas such as strategy, digital, and customer lifecycle engagement.. From Participating to Leading In many ways, this is already happening. Marketers have been leading strategy for years in many organizations. And, it has been accelerating in recent years as marketers have become increasingly responsible for customer relationships, and, perhaps even more importantly, increasingly responsible for being the source of customer engagement data. The marketer knows the customer better than anyone else in this digital world. They are the keepers of customer data, which means they can spot trends before anyone else can—trends in customer behavior, needs, and interests. These are core components of a successful business strategy. Marketers Know Their Customers: Marketers share a deep intimacy with their customers that is simply unmatched by any other business function in a company. We understand what channels customers’ use, where they come from, and how their unique backgrounds contribute to their unique behaviors. This ability to resonate with customers is absolutely critical to business growth. Marketers Know How to Leverage Technology: It’s a digital-first world, and marketers have a stronger command of the most forward-thinking technology. We know and use the tools needed to better understand our audiences and reach them more effectively. Marketers Drive Revenue: With better technology and tools, marketers can effectively demonstrate our ability to drive revenue for our companies. With the data to prove our initiatives are driving revenue, we’ve earned a seat in the boardroom. If you are the steward of the customer and you are driving revenue, you probably should have a strong hand in leading company strategy—don’t you think? I, for one, am excited to see how this Marketing First world develops. How is this movement toward the next generation of marketing happening in your organizations? Do you have any insight or personal experiences to add? If so, please share in the comments. I’d love to hear what you think.

By: Sanjay Dholakia Posted: March 3, 2015 | Engagement Marketing At our core, marketers are storytellers. We love to tell stories that evoke emotion and pull at heartstrings. As I have shared my vision of the next era of marketing, I’ve talked about how marketing is changing. But, in this post let’s start with how it’s not changing when it comes to building a brand. Then, we can turn to how we, as marketers, willneed to change to build our brands in the next era of marketing. Storytelling Is Timeless In the era of engagement marketing, the essence of what makes you and me marketers won’t change. No matter how much digital, social, mobile we have in the world around us, Marketing will always need well-told evocative stories, and the ability to communicate to your audience’s needs, wants, and emotions. Think about Skype’s “Stay Together” campaign: It demonstrated how people are using technology to develop deep, emotional relationships across great distances. It was a shift from talking about their product and features to talking about the emotional benefits of using their product. In one story, two young girls, each born with one arm, connect from across the world to learn from one another’s experiences. They teach each other valuable lessons about self confidence, and share those iconic teenage-girl moments, like swapping hair and makeup tips. The two girls don’t just keep in touch—Skype allows them to become best friends, even while living on separate continents. The campaign is global and spans multiple channels, but it’s also personal and emotional. It connects with the audience. These kinds of campaigns—big narratives that span a wide range of experiences and stories—will still have a key place in the future of marketing, because we can all connect with them. Your Story As A Starting Place What will change about this type of storytelling in the era of engagement marketing, is that marketers will not use these stories to talk “at” their audience–in cinematic fashion, but rather as a way to initiate a conversation and elicit a response that they can listen to. They will need to create this type of storytelling over time–not just at a single moment, but rather a conversation and narrative that builds to create engagement. Customers will also create these stories with us, by engaging on or across social media, and other channels to share and tell stories. The story becomes part of a larger journey that a customer takes, and how the customer responds will help the marketer determine how best to talk with them. Technology Helps Stories This all means that a big change in the future will be the role of technology in storytelling. Technology augments who we are as marketers—where our core love of storytelling is enhanced by the ability to make the interaction last longer than a single point in time. Technology helps marketers engage with their audience, over time and in a personalized way. It’s the only way to do it at scale. And, it’s the only way to meet the customer everywhere they are—as opposed to just pushing a cool story at them through a single channel like TV. Marketers themselves recognize the power of technology to impact their success in the future—as demonstrated in the results from the recent survey conducted by the Economic Intelligence Unit on behalf of Marketo: More than 80% of marketers will rely on technology to engage customers in conversations and build advocacy and trust with customers. Furthermore, when you look at where marketers plan on spending budgeting dollars in the next three to five years, the picture becomes even clearer. Departments are budgeting to meet the customer everywhere they are–tying multiple places together in a dialogue. More than one-third will increase their budgets for social marketing, and roughly 30% will invest more in mobile marketing. Marketers Must Learn How to Do It In the survey conducted by the Economic Intelligence Unit on behalf of Marketo, we found that marketers were feeling a high degree of urgency to develop this new muscle and capability in their organizations. When CMOs and other marketing leaders were asked what skills were the top areas they needed to develop: The #1 answer, at 40%, was “digital engagement” The #2 answer, tied at 40%, was marketing operations and technology 27% indicated customer experience and engagement Building Ambitious Purpose and a Dialogue In an earlier post, I talked about how marketers will be responsible for the customer experience, but we haven’t yet talked about what that will look like. Customers are hyperconnected. They are also overloaded. I’ve seen studies that show that each of us are bombarded with nearly 3000 messages a day. Customers are looking for more relevant connections and ever greater meaning in their lives. Simply put, the bar is now even higher for marketers to get through. This evolution means we need to think bigger; we need to tap into ideas that inspire customers and help them find meaning in the world around them. We have to develop our “ambitious purpose”. This is what we have always tried to do as marketers. We just need to do it bigger now. And, we need to do it in very different ways. We need to effectively harness the tools that customers are using—meet them everywhere they are, on a sustained basis over time. If I think 90 seconds of a YouTube video, television commercial, digital ad, or entertaining social post is going to build my brand and real engagement, I probably will be sorely disappointed. Customers are now the keepers of our brand in this new digital world, and we need to build it with them. That requires a new and unique set of skills, namely the ability to harness new technology platforms and use them to engage customers. What’s old is new—very new. But, if we keep the core of what is true to marketing and embrace the need for new skills and capabilities in this new era of engagement marketing, our potential for growth and real brand connection is unbounded. What do you think? Has the rise in digital technology changed the stories marketers tell and the way we tell them? I’d love to hear your feedback in the comments.

By: Sanjay Dholakia Posted: March 10, 2015 | Engagement Marketing I’ve frequently said that marketing has changed more in the last five years than it has in the past 50. And, I think it is going to change even more in the next 5. Change has become the new normal, and as marketers, we need to adapt. Today’s customers have a 24/7 mentality. And our success is no longer just based on how clever we are, but how adept we are at connecting with customers at the speed of today’s digital world. When I’m on stage, I sometimes tell the story of my most recent move. I had a long list of things to do—like everyone else. There I was—in the passenger seat while my wife was driving—and I thought I would knock off one item off of my to-do list by trying to secure a mover. I searched on my phone, landed on some broker page, filled out my information, and off it went to 52 different moving companies. I got a call back in 5 minutes from one company. Then, over the next 2 weeks, I got 51 other emails and/or phone calls from the other companies. Which one do you think I gave the business to? The game was over before the other 51 companies even got to the stadium. The internet never sleeps. When we go to bed in California, people are eating breakfast in Norway. When Birdman won the Academy Award for Best Picture, everyone knew it within a matter of minutes. Trending hashtags, viral videos, SnapChat—all of these provide ways for people to relay information within seconds. We have entered into a real-time marketing environment. Keep up or perish. Marketers Don’t Create Customer Journeys…Customers Do This is the world I keep talking about—the Era of Engagement Marketing. When we are on the receiving end of real-time information from customers, and from events around the world, marketers can’t afford to be last. Marketers cannot be deluded into thinking that they “map out customer journeys” and that customers dutifully follow those paths—on the marketers’ timeline. Anyone suggesting that is doing marketers a great disservice. For one thing, the idea of mapping a journey is so 2000-and-late, and…slow. Marketers must be able to have a conversation in real-time. I often will describe it in talks as the equivalent of mapping out your conversation flow before you go to a cocktail party. Try sticking exactly to that script. How do you think your evening will go? Why would someone think it any different in interacting with customers? For the second thing, and even more importantly, customers create and guide their journeys—they have access to so much information, in so many places, that they are self-directed. Marketers have to be able to move with the discussion whenever and wherever their customers are—in real-time. We, as marketers, have to be always on—anticipating the start of the race and pacing ourselves to guide and react throughout the journey. In the Economic Intelligence Unit’s conversation with Jim Stengel, former CMO at P&G, a different metaphor came up. If marketing used to be an assembly line, with marketers coming in at the end to figure out how to sell a product, they are now in a trading room, he explained. Marketers need to be able to respond to events as they happen. A much discussed example is how Oreo responded during the blackout at the 2013 Super Bowl with “you can still dunk in the dark.” It was quick, witty, and memorable. It seized the correct moment. Even a day later, and that response would have been DOA and utterly forgettable. If you take a look at data from “The rise of the Marketer,” a survey conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit on behalf of Marketo, you can see these ideas emerge in the numbers. New Skills and Structures are Vital If you recall from my earlier post about the survey, more than 80% of marketing executives believe we will need to restructure marketing to better support business. Think about it—in an always-on, Marketing First world, how will our current marketing departments measure up? Most marketing teams aren’t equipped yet to respond to information 24/7, let alone proactively be communicating in an integrated way 24/7 When marketers need immediate responses, they won’t always be able to act based on a pre-established plan or journey that they dictated for their customers to follow. They will need to think quickly, and respond appropriately, in the right channel, at the right time and with the right message—at scale. Last week’s post highlighted salient statistics on this score—that when CMOs and other marketing leaders were asked what skills were the top areas they needed to develop, the #1 answer, at 40%,  was “digital engagement”, and the #2 answer, tied at 40%, was “marketing operations and technology.” Furthermore, 38% of marketing execs are looking for strategy and planning skills in the next 3-5 years. Among companies that see an urgent need for change, the number is even higher, climbing to 44%. Marketing leaders are recognizing that living in a real-time world requires much stronger strategic thinking as we all seek to adapt. As the way customers prefer to communicate evolves, marketers need to respond with speed and agility. And to do this, we need to invest in skills and technology that allow us to meet customers on their level, in real-time. In the next era of marketing—Engagement Marketing—agility will rule. Do you feel that the need for agile marketing tactics is on the rise? How is your marketing team keeping up with the always-on world? I’d love to hear what you think in the comments.

When creating a dialog box campaign type in RTP, you can set up the length of time (in seconds) the dialog box will display. The provided options include: 5, 10, 30, 60 seconds or Never which means the dialog box displays until clicked on. To customize the timeout and set it to any duration you want, see the following: Set the Timeout to be Never. Click on HTML. Edit the campaign’s HTML and insert the JavaScript below (also see here😞 <script>     (function(){         setTimeout(function(){             AITag.jQuery('#trwDialog').dialog('close');         }, 1000*            15 //seconds         );}()) </script> By default this JavaScript will add 15 seconds timeout to your campaign, you can change it to any duration you want by editing the code. Also see: Triggering RTP Campaigns with a Delay

In Feb14' version we've added RTP activities to the smart campaign standard filters and triggers. Therefore you should no longer use the old way of capturing URL parameters in order to measure your campaign performance and engagement. Please follow the instructions below to set up your smart campaigns in the new way: https://docs.marketo.com/display/DOCS/Define+a+Smart+List+for+Web+Personalization+Activities https://docs.marketo.com/display/DOCS/Define+a+Smart+List+for+Predictive+Content+Activities Cheers, Yanir.

Our Community Blogs are a great way for our customers to have a voice. We want you to share your the successes, innovations, experiences, and ideas with your peers to help build your personal brand and heighten your awareness. The Nation is a powerful tool, and it's at your fingertips, don't be afraid to use it! Not all of our blogs are open, some you have to participate and earn status to be able to contribute to ( Blog) while others are open and free for everyone to contribute to ( Blog)! To see a full list of the different blogs Marketo has (both on and off the Community) you can visit our ​ page in ​. When posting to one of our Community Blogs, here are a few guidelines to remember: Do not duplicate content, meaning do not simply cut and paste content from your personal blog and post it. See "Re-purposed content" below Have a thesis, POV, or CTA Feel free to link to your personal blog if it is relevant to the post Limit external links in your posts, as we aren't trying to drive users off of Community Keep it focused on Women in Business and how it relates to topics like digital marketing, marketing automation, engagement marketing, building teams, workplace equality, and more Do not sell or pitch products...we are monitoring these. Soliciting your personal products or services could result in removal from the blog Share something new and actionable. We want our reader to walk away with the sense that they learned something 400 - 500 words. Re-purposed content: You are welcome to re-purpose content you already have, as we understand you have day jobs and can't dedicate your life to solely writing new content for Marketo No more than 75% overlap with existing content. In other words, rewrite the content with the Marketo user in mind. Make it unique to the Marketo Community Different headline than original post Again, limit / omit external links. It's recommended you include these as part of your author description if you plan to include them at all Frequency: This blog is featured on our page, so we are always needing fresh and relevant content there consistently No spamming (don't post more than once a day) Recommendations: Write when you have time, but don't feel like you have to post right away. Store some content up, and come up with your own content calendar Keep an eye on the blog and post when you see it's becoming stale Comment and participate in other customers blogs, your input is valued greatly Pay attention to the what's hot in the industry Pay attention to what our customers are interested in by scanning conversations in ​ & ​ Ready to post? Find your blog by viewing and get started! If you have questions, let us know! HAPPY BLOGGING!

Written by  , one of Marketo's Champions. I often get asked where I do my research on various marketing automation and digital marketing topics. When I first started writing this post, I wanted to break out the top 5 blogs—then I gave up. It’s like picking players for the baseball Hall of Fame with only 1 pick. The fact is there are a ton of great resources you can lean on for digital marketing and technology content. In the end, I broke out some of the blogs based on what I consider to be the core part of digital marketing technology–that’s marketing automation and its effect on driving leads through the funnel. Content is the fuel that fills that marketing automation engine so you’ll find several content blogs on the list. And yes, there are a couple miscellaneous blogs included because the content is so good. What’s not included: There are some great general marketing, SEO and social blogs but they are not included in this list. And yes, I’m probably missing a bunch—I apologize in advance. If there are sites you find useful, please note them in the comments. A special thanks goes out to our content manager Alyssa Reeves who helped pull together this nearly 2,000-word post. The Blog Categories I did however break up the blogs into categories. Top Overall – Expert Blogs. These blogs may fall across several categories but they rise to the top in the content they provide. Marketing Automation/Technology Vendor Blogs. There are hundreds of vendor digital technology blogs out there. I focused on marketing automation blogs as I view these platforms as the engine that everything else feeds into. Professional Services and Agency Blogs. Like the vendors, these blogs put out some great best practice content. Blogs with a Marketo Twist. I am a little biased to Marketo so blogs that highlight Marketo get a little extra attention. Top Overall – Expert Blogs These blogs rise to the top for blogs to check out. There is some overlap with the agencies but the way I broke it out…if I think of the leader before the agency, the site falls into this bucket. Otherwise, the site drops into the Services category. In alphabetical order….. 1) BeachHead Marketo Champion Steve Moody and his team give tips on everything marketing automation with a Marketo focus. @AskBeachhead Visit Site 2) Brian Solis Blog Brian Solis is a digital analyst, anthropologist, and futurist. Not sure I have ever seen those three words together. Brian’s blog focuses on digital marketing’s effect on transforming business. Brian’s blog is consistently ranked in the Top 10 of the Ad Age Power 150, and ranks among the top 1% of all blogs tracked by Technorat @briansolis Visit Site 3) B2B Marketing Insider Michael Brenner is the Head of Strategy for the leading content marketing platform, NewsCred. He created his blog to focus on emerging business and marketing strategy topics such as content marketing, lead generation, search marketing, digital media, and social media. B2B Marketing Insider is dedicated to sharing the ideas, topics and marketing strategies that drive real results. @BrennerMichael Visit Site 4) Chief Martec Scott Brinker runs this blog on everything marketing technology including Marketing Automation. If you have seen that crazy Marketing Tech Landscape Supergraphicwith 1,876 vendors, that’s Scott’s baby. @chiefmartec Visit Site 5) Content Marketing Institute Content is what fuels the marketing automation engine and CMI covers everything related to content. Over 100K subscribers. @CMIContent Visit Site 6) Convince and Convert Jay Baer is a marketing visionary who has worked with more than 700 brands. His blog is one of the top content marketing sites on the web. @jaybaer Visit Site 7) Duct Tape Marketing Content is what fuels the funnel and John Jantsch gives useful advice on how to create content that drives brand. @ducttape Visit Site 😎 Etumos Ed Unthank loves his whiteboard and puts it to great use bringing some key marketing automation concepts to life. Posts about once a month and the posts tend to be on the technical Marketo side. @EtumosLLC Visit Site 9) Fill the Funnel Miles Austin spent 30 years in B2B Sales and Leadership roles. In addition to helping business with their demand gen needs, he now writes blog posts on email marketing for Fill the Funnel. Miles posts about Sales & Marketing tools and ways that they can be applied in your business. He also has a steady following of 11K. @milesaustin Visit Site 10) The Funnelholic Craig Rosenberg is the co-founder and Chief Analyst of TOPO. His blog was created so he can have fun talking about all things revenue. The Funnelholic focuses on sales, marketing and everything in between. @funnelholic Visit Site 11) Heinz Marketing Matt Heinz is all over the place speaking on the importance of digital marketing. His blog covers everything from marketing automation to best practices in sales. @HeinzMarketing Visit Site 12) KissMetrics Although this site is not marketing automation at all, I had to drop it somewhere because their blog is just so good. They have great articles on analytics. @KISSmetrics Visit Site 13) Marketing Land Marketing Land is a general digital marketing site that covers a wide variety of topics. It also has a great marketing technology section. @Marketingland Visit Site 14) Marketing Profs One of the biggest marketing blogs/portals on the web run by Ann Handley and team. Not marketing automation focused but it’s a must read for content marketers. 600K+ members. @MarketingProfs Visit Site 15) Marketing Rockstar Guides Don’t expect fancy graphics but Marketing Rockstar Guides gets my vote for the top Marketo-focused tips and tricks blog out there. Targeted at the Marketo practitioner. It is run by Marketo Champion, Josh Hill, and you get a 844+ page guide for signing up for blog updates–try reading that on the beach. @jdavidhill Visit Site 16) Marketing Tech Blog This blog was founded by Douglas Karr and has over 75K subscribers.  It covers mainly marketing in new media but has a section focused on marketing automation. @douglaskarr Visit Site 17) Money Ball Marketer Channeling your inner Brad Pitt, Moneyball Marketer is Zak Pines’s blog on data-driven demand generation and marketing best practices. Great blog to check out once a month as it updates once or twice monthly. @MoneyballMktr Visit Site 18) Relevance Chad Pollitt cofounded this site and grew it to 50K subscribers in six months (Read amazing story here). The blog brings in industry experts to share expertise on content marketing and promotion. @relevance Visit Site 19) RevEngineInsider You are reading this post so you already know marketing technology is important to us. We cover everything digital that is related to moving leads through the funnel. At a deeper level, we also cover top tips for organizations leveraging Marketo. Primary contributor is Marketo Champion Jeff Coveney. @RevEngineMarket Visit Site 20) The Sales Blog Digital blog with a Sales focus. Anthony Iannarinno is a publishing machine and gives great Sales process tips EVERY day. I keep waiting for him to miss a day but he’s the Cal Ripken Jr. of Sales blog writing. Technology is not a big focus of Anthony’s but his Sales process stuff is vital to overall marketing automation and funnel success. @iannarino Visit Site 21) The Sales Benchmark Index Blog Here’s another site that doesn’t quite fit into “digital marketing technology.” However SBI’s content on Sales and Marketing methodologies and best practices is central to any company trying to develop a marketing funnel. Updates daily. SBI delivers some great  podcasts too such as this one: Case Study: Aligning the Marketing Strategy to the Skills of the Marketing Staff @MakingTheNumber Visit Site 22) The Sales Lion Blog Mark Sheridan runs this inbound marketing blog with a Hubspot focus. Great podcasts also. In six years, Mark went from pool seller to content marketing king. That’s a career path you wouldn’t expect.Read more on Mark’s pool story success. @TheSalesLion Visit Site 23) Sirius Decisions Sirius Decisions is where all the smart people go to try to get smarter about optimizing the revenue funnel. You sometimes need a MIT degree to completely get all the concepts but their forward thinking enables you to plan for the future. Jay Famico is the go-to guy for technology and services so make sure to follow his posts. @JayFamico @siriusdecisions Visit Site 24) SmartInsights Blog This blog (and membership site) offers tons ofactionable digital marketing advice. There are plenty of planning templates, ebooks and online training courses. Some are no cost, others have a fee. There is a no-cost weekly newsletter I’d recommend signing up for. 80K+ members. Co-founded by Dr. Dave Chaffey, Dan Bosomworth and Stu Miller. @SmartInsights Visit Site 25) Topo Blog Topo Blog is UK-based and covers a mixture of sales, marketing and technology data and research. @scottalbro Visit Site 26) Top Rank Marketing Lee Odden’s blog is another extremely strong content marketing focused blog. I almost didn’t include it because the site is heavy on the social flavor and light on digital technology. The content stuff is just too good to leave off. Attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors and has over 50,000 subscribers. @toprank @leeodden Visit Site

The CMO behind Equinox’s bold and provocative ad campaign

AOL’s CMO Allie Kline talks strategy, content and code

Why Cisco CMO Blair Christie embraces the Internet of Things

Q&A with Kevin Krone, CMO of Southwest

Lessons for Transforming the Way Your Company Communicates

Ardath Albee, B2B Marketing Strategist Marketing Interactions, Inc, presentation from Marketo Summit 2015

Christian Martinez​ provided these: Alt + D = Design Studio Alt + L = Lead Database Alt + M = Marketing Activities Ctrl + Z + T = Open the last close tab... it helps a lot Any others?

INDUSTRY NEWS Mobile In Mind: Thoughts on the Present and Future of Mobile Marketing Forbes Across all industries, brands are spending more time on researching and implementing mobile marketing strategies. From mobile advertising and mobile wallets to mobile sales mechanisms and reward-based mobile advertising, executives are realizing the current benefits and planning for the future opportunities mobile has in store. Interestingly, researchers have estimated that consumers interact with their mobile devices over 100 times a day. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to determine at what point during these interactions is the consumer most likely to engage with mobile advertising. Internet of Things Data Could Fuel Ad Targeting Ad Age IOT has promised to turn people’s everyday interactions with everyday items into data for logistical and marketing applications. The industry is approaching the next stage of connected appliances and food packaging. This means marketers need to figure out where all this information will go and how it will be used. Marketers Should Use Data to Build Trust with Customers, Says Report by EY and Forbes Insights Forbes Customers have more information available than ever before to assist them in their buying decisions, and winning customer loyalty has become an increasing challenge for companies. Less than a third of CMOs and marketing executives fully understand where trust is eroded. In fact, 51 percent of executives believe that there is a significant opportunity in the use of analytics for customer insight and in expanding the use of external data sources. However, only 37% say they have the capability to use analytics to tailor communications and outreach to the customer. This is a low number considering that many marketing executives see personalization as the next big trend in marketing. Age of the Data-Devoted Marketer Information Age Big data is disrupting the way marketers understand and interact with their audience. However, while analytics will help to identify targets, and understand customers, it must never be at the expense of creativity. This means having the ability to act intuitively and not necessarily because it’s laser-targeted at a key audience. The article highlights that in order to be successful today, marketers must wear many different hats. This means that they are analytical and data-driven, while having a strong grasp of brand, storytelling and experiential marketing.

Once a week or so , we will try and share 'what's in the news' about Marketing Automation, Digital Marketing and Engagement Marketing... Maybe even Big Data too. How Marketers Can Seize the Mobile Moment CIO A new report by Forrester says marketers and advertisers cannot afford to shun mobile. People are consuming mobile content more than ever. However, only two percent of online shoppers want to see offers from brands on their mobile devices. One of the mistakes marketers make is delivering content that markets products. The smartphone is very personal, and mobile users don't want to turn their device into a billboard for advertisers. Marketers who don't heed this advice are doomed to get abysmal conversion rates. How to Create a Data-Driven Marketing Team Computer World To succeed as a data ready enterprise, companies are faced with the imperative of building a data-driven marketing team that can put massive amounts of data to work. Interestingly, the biggest obstacle to creating a data-driven culture is a lack of leadership. Most people are afraid of data and are afraid of being involved in situations where they don’t know the numbers and don’t understand how the data represents their business. 80 Percent of Marketers Will Increase Digital Budgets in the Year Ahead Direct Marketing News According to the Direct Marketing Association’s “2015 Statistical Fact Book,” four out of five marketers will increase their spend on digital this year and 45 percent will focus on social media marketing as their biggest area of opportunity. Email marketing came in second as it was seen as continuing to deliver exceptional ROI because people continued to respond positively to the commercial messages that reached their inboxes. Most importantly, 77 percent of respondents said they'd likely buy more if their mail was personalized, and 69 percent said they were willing to share more personal information in return for that relevancy.