SiriusView

SiriusView: Marketing Automation

Platforms 2015
This SiriusView compares leading
vendors within the b-to-b marketing
automation platform (MAP) space
Although all MAPs offer similar
functionality, differences are evident
when MAPs are evaluated through
various use case scenarios
An organizations MAP choice
should be based on its use cases for
marketing automation

All b-to-b marketers understand the value of lead nurturing, lead scoring/
prioritization and SiriusDecisions Demand Waterfall and tactic-level reporting.
Indeed, it would be difficult to find a b-to-b marketing department that does
not engage in these standard practices. This makes marketing automation
platforms (MAPs) an essential component of every b-to-b organizations
marketing infrastructure.
In this SiriusView, we evaluate MAP vendors based on their features and
functionality, usability, vendor viability, and service and support. The
evaluations are based on vendor briefings and demos (including specific
use cases requested by SiriusDecisions), in-depth surveys filled out by the
vendors, interviews with select customers, and data and information from
SiriusDecisions client inquiries and benchmarks. See the full description of our
SiriusView methodology on the SiriusDecisions Web site.

Evaluation Criteria

Scoring was based on the demonstration of the eight use case scenarios
outlined below, defined by SiriusDecisions, as well as vendor usability, viability,
service and support. Vendors were required to state whether the functionality
demonstrated is contained within the entry-level basic solution or in an
offering at a different level. Vendors may have satisfied the use cases with
third-party integration or directly through their offering, and this is stated
where applicable in the analysis of each vendor. MAP vendors included in this
SiriusView met the following criteria related to product/solution maturity and
overall vendor health:
Role administration and permissions. The ability to support centralized
and decentralized marketing automation tasks (e.g. demand center vs. field
marketing responsibilities) through user role assignments that govern read/
write/access permissions for contact data, content assets and programs.
Web personalization. The ability to dynamically personalize Web visitors
online or mobile experiences based on their MAP profiles.
Lead scoring. The ability to score and prioritize leads for sales engagement.
Nurture programs for qualifying demand. The ability to qualify demand
using nurture programs (e.g. pre-marketing-qualified lead nurture, recycle
nurture, trial nurture).

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Multi-channel nurture. The ability to execute MAP
programs that rely on delivery mechanisms beyond email
(e.g. mobile, search engine optimization/search engine
marketing, Web personalization, social, content syndication,
webinars, retargeting, chat, text, print advertising, live
events, direct mail, telemarketing).

revenue size, trending and composition; and if and how

they are raising capital to finance their growth (e.g. venture
capital, private or public equity). When assessing strategic
viability, we consider customer references, number of
technology partners, visibility in the marketplace (e.g. press
and industry awards) and whether the vendor has recently
been acquired or has acquired other companies.

Testing. The ability to test hypotheses and improve

programs and performance though A/B and multivariate
testing.

Service and support. Gaining the maximum value from a

MAP is contingent on the time, cost and complexity involved
in installing or configuring the solution, training users
and obtaining ongoing support. We elicited feedback on
the quality and responsiveness of these services for each
vendor, as well as the pricing structure related to support.
We also evaluated how training and support services are
provided (e.g. phone, email, Web, on-site and/or video) and
to whom they are provided (e.g. marketing personnel, thirdparty marketing agencies).

Sales enablement. The ability to support sales qualification

by providing sales reps with insight into buyer behavior and
engaging with prospects on their behalf.
Measurement and reporting. The ability to measure
tactic-level performance and provide stakeholders with rolespecific dashboards and reports (e.g. marketing ROI, tactic
and marketing channel performance, lead stage conversion,
velocity, revenue contribution metrics).

Marketing Automation Key Trends

The percentage of b-to-b organizations using marketing

automation continues to climb, as does the number of
marketers who understand how a MAP can be used to drive
demand creation performance. In addition, SiriusDecisions
has noted five significant shifts: two involving marketing
automation marketplace trends and three centering on
marketing automation features.

Beyond features and functionality, MAP vendors were also

scored on the following three criteria:
Usability. This component evaluates the overall usability
and accessibility of the MAP application. In most
organizations, marketing automation is managed by an
individual or team that must also manage additional and
competing responsibilities. Logical process steps and screen
layout are important in delivering a positive user experience.
Nearly all MAP vendors stress their platforms ease of
use, but the actual degree of usability differs significantly
based on the skill level and experience of the end user. We
evaluated the level of effort required by a non-technical
marketer to undertake the use cases mentioned above. We
also examined the ease of system administration, as well
as the skill level required to use the tool to access other
integrated applications (e.g. sales force automation [SFA]
platforms, business intelligence [BI] tools).

Marketplace Trends
Acquisition growing pains. Over the last three years, the
marketing automation market has rapidly consolidated
(e.g. Oracle acquired Eloqua, Salesforce.com purchased
ExactTarget/Pardot, IBM acquired Silverpop, Adobe bought
Neolane, SalesFusion purchased LoopFuse). However,
simply acquiring a company doesnt immediately meld the
organizations (and products) together. Product portfolios need
to be rationalized, user interfaces streamlined and messaging
unified. This has not happened in marketing automation,
so customers, prospects and many MAP sales reps lack a
clear understanding of the vendors future roadmap. Though
the level of clarity will improve in 2016, this ambiguity will
continue, especially for vendors new to the MAP marketplace.

Viability. The purchase of a MAP is both a financial

commitment and a skills investment. There is no way
to eliminate the risk of technology vendors going out
of business, being acquired or ceasing the support of a
solution. This risk makes vendor viability an important
selection criterion. When assessing financial viability, we
consider how long vendors have been in business; their

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Predictive lead scoring. Lead scoring is a core capability of

MAPs; however, the use of predictive lead scoring providers
has grown rapidly. Thus far, marketing automation vendors
have opted to partner with predictive lead scoring vendors

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rather than securing predictive scoring capabilities by building or acquiring

them. SiriusDecisions believes this will shift in the coming year; MAP vendors
will begin incorporating predictive capabilities into their core offerings, driven
by customer demand and/or eroding wallet share.

Feature Trends
Usability. Previously, only technically inclined marketers were capable of
actively working in a MAP. User interfaces were full of pop-up windows, file
structures were complex, and creating a landing page or form required HTML
expertise. Most MAP vendors have made significant improvements to their
user interface and user experience (UI/UX), so non-technical marketers can
now safely design and execute demand creation programs using a MAP.
Surprisingly, not all MAP vendors have focused on their UI/UX. As a result,
their rate of acquiring new customers and retaining existing clients has
plummeted. These vendors will continue to bleed market share until their
senior management teams realize that product usability is not a nice-to-have
but a must-have in todays MAP marketplace.
Ad integration. B-to-b marketers are beginning to realize that they require
better-targeted communication channels beyond email to relay their messages
to the market. To expand reach and improve response rates, they are
increasing their investment in digital advertising. In response, MAP vendors
have started to integrate, and offer as add-on modules, access to demand

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management, advertising and lead management platforms that augment
anonymous visitor data with first-party data. Opening up connectivity and
linking these technologies gives b-to-b marketers a more defined audience
that can more effectively be targeted with ads and expanded nurture tactics
beyond traditional email. SiriusDecisions expects that advertising technology
and marketing automation will continue to merge, giving marketers a complete
data picture of their digital buyers.
Advanced analytics. Without the ability to measure, an organization cannot
report on its results, let alone understand how close it is to reaching its goal.
Over the last two years, MAP vendors have focused on funnel reporting,
campaign and conversion analysis, as well as automated testing (e.g. A/B,
multivariate testing). As the MAP market has matured, so too have MAP
vendors analytic capabilities and offerings. Look-alike modeling, pattern
matching and next-best-offer capabilities have emerged as feature sets in
several MAPs, most notably in MAPs that target enterprise-level organizations,
making it easier to export data from the MAP to feed other analytic
environments. SiriusDecisons anticipates that MAP vendors will package these
advanced capabilities in a way that makes them easier to use in demand
creation programs.

Vendor Analysis

Act-On

For smaller organizations or agencies that require a cost-effective solution

and place a premium on enabling sales and marketing with flexible reports and
in-workflow intelligence Act-On should be included on the list of vendors to
consider. However, since Act-Ons offering is focused on small and mediumsized businesses (SMBs), it may not meet the needs of global enterprises or
organizations that place a premium on lead scoring precision.

Differentiators
Marketing funnel reports. While most MAPs provide funnel reports, they are
often difficult to create or offer limited flexibility. Act-On allows users to easily
configure and manage multiple funnels. Act-On marketing funnels are flexible,
allowing marketers to track items like key conversion stages (e.g. unknownto-known visitors, Demand Waterfall stages). Using data from Act-On and an
organizations SFA system, these reports provide insight into the effectiveness
of marketing and sales efforts.
Sales enablement. Within any Web-based environment, Act-On Anywhere
provides sales intelligence and marketing automation functionality without
requiring users to log in or to leave the application they are working in. For
example, sales reps using LinkedIn can use Act-On Anywhere to understand
how their network has engaged with their organizations Web properties
and content. Organizations using Gmail can easily access a contacts activity

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history and engagement. Conversations with potential buyers or customers
become more relevant since behavioral and profile context are provided. With
a minimized need to do research within multiple systems, sales becomes more
productive.
MAP partitioning. Agencies and marketing organizations can partition access
to contact data, assets (e.g. emails, forms), programs and specific roles or
reporting lines. For example, the organization may elect to create a partition
based on geography, preventing non-European marketers from accessing
any programs or associated assets maintained by the European team and
preventing other regions from accessing European contacts. The solution
allows the sharing of best practices, landing pages, email templates and
programs across multiple instances. This creates efficiencies necessary for
organizations with limited bandwidth and/or skilled resources.

Challenges
Depth of features. Act-On offers many features for inbound and outbound
marketing automation. However, the application is not as well rounded as it
could be in terms of the flexibility of role creation, testing functionality and
linear programs. Many organizations may seek a higher level of security and
flexibility than Act-On offers for creating roles and assigning permissions.
Although Act-On offers 12 privileges that may be assigned to system users, the
administrator cannot modify an entire group or role-based persona (e.g. field
marketing, sales).
Lead scoring flexibility. Act-On provides marketers the ability to incorporate
frequency and recency elements into their lead scoring models. However,
marketers cannot modify or customize the decay rules. The system
automatically decays a score after 90 days and completely resets the score
after 120 days. By artificially selecting dates, instead of using buyer behavior
or typical sales cycle length, this approach does not offer the marketer much
flexibility.

Adobe Campaign

Adobe Campaign is available as standalone a MAP, but offers considerable

value for medium-size and large organizations with existing Adobe Marketing
Cloud solutions and the need to manage a distributed, global marketing
function. Its on-premise deployment option also affords an added benefit for
organizations that need to address strict security or data privacy requirements.
Smaller organizations that do not plan to have a dedicated MAP administrator
and those without highly standardized marketing processes should consider
other solutions.

Differentiators
Adobe platform. Organizations with existing Adobe infrastructure can benefit
from using Adobe Campaign, as it includes Core Services (e.g. Profiles and
Audiences, Shared Assets, Activation, Mobile, Exchange, Collaboration, User
Management and Administration) that are shared across all eight solutions

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of the Adobe Marketing Cloud (i.e. Adobe Campaign, Adobe Media Optimizer,
Adobe Social, Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Target, Adobe Analytics,
Adobe Primetime, Adobe Audience Manager). Multi-functional groups can
share assets as well as audience and profile information as well as personas
through the cloud vs. needing to manually bring data into the system
(e.g. demand marketers can access and share the same assets as product
marketing or strategic communications).
Multivariate testing. The ability to test emails on multiple conditions offers
marketers greater efficiency in determining which combination performs best.
Adobe Campaign goes beyond the traditional A/B test by allowing additional
variations of combinations (e.g. A/B/C/D) to be tested. Marketers can configure
four segments (e.g. subject lines, names, graphics) against each other and
automatically test response levels (e.g. best open rate, best click rate, best
conversion rate, lowest opt-out rate) to identify the winning combination.
On-premise. Unlike most other MAP vendors evaluated in this report, Adobe
Campaigns product is also available as an on-premise offering. Organizations
with strict security or data privacy requirements, or those in highly regulated
industries (e.g. financial services, healthcare, government) may find this to be a
suitable choice, since the storage of confidential data on-premise can decrease
security risks.

Challenges
Usability. The Adobe Campaign user interface features a legacy Windows-like
environment. Pop-up windows for more trivial user actions (e.g. selecting rule
conditions, general queries, viewing lead score details) appear instead of more
functional split-screen views. While marketers can create emails, forms and
landing pages through a what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) interface,
Adobe Campaign does not offer drag-and-drop functionality.
B-to-c focus. Adobe and Neolane (i.e. the MAP Adobe acquired in 2013)
both have heritage in b-to-c marketing, and Adobe Campaigns campaign
management capabilities are optimized for this audience. Much of the
terminology used within the platform has a b-to-c orientation (e.g. crosschannel campaign orchestration, shared audiences), as do its training
materials. Only about 20 percent of Adobe Campaigns customers are in the
b-to-b space. In addition, a considerable amount of Adobe Campaigns partner
and consultancy network is composed of advertising-related partners vs.
demand creation agencies.

ClickDimensions

Designed to run natively within Microsoft Dynamics CRM, ClickDimensions

is a good choice for SMBs currently using the Microsoft Dynamics platform.
Integration is quick and easy, allowing marketers to leverage data within their
SFA system for tactic-level reporting, targeting and segmentation. However,
large companies seeking advanced functionality or companies not currently
using Microsoft Dynamics CRM should assess other options.
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Differentiators
Email design. ClickDimensions offers a variety of enhanced email design
features. Users have the option to select from four email design environments,
including a wizard-based block, custom HTML, freestyle (WYSIWYG), and a dragand-drop editor. This flexibility enables marketers with varying preferences
and skill sets to create emails within the platform. Once in the environment
of their choice, users can use a built-in photo editor, spam filter and inbox
previewer, which tests the look and feel of emails in 40 different devices and
applications.
Rapid implementation. Since its embedded in Microsoft Dynamics CRM,
ClickDimensions can be directly integrated into the Microsoft environment
within 15 minutes. Access to every object within the SFA system (e.g. tasks,
rules, workflows, contacts, lead, opportunities) is provided. Similarly, email
marketing, Web analytics, survey and social data are seamlessly pushed back
into Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Quick deployment allows users to operate the
solution almost instantaneously with limited technical resources.
Usability. The look and feel of ClickDimensions is consistent with Microsoft
Dynamics because of its native integration to the platform. ClickDimensions
enables users to create emails, registration forms and nurture streams with
drag-and-drop capabilities. Organizations with strong expertise in Microsoft
Dynamics CRM will experience a shallower learning curve, helping establish
full utilization within a short timeframe and benefitting from existing resources
(e.g. the organizations Dynamics administrator).

Challenges
Requires Microsoft Dynamics. ClickDimensions is built specifically for the
Microsoft Dynamics platform and is not a standalone solution. For companies
using Microsoft Dynamics for CRM and ClickDimensions for their MAP, the
decision to discontinue the use of Microsoft Dynamics would automatically
preclude the continued use of ClickDimensions.
Depth of capabilities. As ClickDimensions focuses on small and mediumsized organizations seeking a standard marketing automation product, it
doesnt offer the depth of features and functionality in more advanced MAP
systems. For example, it doesnt offer the capability to dynamically personalize
a Web visitors online or mobile experience. Its lead scoring capabilities do
not consider recency (i.e. buyer behavior within a certain period of time) or
frequency (i.e. how often the behavior is exhibited) when scoring a buyers
activities.

eTrigue

For small and medium-sized organizations, or divisions of larger companies

that require a cost-effective solution with advanced functionality to support
smaller marketing teams, eTrigue offers considerable value and should be
on the short list of vendors to consider. Enterprises looking to standardize on

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one MAP across all divisions, or organizations with a large number of sales
resources seeking a MAP for small-net fishing or personalized outreach may
want to consider other options.

Differentiators
Evaluation and pricing. Eliminating the need for negotiation, eTrigue
offers a straightforward, low-entry pay one price model. Every feature and
function including live support is offered for one price based on the number
of contacts in the database. Unlimited features include emails, landing pages,
visitors, campaigns/workflows and sales, marketing and administrative users.
Additionally, eTrigue offers marketing organizations a free trial that allows
users 30-day access, providing the opportunity to quickly learn and get started.
Robust features for small teams. eTrigue specifically focuses on the SMB
market and departments within large organizations. However, its features
provide small marketing teams advanced functionality to help them achieve
their demand creation goals. eTrigues reporting capabilities enable real-time
insight into lead stage conversion, opportunity data and campaign analysis.
Marketers can report on opportunity velocity by time and lead source.
Lead alerts. While most MAP lead alerts are created and configured by the
marketing organization, eTrigue takes this one step further. The product
enables sales reps to completely customize and configure the format of their
own lead alerts, making it less likely that alerts will be ignored. Any data from
the SFA system or MAP can be included in the alert to meet the individual
needs of multiple sales functions (e.g. tele reps require different lead alerts vs.
field sales reps). For example, an alert can be set up within a campaign, which
informs sales that a prospect has reached a certain stage and should follow up
after a webinar (e.g. by filling out a form). For organizations with small teams
and minimal lead volume, this can greatly increase efficiency and productivity,
since reps do not having to log into multiple systems to research lead details.

Challenges
Access control. eTrigue has built several innovative features into its platform
(e.g. sales reps can add leads directly into eTrigue using derived data, opt-in/
opt-out controls can be turned on and off). However, these capabilities do not
have guardrails, so it would be easy for an admin or sales user to disrupt the
marketing and/or sales process and risk the enterprises data privacy. For this
reason, marketing teams with limited technical skills should use caution, as
they could easily jeopardize deliverability, program performance and privacy
compliance.
Market visibility. Although eTrigue has 450 customers and is a viable option
for companies with smaller marketing teams, it is not often included on the
short list of small and medium-sized organizations that seek a MAP. Low

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visibility in the market and low product awareness among prospective buyers
inhibits eTrigues potential for growth and market penetration.

HubSpot

For small and medium-sized organizations focused on inbound demand

creation and seeking an all-in-one marketing platform that covers marketing
automation, Web site, social media monitoring and publishing, HubSpot should
be placed on the short list of vendors to consider. For organizations that seek
advanced marketing automation capabilities or large organizations that
require a single, global MAP implementation other MAPs are likely a
stronger fit.

Differentiators
Social selling tools. Many marketers struggle to determine how much lead
information it is acceptable to provide to sales. HubSpots Social Inbox enables
marketers to give sales reps their own set of social monitoring and prospecting
tools. Salespeople can create special social monitoring lists of their own
opportunities, allowing them to easily prioritize the social interactions that
matter most. Furthermore, an email or push notification alert can be set up
if a prospect mentions a keyword. HubSpot also provides sales with a simple
timeline view of all activities from first through last touch, providing a view of
who is engaging and which watering holes they visit most often.
In-product prescriptive coaching. The user has an interactive experience,
since dynamic prompts in Hubspot guide the marketer through the application
with proactive hints, descriptions and built-in recipes for success. Users can
choose from various pre-built templates that include automated workflows,
pre-defined reports, emails and lists. HubSpot offers a searchable knowledge
base, in addition to direct access to support via email and phone, and a
callback feature that allows marketers to provide details online, then receive a
phone call with answers.
Advanced personalization. Dynamic content and personalization is native
to HubSpot and provides an anonymous visitor with an optimized online or
mobile experience with tailored forms, videos, images, and templates. Firsttime anonymous visitors are served default content based on multiple factors
(e.g. country, device type, referral source), and second-time visitors or known
visitors are served personalized messages based on list membership or
lifecycle stage (e.g. subscriber, lead, opportunity, customer).

Challenges
Roles and permissions. HubSpot offers seven preconfigured user roles (e.g.
marketer, content creator, business analyst, sales rep and administrator).
Although these default roles cannot be customized across the board or
renamed, individual users roles can be fine-tuned to allow read-only,
read-and-write, or read-write-and-publish access to specific tools within the
product (e.g. email, blogs, site pages, landing pages). Teams with unique or
complex permission structures may find HubSpots options unsuitable.
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Market positioning. Although HubSpot supports divisions of large
enterprises, its client base is primarily comprised of organizations of fewer
than 200 employees. Therefore, HubSpot is positioned by competitors and in
the marketplace as a marketing automation solution that focuses on inbound
demand creation to small organizations. This inhibits HubSpots growth
potential among large b-to-b organizations.

Silverpop, an IBM Company

For organizations operating in an existing IBM technology ecosystem that seek

to build and expand their relationship with IBM, Silverpop Engage should be at
the top of the short list. The platform offers pricing by email volume sent, for
those that are conscious of their database size. However, organizations looking
for an easy-to-use program builder for multi-channel nurture programs, may
want to consider other options.

Differentiators
Mobile marketing. Silverpop Engage offers strong integration with mobile
applications with its Mobile Customer Engagement solution. The solution
can push dynamic content to a mobile application and capture in-application
activity. For example, companies that create applications for customer events
can generate personalized in-application experiences (e.g. promote featured
sessions to different user types) and integrate data from the event application
back into Silverpop Engage (e.g. automatically route contacts based on their
interactions) for enhanced targeting and personalization.
Pricing flexibility. For organizations that are conscious of their database size,
Silverpop Engage is the only enterprise MAP vendor that offers pricing based
on monthly, quarterly or annual email volume sent, rather than by the number
of contacts in the database. Pricing based on primary email sends allows an
unlimited number of database contacts, while pricing based on database
contacts allows an unlimited number of email sends.
Market presence. IBM has a strong brand and market presence, deep IT
experience, a robust partner ecosystem, and global support and services
offerings. IBMs acquisition of Silverpop in 2014 positions the company for
future marketing automation success in the space.

Challenges
Messaging. Since IBMs acquisition of Silverpop, existing and new customers
have found the messaging, branding and positioning of the platform confusing.
Those considering purchasing the MAP find it difficult to determine what
it does and doesnt include. For example, the company communicated
that the IBM Marketing Cloud is built on Silverpop Engage however, it is
unclear whether its necessary to purchase the IBM Marketing Cloud when
an organization only wants to purchase as a standalone MAP. The company
is currently in the process of rebranding and positioning marketing cloud
packages, as well as their on-premise solutions.

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Program design and user permissions. Silverpop Engages program
designer takes a filmstrip-like approach (i.e. left to right) to designing demand
creation programs. This works well for simple programs, but for more complex
programs (e.g. multiple decision rules) it becomes unwieldy as the number
of rows (sequences of activities) increases. The way in which contacts enter,
transition and are dispositioned in a program flow is not clearly visualized
for the user. In addition, though Silverpop can manage user permissions at
an individual user level, including the ability to restrict access and assets (e.g.
email, landing page, forms) through foldering, the platform is not able to group
users into roles (e.g. admin, creative staff, reporting user) and make role-based
changes, which makes user administration more difficult for companies with
a high number of users.

Marketo

Marketo is a strong candidate for larger organizations considering marketing

automation for the first time or those that need to switch to a solution that
offers advanced capabilities and sales applications. However, organizations
with limited marketing technology skillsets and resources or more advanced
lead scoring needs should consider alternative options.

Differentiators
Nurture program builder. Marketos Customer Engagement Engine makes
it easy for users to build modular nurture streams aligned to buyer personas,
stages of the buyers journey and solutions of interest. Users can easily test
how nurture stream email elements impact the overall performance of the
nurture stream. Using champion and challenger scenarios, the marketer can
define a control group and test group, declare a champion, and deploy the
champion stream for the rest of the stream entrants.
Demand performance visualization. Revenue Cycle Analytics, Marketos
lead modeling tool, allows marketers to define demand creation stages with
rules and criteria to manage lead progression. Once these process elements
are defined, a success path analyzer provides a timeframe-specific snapshot
of model performance, showing lead balance by stage, inflow/outflow during
the period, conversion rates and velocity. With the lead model as a guide and
analytics to measure performance, marketers can more effectively design and
execute programs and tactics.
Demand performance accessibility. Marketo helps marketing teams create
a central display of program performance via large-screen wall-mounted TV
displays. Marketing teams can easily see and be reminded of the importance
of data-driven decisionmaking. They can congregate to make decisions based
on viewing program goals and performance against those goals along various
dimensions. Marketo Moments is a mobile application that provides users a
real-time view of the performance of recent tactics, produces reports to help
determine impact, and has the ability to share successes with a larger group of
team members.

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Challenges
Usability. Marketo has always received high marks for usability, however, its
leadership in design and usability has begun to erode, as it has not kept pace
with the user interface in some areas of the platform. As Marketo expands its
functionality in nurture, mobile and reporting, user experience is becoming
inconsistent, which increases the learning curve for new users.
Lead scoring. Although many organizations successfully build lead scoring models
within Marketo, organizations seeking to design more sophisticated scoring
models may face a greater challenge. For example, creating a scoring model that
looks at an activitys recency and frequency together, or one that is based on a
100-point scale (a continuum), is more difficult to build in Marketo than with other
MAP vendors.

Microsoft Dynamics Marketing

For organizations looking for a pre-built integration with Dynamics CRM, Microsoft
Dynamics Marketing is an obvious short-list option. Although Microsoft Dynamics
Marketing offers an application programming interface (API) and software
development kit for integration to third-party applications, organizations that
require an out-of-the-box integration to other marketing and sales applications
may want to consider other providers.

Differentiators
Reporting and visualization tools. Microsoft Dynamics Marketing offers both
analytical and pre-designed reports, making it easy to analyze and present
marketing results. Standard reports include tactic performance, budget usage,
lead performance and marketing results. The tools can be customized and include
access to a marketing calendar, a graphical timeline report to identify when lead
engagement increased and decreased, as well as a sales view that includes lead
and social dashboards. Every user is provided with a Microsoft Power BI license
to create, view and share personal dashboards and reports. For data scientists or
mature marketers, an upgraded license provides more advanced functionality,
including the ability to create content packs, dashboards for teams, active
directory groups for sharing and managing control, and advanced data queries
from any integrated source, including SFA.
Extended functionality. Microsoft Dynamics Marketing extends beyond the
traditional features of marketing automation to include marketing resource
management capabilities from a single platform. Marketers can integrate
planning, budgeting and tracking for offline and online marketing channels
to understand campaign performance and cost. Resource allocation, project
management, workflows and approval processes help marketers stay on budget,
track milestones and allocate resources.
Role administration functionality. Microsoft Dynamics Marketing offers many
out-of-the-box, pre-configured roles with permissions granted for typical use
cases (e.g. administrator, marketer, sales, reporting-only). The solution also
gives organizations the ability to support complex business needs for individual
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permissions, group roles and privileges, with the ability to create as many roles as
necessary. Division or department hierarchy access is provided to enable agencies
or organizations to easily partition access to data, programs and assets.

Challenges
Landing page and form capabilities. Microsoft Dynamics Marketing offers
landing page creation and personalization using an IFrame and relies on thirdparty integrations for Web site personalization. Form integration into a Web site
requires extensive Web development experience with HTML, CSS and Javascript
knowledge that most marketers lack.
Experience. Microsoft launched its Dynamics Marketing solution in 2014.
Although Microsoft Dynamics Marketing offers a platform with many sophisticated
use cases, the user community is new and the coaching and marketing guidance is
based on limited experience.

Oracle Marketing Cloud (Eloqua)

Oracle Eloqua should be considered by global organizations or organizations

seeking to execute advanced demand creation programs with rapidly expanding
demand creation needs. Organizations looking for a simple and streamlined MAP
should consider other platforms instead.

Differentiators
Programmatic site retargeting. Oracle Eloquas basic/enterprise package
offers marketers a license to use programmatic site retargeting with its native
integration with the Oracle Data Management Platform, formerly BlueKai.
Individuals within the MAP can be appended to third-party data from the Oracle
Data Management Platform, then served display advertising through partnerships
with demand-side platforms. This allows marketers to target and retarget
individuals outside traditional email programs. In addition, Oracle Eloqua can
build look-alike audiences to find additional individuals that match the target
profile and serve ads to those anonymous individuals. Individuals who respond to
an ad are captured within a nurture program and can be served additional crosschannel messaging.
Lead scoring performance. Oracle Eloquas Lead Scoring module allows multiple
advanced lead scoring programs to run quickly across millions of records, and
to be scored immediately for segmentation and further action directly within
the campaign canvas. With the lead scoring module built into the platform,
Oracle Eloqua has improved the performance of its scoring models for complex
programs that support large data sets and rules.
Global presence. Oracle Eloqua excels at supporting the global enterprise. As
part of this global organization, Oracle Eloqua customers can utilize local servers
outside of North America, including the Netherlands and Australia. In addition,
support is available in 18 languages with the cultural localization in-browser.
Finally, Oracle Eloqua has the largest number of partner resources and certified
consultants outside of North America vs. other MAP providers.
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Challenges
Time to value. Oracle Eloqua has designed the advanced capabilities within the
platform to be fairly intuitive. However, its complexity precludes most smaller
organizations from leveraging all of its advanced features for the cost. Smaller
marketing teams may not need the advanced functionality of the platform, but if
they anticipate growing into these capabilities, they should establish process and
organizational plans for this growth before investing in Oracle Eloqua.
Sales enablement. Organizations can view customer data and activity within
Eloqua Profiler in their SFA systems and sales reps may send emails using Eloqua
Engage and be notified of Web site activity. However, while Oracle Eloqua recently
made improvements for mobile-friendly display and external activities (e.g. event
attendance and video views), little additional innovation has occurred over the
past two years in the area of customizable lead alerts, content sharing and social
listening.

Pardot (a Salesforce Product)

Pardot offers strong email marketing and lead management capabilities along
with an intuitive user interface. Pardot should be on the short list for small and
medium-sized Salesforce customers. However, global enterprises with multiple
business units and complex lead management requirements should evaluate
other solutions.

Differentiators
Ease of use. Pardots user experience is optimized for the average marketing user
and is not overly stylized, allowing users to focus on the task at hand. The landingpage wizard and designer are particularly strong, featuring a library of template
options, a drag-and-drop editor and HTML scraping that can insert a users Web
site look and feel to an initial Pardot landing page that can be further edited.
Reports are clear and easy to understand. Pardot offers a compelling view of basic
Demand Waterfall performance in aggregate.
Salesforce portfolio. As a part of the Salesforce product family, Pardot is
positioned well to win mindshare from sales leadership. As a result, organizations
that are evaluating marketing automation for the first time may find it easier to
make the business case for Pardot to executive leadership. Integration with the
Salesforce1 Mobile App allows Sales Cloud users to check prospect activities,
score data and add prospects to nurture programs from any device. Connector
improvements have been made to enhance security and ensure that Pardot and
Sales Cloud clients can make unlimited API calls between the systems at no cost.
Finally, Pardot users can now log in with their Salesforce credentials.
Customer support. Pardot customers consistently comment about the quality
of the service and support they receive. Pardot offers free, unlimited instructorled training sessions that cover Pardot basics, automation, social media, drip
programs and reporting. For Pro and Ultimate subscribers, Pardot offers inproduct chat support.

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Challenges
Vision. Since Salesforces acquisition of ExactTarget and Pardot, there has been
confusion as to how Pardot is positioned externally to customers. Customers are
often unsure whether they are evaluating ExactTarget or Pardot, and theyre not
sure whether Pardot exists as part of the Sales Cloud or the Marketing Cloud. In
addition, although Pardot is continuing to work on integration with Salesforce, the
promise of a unified data model originally communicated in the early days of the
acquisition has yet to be completed.
Enterprise support. While Pardot has made some investments to help support
larger organizations (e.g. foldering), there is still a lack of features to support
the global enterprise. For example, Pardot does not support advanced nurture
personalization based on attributes that come from a custom data object. Pardot
offers roles and permissions capabilities, but it requires the highest account
edition to define custom roles and permissions.

Salesfusion

Salesfusions event management and lead scoring capabilities make it an

appealing option for small and medium-sized organizations. However, more
advanced organizations may not find the capabilities or advanced functionality
they need (e.g. Web personalization, form usage), and should consider other
platforms.

Differentiators
Built-in event management platform. Salesfusion goes beyond typical MAPs
with a built-in event management platform available a tier up from its standard
package. Marketers can build events using a custom flow or wizard workflow that
incorporates event management, demand generation and nurture activities (e.g.
invitations, registration forms, reminders landing pages). The platform can also
support multiple sessions for events (e.g. user conferences) and has a built-in
check-in function using mobile devices.
Lead scoring. Salesfusions lead scoring tool, Lead Analyzer, is extremely
customizable, allowing flexible lead scoring models that ensure the right leads
are being handed to sales. Using Listener, Salesfusions workflow tool, marketers
can find actions taken by individuals and use specific data points to score activity
within Web, email, landing page and events and add these directly to their scoring
programs. Custom objects can be integrated and used for scoring programs as
well. Marketers can save templates and use them as alerts for sales and create
opportunities based on score levels. Multi-scoring programs are supported and
are easily pushed to the SFA system for sales reps.
Pricing. Salesfusion offers the lowest pricing by contact tier across all listed
MAP vendors, and pricing across contact tiers is the same for the base and
premium packages. Salesfusions current pricing provides an affordable option for
companies looking for standard MAP functionality.

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Challenges
Lack of advanced functionality for mature marketers. For small and
medium-sized organizations looking to enter the MAP space, the tool provides
all that is necessary in a clean user interface. However, larger or more advanced
organizations may notice several shortcomings the inability to personalize
landing pages or Web pages beyond recognizing an individual via a cookie; the
one-to-one relationship between forms and Web pages, which requires the
creation of a new form for each individual page; and the lack of social connectors.
In addition, Salesfusion has a less mature partner base than other MAPs.
Organizational change. Salesfusion recently made several organizational
changes including a new CEO and a new CMO in early 2015 and seeks to
expand its internal marketing capabilities to focus on market presence, persona
definitions and overall positioning. A renewed focus on the market opportunity
and target customer should help Salesfusion accelerate in the future, but its in a
transition period as can be seen by its efforts to de-emphasize social listening and
publishing tools, despite its acquisition of LoopFuse a year ago.

Sitecore

Organizations that currently use Sitecore for Web content management

(WCM) and are looking for an integrated platform that provides MAP and WCM
capabilities should include Sitecore on their short list. Organizations seeking a
standalone MAP solution or that anticipate a significant reliance on MAP services
and support (especially in the global arena) should consider other solutions.

Differentiators
Buyer experience and progressive personalization. Sitecore provides a
complete view of buyers and their journeys within a single platform. Using
contextual information like persona details, behavior and buying cycle stage,
marketers can leverage automation to personalize and optimize the treatment
plan for each potential buyer. This makes the buyers experience more relevant,
helping to increase conversions with appropriate messaging, offers, assets and
marketing channels. Sitecore goes further, customizing each interaction based
on known information. When a behavior pattern is recognized, the system begins
progressively personalizing the content and modifying the experience as more
information is collected. Additionally, marketers can determine the most and least
efficient paths toward a pre-determined goal, weighing the effort required for the
desired outcome.
Testing and experience optimization. Sitecore allows marketers to perform
robust Web site, landing page, email A/B and multivariate tests on all aspects
of the visitor experience. No coding, tagging or development work is required.
Sitecore measures engagement by understanding the best way to drive potential
buyers toward a pre-determined goal. Because the optimization testing
capabilities are native to Sitecore, marketers can test individual components,
entire site items or the entire site experience across whichever marketing channel

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is used. There are no limits to the number of combinations or tests that can run
concurrently.
Dynamic, personalized printed collateral. As email response rates diminish,
marketers are turning to alternative marketing channels. Sitecores Print
Experience Manager offers organizations the ability to manage their print efforts,
including direct mail and sales collateral. Content stored in Sitecore can be
leveraged to create printed pieces customized by persona, buying cycle stage and
behavioral insights captured from Web activity. The native integration offers a
workflow with version control and routing functionality.

Challenges
Pricing and ecosystem support. Sitecore provides WCM and MAP capabilities
that are sold as one integrated system and at one price. When purchasing
Sitecore, organizations do not have the choice to purchase MAP functionality
alone. For organizations with a WCM system already in place, Sitecores pricing will
prove to be higher compared with other MAP systems that lack WCM functionality.
Although Sitecore has a global network of more than 2,000 partners, only a small
group of these partners have marketing automation capabilities, making the level
of specific marketing automation capabilities in this network lower than that of
other vendors in the space.
Market positioning. Sitecores solution is well suited to organizations with
marketing focused heavily on Web site initiatives, including digital and inbound
marketing. While Sitecore has a strong brand for Web technologies, it is still
building awareness within the marketing automation and marketing community.

The Sirius Decision

This SiriusView is designed as a starting point for organizations seeking a short list
of potential MAP vendors. Todays MAPs offer marketers advanced nurturing and
scoring functionality; the ability to easily personalize emails, landing page and Web
sites; and use of multi-channel communications for nurture tactics throughout the
buying cycle. In addition, many platforms offer the ability to test hypotheses and
improve tactic performance through A/B and multivariate testing. Organizations
should evaluate the current state of their demand creation marketing initiatives,
the level of resources and expertise required for implementation, and how these
conditions correlate to the functionality, capability and cost of each MAP vendor.
SiriusDecisions recommends securing customer references for any prospective
vendor as part of due diligence.

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