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The major challenge of the new marketing tools
Salesforce.com and Marketo for companies today
Corentin Natali
Memoir
Spring 2016
TABLE OF CONTENT
Research Method…………………………………………………………. 3
1. Introduction…………………………………………………………... 4
2. Definition of Marketing and CRM………………………………….. 5
3. Evolution of Marketing………………………………………………. 6
3.1 History of Marketing……………………………………………... 6
3.1.1 Mass Marketing………………………………………... 7
3.1.2 Direct Marketing………………………………………. 7
3.1.3 Social Influence Marketing……………………………. 7
3.2 Digital Marketing ………………………………………………… 8
3.2.1 Definition……………………………………………….. 9
3.2.2 Inbound and Outbound Marketing………………….. 10
3.2.3 SEO…………………………………………………….. 10
3.3 Marketing Automation…………………………………………... 11
3.3.1 Definition………………………………………………. 11
3.3.2 Lead generation……………………………………….. 12
3.3.3 Email Marketing………………………………………. 13
3.3.4 Landing pages and Forms…………………………….. 14
3.4 Marketing and Sales……………………………………………… 15
4. SalesForce.com, a strong CRM asset………………………………... 16
4.1 A recognized software solution……………………………………16
4.1.1 History…………………………………………………. 17
4.1.2 The SaaS industry……………………………………… 17
4.1.3 Products: the “clouds”…………………………………. 18
4.1.4 Specific vocabulary……………………………………... 19
4.2 Salesforce.com benefits…………………………………………..... 22
4.2.1 Customer focused……………………………………….. 22
4.2.2 Revenue growth…………………………………………. 23
4.2.3 Utility and accessibility…………………………………. 24
4.3 Results and feedback………………………………………………. 25
4.3.1 Airbus Helicopters Inc implementation……………….. 25
4.3.2 Customers success stories………………………………. 26
4.3.3 Limitations………………………………………………. 28
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5. Marketo, a promising marketing tool ………………………………… 29
5.1 Marketing automation oriented……………………………………. 29
5.1.1 Overview of the company……………………………….. 29
5.1.2 Applications……………………………………………… 30
5.1.3 Marketo terms…………………………………………… 31
5.1.4 Utilization and implementation………….…………….. 33
5.2 Marketo benefits…………………………………………………….. 34
5.2.1 A maximized productivity…………………………….... 34
5.2.2 A revenue increase……………………………………....... 35
5.2.3 Marketing and Sales Alignment ………………………… 36
5.3 A result-oriented system…………………………………………….. 37
5.3.1 Marketo at Airbus Helicopters Inc…………………….... 37
5.3.2 Customers feedback……………………………………… 38
5.3.3 Axis of Improvements……………………………………. 40
5.4 Marketo and Salesforce.com…………………………………….… 41
6. Conclusion………………………………………………………………... 43
7. Bibliography…………………………………………………………….. 45
8. Appendix………………………………………………………………... 48
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RESEARCH METHOD
Marketo and Salesforce.com appeared to be some essential marketing tools for companies today
using new technologies. This is a recent and ongoing phenomenon and a major part of companies
are still trying to look for a suitable solution for their activities. Salesforce.com is more known
due to its seniority which is not the case for Marketo, a recent and evolving company.
Therefore, the information that will be used in this paper will come from specific books, articles,
statistics, websites and testimonials coming from professionals using either Marketo or
Salesforce.com or even both. I also conducted some interviews with members of the Marketing
and Sales team at Airbus Helicopters Inc. Existing surveys will be used and some piece of
information will also come from some classes taken at UNCW (Marketing Strategy and Sales
Force Automation) during spring 2015.
The goal of this study is to prove how these marketing tools will become more and more popular
in the future and commonly used by companies. How can the system they provide help marketers
in this technology based environment?
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1. Introduction
Nowadays, technology evolves quickly and offers new challenges for companies which need
to follow-up that phenomenon. In the 90’s, Windows was the main technology tool available for
both companies and the average consumers. A big change appeared in 1998 with the launch of
Google, who became one of the most successful companies in history (ranked #2 among
companies that change the world in 2015 according to Fortune). This was a global phenomenon
that changed this world: it was the beginning of the New Technologies revolution. Microsoft
with Windows, Google and Apple are tech companies that took advantage of this transition and
are now one of the largest companies worldwide. In order to reach this level, they had to manage
and best use their resources in particular the use of Marketing. Indeed, this new trend had to be
publicized so that consumers are aware of what is going on within this specific industry.
Moreover, this trend also affected companies, from the SMEs to the largest ones which underline
the importance of Marketing when well implemented. It is usual now that companies, if not all,
use a computer with either Windows or Apple and have Google as the browser by default. This
case even applies for practically anyone on earth, mentalities have evolved and so did the human
being. In the 90’s the Personal Computer was mainly used as the best way to connect to other
people worldwide and to use Technology. As of today, in 2016, consumers have the choice to be
perfectly connected between computers, tablets or smartphones which strengthen the evolution
of our behaviors.
As the world is evolving with launch of new technologies, so are businesses and marketers
that need to adapt and give an appropriate answer to this new demand. Salesforce.com and
Marketo are two companies that try to provide marketers the accurate tool that would allow them
to face new challenges. The following sections will present these two tools based on CRM and
marketing automation that are potential solutions for companies.
As a college student, I had the opportunity to discover and to learn about Salesforce and
Marketo in some of my classes. These tools represent the transition to the future of marketing
strategy; they’re incredibly helpful when well implemented. In a world where new technologies
are constantly evolving and the center of attention, being able to master these tools offer a huge
asset to companies. This critical challenge drawn my attention and also because this is a new
phenomenon, not all the companies have heard about SalesForce.com and Marketo. We could
classify them into the growth stage of the product life cycle.
Another relevant point that motivated me to write a memoir on this topic is my internship with
Airbus Helicopters Inc: on a daily basis, I have the opportunity to use both of these tools in order
to fulfill my tasks. This experience is a tremendous way to learn more in details about these tools
and thus being able to talk about them more easily.
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2. Definition of Marketing and CRM
In order to understand what this topic is about, it is important to define the concepts
linked to the tools Marketo and Salesforce.com and their meaning.
According to the Business dictionary, marketing is the management process through
which goods and services move from concept to the customer. It includes the coordination of
four elements called the 4 P's of marketing (Product, Price, Promotion, Placement).
In other words, it could be defined as the action or business of promoting and selling products or
services, including market research and advertising. Marketing is vital within a company, this is
the image they show to customers representing the company. Marketing goes along with sales,
they’re closely related to one another which is why it is important to have an efficient marketing
system set up.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) regroups the practices, strategies and
technologies that companies use to manage and analyze customer interactions and data
throughout the customer lifecycle. This is critical for a company to take advantage of CRM
because this will leverage their profit if well implemented, it’s a relationship built with the
customer. If he is satisfied with the service delivered, he will become the best ambassador
towards his entourage (advocacy and recommendation) and he will hopefully become a loyal
customer which is the goal of companies. Indeed, the most difficult exercise is not to attract
customers but to retain them.
Marketo makes marketing automation software for companies. It helps marketers master the art
and science of digital marketing to engage customers and prospects (Marketo.com).
Salesforce.com is a global web-based software and cloud computing company best known for
its customer relationship management (CRM) product that capitalizes on commercial
applications of social networking through acquisition (Business dictionary).
It is important to consider the fact that these concepts were not as relevant a couple of
years ago as they are nowadays. CRM and marketing occupy a central position for companies
that need to adapt their strategy and their objectives using these concepts.
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3. Evolution of Marketing
3.1 History of marketing
Marketing as we think of today is a recent concept that appeared in the early 1900s where
advertising was the main goal and activity for companies and retailers. After the industrial
revolution (18th
-19th
centuries), a period of social changes occurred: behaviors evolved with the
mass production and the improved ways of transportation. Hence, producers had to find a way to
distribute their goods more efficiently in creative manners as competition grew as well. Thus, it
is interesting to notice that already at that time, sellers had to adapt based on the technological
changes and the tools available.
Figure 1: Marketing promotion by Michelin in the early 1900s
The figure above shows how companies found new way to advertise their products or services
(in that case Michelin with Bibendum, the “Michelin man”). Marketing witnessed evolution with
some trends about the way of marketing products and services.
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3.1.1 Mass Marketing
The idea of Mass marketing is to target as many people as possible. The strategy behind it is
to broadcast a message reaching everyone ignoring the market segmentation. It first appeared in
the 1920s with the massive use of radio by corporations and was used a lot during World War II.
This “mass” idea comes from the form of mass demand, mass communication and massive stores
at a time when the US economy was recovering and growing after the War. Companies like
Procter & Gamble took advantage of that new concept by advertising a lot their products through
TV during the shows (ads) knowing they could reach out directly to consumers. This was made
possible by the amount of many invested in these promotions but also by the use of technology
which was a critical factor of success for these companies. Even nowadays, this marketing
technique still exists and is used by several companies like Apple. Indeed, this company can still
benefit from traditional mass marketing thanks to the brand’s popularity.
3.1.2 Direct Marketing
Then, technology evolved quickly and became available to the population and not only to
specific organizations. According to the Census Bureau, 8.2% of all households had a computer
at home (1984) versus 78.9% in 2012 and from 1990 to 2011, global cell phone subscriptions
increased from 12.4 million to over 6 billion which highlights the democratization of the
technology and the easy access to it.
Direct marketing is a type of advertisement campaign that targets a selected group of customers
through the use of different platforms such as billboards, cell phones, direct emails, radio or
television. Unlike mass marketing, this is a targeted message that will help increasing the sales of
a company and feed its database with useful information about customers (age, gender, buying
habits, location...).
3.1.3 Social Influence Marketing
Nowadays, a new critical factor appeared in determining marketing strategies: social media.
Indeed, this phenomenon became so important because it spread really quickly and is available
to anyone which shows how critical this tool is for companies. The growth of social influence
marketing stresses the transition from the Web 2.0 to the Web 3.0 generation.
In other words, Web 2.0 is seen as the change from static to interactive (peer to peer marketing)
by people sharing information online.
Then, Web 3.0 corresponds to anywhere, anytime from any device which highlights the ease of
access and popularity of the technology tools. Because social marketing is a viable platform for
companies, earned media is the new advertising.
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Even if these ways of marketing products or services are different, it is important to state that
even nowadays; all three of them are still used even if social influence marketing becomes more
and more popular and appears to be the main challenge.
This picture below summarizes the transition of the buying behaviors due to the new
technologies and the easy access to information. Years ago, ways of communications were not
really diversified from one person to another. TV, radio, billboards were advertising the same
content to a massive audience that did not have the choice. Nowadays, this same audience has
more power and more tools to be reached. A single person has access to a significant number of
social platforms which means they are more informed and have more choice. This change needs
to be taken into account by businesses that need to adapt their strategy in order to face this
behavior change.
Figure 2: Buying behaviors, then and now
3.2 Digital Marketing
Marketing is a broad term: it exist a lot of different types of Marketing (52 according to the Cult
Branding Company) which is why this memoir will only focus on the main marketing activities
directly linked to Salesforce.com and Marketo. Digital marketing is an ongoing phenomenon
with multiple aspects that will be described below.
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3.2.1 Definition
Digital Marketing is the “practice of promoting products and services using database-
driven online distribution channels to reach consumers in a timely, relevant, personal and cost-
effective manner” (Jared Reitzin, CEO of mobileStorm Inc, April 26th
, 2007). This definition
helps understanding what digital marketing is about and its challenges: customers are targeted
and reached more easily with the objective of promoting the brand, building awareness and
directly engage with these customers in order to increase sales for the company. On
average, 60% of a marketers' time is devoted to digital marketing activities (Source: Smart
Insights and Ecommerce Expo). Once again, thanks to the new technologies (electronic media in
this case specifically) and the evolution of mentalities, this activity is growing more and more
and starts becoming essential if not the case already.
It is also important to take into consideration that digital marketing (also called internet
marketing) is the base for other kind of marketing activities that are commonly used nowadays
and are constantly evolving. Because they are new and not known by everyone yet, they
represent an incredible challenge for companies and a potential great source of revenue if well
implemented. Indeed, marketers need to adapt to this trend and fully embrace the new
technologies in order to be fully efficient. Web design, email marketing, a competitive SEO
(Search Engine Optimization) are examples of duties directly linked to Digital marketing and its
use.
Figure 3: The connections of digital marketing
**Note: the scheme comes from Newtek “The Small Business Authority”
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3.2.2 Inbound and Outbound Marketing
Due to the Internet revolution, marketing has evolved over the years and the use of
traditional ways of communication (TV, billboards, radio) is no longer the most appropriate one.
Called outbound marketing, a one way communication that pushes services/products on
customers, this method is no longer relevant in this society surrounded by new technologies and
is getting replaced little by little by inbound marketing. Indeed, this new marketing method is a
two way communication facilitated by the use and popularity of social media that relies on
earning people’s interest. In other words, the customer comes to the company and a relationship
is built where the marketer will bring an added value which was not the case in the past. Content
marketing and social media activities are important features that help developing inbound
marketing and the conversion of leads. This new way of marketing is a part of digital marketing.
In this situation, Marketo is a tool that combines the use of Outbound and Inbound marketing
through the use of emails that are part of the campaigns, landing pages and forms that are part of
the tool. This topic will be explained into more details later.
It is interesting to highlight some key figures about the differences between inbound and
outbound marketing which show why marketers are more and more considering using inbound
marketing. According to Lauren Drell, Mashable's Branded content editor, inbound marketing
costs 62% less per lead than outbound marketing which underline a more important Return On
Investment (ROI) for inbound marketing. Then, 57% of businesses have acquired a customer
through their company blog and the average budget spent on company blog and social media has
doubled in the last two years. This is a relevant statistic because it shows how marketing content
is critical for a company and how social media can become a tremendous source of revenue if
well implemented. On average, inbound marketing costs less, have better results and is more
accepted by customers over outbound marketing.
3.2.3 Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
According to comScore, approximatively 400 million web searches were performed
every day as of January 2009.This figure really shows the popularity and the massive use of the
Web to do researches with Google, Yahoo and Bing who are the main actors of this platform.
SEO is a “methodology of strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase the amount of
visitors to a website” (Webopedia). Incredibly helpful for a company, SEO will play an
important role in the future with the changing habits of customers. It is very critical to have a
performing SEO for a company because it makes their website easy to use and to understand
with the important flow of information potential leads have to deal with. Indeed, they may be
searching for what a company sells but will they find it? A majority of person will not go any
further than the first results if they can’t find what they are looking for which highlights the high
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level of exigency customers reached. 5-7 seconds is all you have to convert a user that they are
on the right page with relevant results to their search (Source: Baymard Institute). If well
implemented, a good SEO will allow the prospects to become leads by converting them into
opportunities.
With marketing strategies evolving and consumers becoming more demanding, SEO is
Keywords, forms, Call to Actions (CTA), content...are examples of features necessary to have a
good SEO for a company. They will be explained into more details later with Marketo which is a
relevant case because it deals with these features specifically.
3.3 Marketing Automation
3.3.1 Definition
Marketing automation is the technology that allows companies to streamline, automate,
and measure marketing tasks and workflows so they can increase operational efficiency and
grow revenue faster (Marketo, the definitive guide to Marketing automation). It also includes a
significant marketing ROI (Return on Investment) for companies thanks to the time saving and
the efficiency marketing automation offers. Indeed, marketing automation retains and extends
customer relationship, increases alignment with Sales and gives a new vision of marketing to
marketers with new sales opportunities.
According to Nucleus Research about marketing automation effectiveness, companies using
marketing automation can expect an increase marketing staff productivity between 1.5% and
6.9%. Plus, enabling marketing automation will decrease company administrative overhead
between 1.5% and 5.2% (3.4% on average). This figures show the importance of marketing
automation and the difference it makes when it is used. “Marketing has changed more in the last
five years than in the last four decades” (Bryan Carter, an industry expert, president of Think
Webstore). This change needs to be fully embraced by marketers nowadays who therefore need
to adapt in order to take advantage of this system. As shown above, if well implemented,
marketing automation is a real game changer and a key player in marketing with new
technologies. It is important to stress that marketing automation interacts with other concepts and
facilitates the communication and effectiveness between sales and marketing. The following
schema summarizes the role of marketing automation and the different concepts it involves.
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Figure 4: What defines marketing automation
3.3.2 Lead Generation
Lead generation describes the marketing process of stimulating and capturing interest in a
product or service for the purpose of developing sales pipeline (Marketo, the definitive guide to
lead generation). A good lead differs from a company to another depending on the criteria they
use to define a lead (demographics, need, buying behavior…). However, a lead means the same
thing for a company because it is a person who showed an interest in the products or services
proposed. Converting this lead is the same goal for companies since it is a source of revenue that
needs to be exploited. This method refers as inbound marketing as explained above (the
prospects comes to you) and is mainly used in lead generation. Indeed, a lead is informed about
the company because of the information provided on the website (content marketing). The blog
of a company for example is an important location for a lead in the way he will be provided
some relevant information about the products or services he is interested in.
Social media also plays a key role in attracting and converting a lead by the interaction
between a person and a company. Chris Brogan (CEO and Founder, Human Business Works)
said “For successful lead generation on social, equip your buyer for success. Be personable,
connect with your prospect’s challenges, and give them a next step to move forward.” This is
exactly what lead generation and marketing automation are about: personalization. Nowadays, it
is really easy to access information given possible by technologies and its popularity, customers
are prepared. Therefore, companies need to adapt and give a personalized message to leads that
showed interests. According to the Engagement 3.0 Report, a large number of customers (82%)
feel that being treated with a one-size fits all approach results in a negative perception of that
business.
However, despite being a difficult exercise, this process is a source of potential huge benefits for
companies. Indeed, leads are able to share their experience via social media (Facebook, Twitter,
LinkedIn…) and thus save time and money for the company since the lead would do this process
by itself.
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Usually, potential leads are categorized depending on the stage they are based on their
actions. They move from prospects to new customers and in order to visualize this progression,
stages are often presented with a funnel (Top of the Funnel being the 1st stage, Middle of the
Funnel until the last stage which is “new customers”). Every time a lead moves from a stage to
another, it status changes and the more it goes further, the more chance to close a deal the
company has.
Figure 5: The different stages of the Marketing funnel
3.3.3 Email Marketing
Email marketing is essential in marketing automation because this is the message a
company sends out to potential leads which will determine their actions. This is a way to build
relationships with customers, exchange information and interact with them. In other words, the
piece of content the company delivers will influence the leads’ action which is why it is critical
to use this system correctly. Usually, emails are personalized depending on the lead it is
addressed to and is the starting point of campaigns, landing pages, promotions, converting
potential leads…This topic will be explained into more details later with Marketo who’s really
efficient with targeted emails.
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One great advantage nowadays with email marketing is its accessibility: anyone can send
emails from any devices (laptops, tablets, smartphones) anywhere at any time. This works for
both companies and customers who are thus more easily reachable. Moreover, this method is
cost-effective and fast for marketers which explain the popularity and massive use of it. In fact,
72% of people prefer to receive promotional content through email according to
MarketingSherpa.
Furthermore, email marketing is also an important feature in lead generation because it is
easily measurable. Hence, this allows marketers to adapt their messages in the future and
therefore will improve results. These marketers see an average increase of 20% in sales when
using personalized web experiences (Monetate) underlining the importance of a personalized
content.
3.3.4 Landing pages and Forms
Landing pages are customized pages where potential leads click on thanks to a Call-to-
Action (CTA) on a company website for example. The form is the structure within the landing
page that indicates the actions a lead needs to take by asking to fulfill some personal information.
Just like email marketing, landing pages and forms are personalized with some specific content
depending on the situation. However, they “live separately” from the website and need to be
clear and quick. Indeed, in just a few seconds, potential leads can be very impatient and leave the
website if the message is not clear and visible.
The main goal of a landing page is to keep a customer interested in what a company has
to offer. If that’s the case, he will then fill out a form with its personal information which will
allow the company to follow up with him and then start building a relationship. This is a big
difference compared to simple home pages because it designed for specific leads with some
appropriate content. This is a real challenge for marketers, 90% of consumers expect
personalization (Source: IBM Institute for Business Value and Center for Applied Insights).
The information provided will increase the lead conversion rates that will move in the marketing
funnel next. In order to reach this goal, a good message is necessary instead of a general one like
on the home page. By providing a strong message match, the visitor will have the impression that
he was doing well by clicking on the links.
It is important to notice that the appeal of the landing page is critical as well and
determining just like its content. Indeed, this is the impression someone will have when visiting
the company’s website. If the landing page is overloaded with information and images, the lead
most likely would not go further and thus won’t provide any personal information. However, if
the landing page looks good with relevant information and a clear Call to Action, then the lead
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will be encouraged to stay and provide more details about him. The more landing pages the
better: this will increase opportunities for companies to attract leads. Plus, this is a good way to
collect demographic information about prospects and to know more about them (who is more
engaged?). By doing this, it also allows a company to make promotions on specific offers and to
fuel other marketing channels.
3.4 Marketing and Sales
Marketing and Sales represent the image of the company, they’re at the heart of it and are
the ones responsible for generating revenue. So it is vital to have these two departments working
in coordination for the health of the company. When making a decision, communication has to
be effective and take into account marketing and sales, a harmony is essential for the well-being
of a company and its business growth. A company with a marketing and sales alignment will
increase its marketing ROI, sales productivity and will perform a tremendous growth as well.
More specifically, marketing and sales help each other to move forward a lead in the funnel to
the next stage; contacts are established with the prospects. As seen above with the marketing
funnel, the lead will be at a time considered as MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) before moving
to the next stage: SQL (Sales Qualified Lead). A “visitor” will be considered as a MQL when he
demonstrated interest in the company’s website content. Yet, he is most likely not ready to buy at
that stage. A lead is registered as SQL when they have specific questions and are ready for some
one-on-one time with the sales department. In that case, leads showed intent to buy and enter in
the sales cycle. It is important to mention that this transition requires marketing and sales
alignment. The more communication there is, the smoother the transition between stages. Once
sales and marketing are aligned, they will be able to focus on hot leads, those who are most
likely to buy which will therefore increase conversion rate.
Marketing and Sales strategy needs to be consistency with the business strategy which is
why marketing and sales tactics have to be aligned. Lack of communication between these
departments was a reason some companies failed to achieve their business goals or to attract
leads. According to a Hubspot study, companies with good marketing practices in place
generated 208% more revenue from marketing efforts. In addition, when sales and marketing
teams work together, companies see 36% higher customer retention and 38% higher sales win
rates. These figures stress how important it is for companies to have their marketing and sales
department aligned in order to be efficient and achieve their business goals.
As demonstrated above in the previous section, marketing automation is a great way to
bring effectiveness within a company. It is also a huge asset to align Sales and Marketing which
is why corporate decisions need to use marketing automation so that they can be as accurate as
possible. This is a game changer and companies using it see its effectiveness and can then focus
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more on customers and understand which marketing programs are performing. Marketing
automation aligns sales and marketing thanks to the mutual decisions it provides to both the
teams that are encouraged to communicate more with accurate information at their disposal.
Gleanster realized a survey by probing top companies using marketing automation: 69% of them
consider marketing and sales team alignment as the most critical driver for maximizing
marketing automation ROI.
Figure 6: Marketing automation, a game changer
4. SalesForce.com, a strong CRM asset
Salesforce is acknowledged to be a huge performer in CRM thanks to the features it provides
and is forecast to play an important role in the future for companies that can gain significant
benefits by using this system. The following sections will explore into more details how this
company, created in an apartment 17 years ago, became a key player in this industry and will
play an important role in the future.
4.1 A recognized software solution
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4.1.1 History
SalesForce.com was founded in March 1999 and his headquarters are located in San
Francisco, California. They were unique and launched their Sales Force Automation application
that was absolutely unknown at that time. The goal of the creators (Marc Benioff, Parker Harris,
Dave Moellenhoff and Frank Dominguez) was to run businesses from anywhere without the
constraint of hardware or software. They became the pioneer of the CRM and are now the main
actors to broadcast it worldwide for different companies. The years following this launch saw the
company gaining an incredible number of customers and a solid reputation in the tech industry.
In 2004, Salesforce.com was inducted to the NASDAQ with the sign “CRM” testifying their
exponential evolution. They grew more and more by purchasing brands and companies just like
Kieden in 2006 or RelateIQ in 2014 that play an important role in the CRM and tech industry.
These acquisitions and joint-venture allow Salesforce.com to diversify and to be more competent
in specific domains thanks to the knowledge and skills shared.
In 2001, customers grew to 3,500 with 53,000 users and as of April 2013, Salesforce.com
is translated in 16 different languages, has 82,400 regular customers and over 2,100,000
subscribers. This show how fast and how important this company became: they employ 19,000
persons and their revenue is in 2016 $6.667 billion. All these results make Salesforce.com the
market share leader in his sector in term of CRM revenues, customer acquisitions and number of
subscribers.
4.1.2 The SaaS industry
With all these acquisitions, they have achieved an unbelievable growth in the SaaS
(Software as a Service) industry. SaaS is a “way of delivering applications over the Internet as a
service” (Salesforce.com) and is closely linked to ASP, Application Service Provider. In other
words, this is not necessary anymore to download and install software; it is accessible via the
Internet which is really easy, intuitive and does not require any updates. Plus, it provides a better
collaboration and a great compatibility because software is the same for everyone.
Nowadays, SaaS is a hot trend and a growing trend that is becoming more and more used
despite of the high number of existing users. Indeed, SaaS and cloud-based business application
services revenue will grow from $13.5B in 2011 to$32.8B in 2016 (a SaaScribe study by Alex
Theuma, 2015) which represent a 143% increase in 5 years. An important feature linked to the
topic of this memoir is the use of social media that are being tremendously included in SaaS.
Competition is not that strong in this emerging market: a few leaders own almost the
entire market share (oligopolistic situation). The cost to develop these apps keeps increasing
because of its popularity which therefore appears to be a strong barrier for companies willing to
enter this market. A specific point about competition in this industry is the ability for the
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customer to use multiples software since this is internet based. Thus, one could use at the same
time Salesforce.com and Oracle or NetSulte, other SaaS actors.
4.1.3 Products: the “clouds”
Salesforce.com offers different products with specific attributes for a company depending
on what they are looking for and what part of their business needs to be improved. All the
services provided have a cost that varies based on the features the company will purchase. A
great advantage about these products is that they are available no any businesses no matter what
is their primary activity or what industry they evolve in, it is diversified.
 Sales Cloud
Sales Cloud helps selling products and services, increasing interaction within the company,
building relationships with customers and closing more deals. This is the most common feature
used by businesses and the number 1 CRM application worldwide. No hardware, everything is
online and an internet connection to the account is the only requirement. Using this feature
increases revenue by 37% on average.
SalesforceIQ is another platform that is possible to purchase. It is designed for smaller
businesses, simple and smart.
Data.com is also available for the Sales department specifically for B2B businesses by bringing
the most accurate and best contact information to the team. Hence, productivity will increase and
this will also save a considerable amount of time to the company.
 Service Cloud
Service cloud’s specialty is to focus on customers by providing more visibility, smarter and
faster service. The solutions proposed are more responsive, customized depending on the
customers and especially anticipate their needs thanks to the information saved available. More
specifically, Service cloud includes a call center case management designed to face the
customers’ concerns or potential questions which enhance the interaction between them and the
company. According to Salesforce.com, using this feature increases customer satisfaction by
45%.
Desk.com is another platform owned by Salesforce.com in the form of an app designed for small
businesses. In fact, this is an “all in one” customer support tool able to offer a personalized
service in a timely manner.
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 Marketing Cloud
Marketing cloud allows a better customer engagement interaction trough personalized emails,
channels and a strong social media experience. Here again, the customer is put forward on this
digital marketing platform.
Pardot, a marketing solution option as well, is more focused on B2B interaction using marketing
automation. The goal of this service is to drive sales and accelerate pipeline by generating high
quality leads, connecting faster from any device anywhere and by calculating marketing ROI in
order to have more visibility on its activity.
 Community Cloud
Community cloud is more about the manner of interacting efficiently with both customers and
employees. Social media plays an important role here and thus creates a strong online interaction
from any device (tablets, smartphones, computers). This outcome stimulates employees’
productivity and encourages them to build relationships with customers. Salesforce.com
introduces this feature as an online collaboration where they can approach any topics.
Chatter is a powerful feature that is driving interaction within the company only between
employees. They are able to share data, files, give updates on deals, ask for assistance or give
recommendations. The basic chatter is free and thus permits to share knowledge using
technology from any device anywhere as well.
 Analytics
This is a critical aspect of Salesforce.com products in so far as analytics allow a company to have
visibility on their activity and therefore ensure an effective follow up. Indeed, customer
information is collected, analyzed and displayed depending on the settings the company put in
place. This specificity is a huge safe of time for employees since they have access to the relevant
information by themselves without asking for an analyst. It is also available from any device
strengthening that speed access in real time using technology.
 Apps
As explained above, the main purpose of Salesforce.com creators was to run business from
anywhere without the issue of hardware or software. Thus, some apps are available from any
device allowing users to optimize their time and take actions in real time when necessary.
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The App Cloud is the “world’s #1 enterprise cloud platform” (Salesforce.com website) that
permits in average 48 cost savings for companies and a faster access.
Force.com and Heroku Enterprise are other examples of Apps delivered by Salesforce that are
really secure as well and flexible for users.
4.1.4 Specific vocabulary
Using Salesforce.com requires a specific vocabulary to use the different products available. The
following table summarizes the most used features that will be accessed frequently. For each
record, each activity and action, there is a specific icon designed to help the user indicating the
type of record being viewed.
Lead, Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities, Activities, Reports, Dashboards and Chatter are
important terms that are used by Salesforce and need to be digest by users in order to use the tool
at best and save time.
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Figure 7: Salesforce terminology
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4.2 Salesforce.com benefits
Salesforce.com is a popular tool used by several companies (150,000) worldwide from small
ones to big international leading corporations and also by entrepreneurs. So, why these
companies granted their confidence to this online software? The following deals about the main
benefits of using Salesforce.com and the asset it provides to their users.
4.2.1 Customer focused
Salesforce.com is efficient in interacting with customers and building relationships with
them. The company is even considered as the #1 CRM for all businesses and the #1
recommended solution by Software advice. The reason for that is the customized and unique
service proposed by Salesforce to customers. Indeed, the technology used allows a faster
response and a personalized solution to the customer’s concern. The use of social media
strengthens this interaction and enhances employees’ productivity as much as the availability
from any device anywhere at any time that plays a key role in their customers’ success stories.
An interesting statistic about customers’ interaction catches attention on this trend: in 2014, there
were1.8 billion mobile devices showing their easy access to information. Even if competitors are
pushing into the cloud (SAP, Oracle, Microsoft), the number of Salesforce.com customers keeps
increasing every year (around 30% growth rates) stressing the performance and the popularity of
the online company. Salesforce was chosen as CRM Magazine’s best Enterprise CRM for 6
consecutive years between 2009 and 2014.
Then, Salesforce has a specific way to treat customers on their platform depending on the
information they gave and what action they did. Depending on these, the software will classify
them into different categories and they will be able to move to the next step when one employee
will decide to do so which gives the company high flexibility. For example, a new lead will be
saved in the database with all the information about it being under the “Contacts” logo. It could
be linked to an “Account” which represents the company the lead represents. In order to close
deals and follow-up with the current stage, the company using SalesForce will have to update
their “Opportunity” and be the ones that decide at which stage the deal is. Hence, they will be
able to move it from one to another (“Negotiating” to “Booking” for example) based on the
customer interaction and what has been done. This feature gives a great visibility to the company
and can improve customer experience.
Moreover, it is important to highlight the fact that this customer focus offers an
opportunity to find new deals based on the actions customers do and the information they
provide. Indeed, Salesforce covers all the stages of the customer lifecycle which enables
employees to be flexible and deliver an appropriate response in a record time.
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As mentioned in the previous sections, a majority of the products that Salesforce offers are
customer oriented: sales cloud, marketing cloud, community cloud…all of them they put forward
customer experience and encourage the company-customer interaction.
Figure 8: Customer experience maturity is linked to Business performance
The table above shows how important and valuable customer experience is for a company. A
single and personalized relationship, keeping customers satisfied by anticipating their needs and
solving their problems is a great way to increase revenues in the future.
“Salesforce helps us connect more closely with our 600,000+ customers.” says Dan Page, VP of
Sales Automation at ADP. Indeed, this is a tremendous platform to engage with them and to
ensure an efficient follow-up as demonstrated above. Everything is made to make the customers
heard which is not the case for other CRM software companies.
4.2.2 Revenue growth
Salesforce.com is a great way for a company to drastically increase their revenue and
lower their costs. Indeed, this is an online platform which means they just have to pay a
subscription to the products they wish to use. According to a survey published on February 2009
by Randy Rodriguez, Managing director at BlueWolff group, Salesforce users report average
ROI of 45% achieved in 8 to 9 months. This is given possible by the streamline of data and
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information enabling employees to focus on the most relevant tasks without losing time. More
specifically, users will gain time thanks to the “Dashboards” set up on Salesforce. Indeed, this
specificity is a huge help to have a global visibility on business outcomes by providing clear,
complete and easy-to-read graphs or diagrams depending on the selection. A lot of data can be
monitored through these tables such as sales by quarter, by region, products… This is the main
metric Salesforce provides to measure success and alignment with business objectives.
The measurable business outcomes attributed to Salesforce is truly significant based on
“the State of Salesforce report 2015-2016” by Bluewolf (February 2016). Indeed, the customer
experience is improved by 32% and the tool is responsible for a 46% increase of collaboration.
On an employee standpoint, productivity gains are of 57% thanks to the benefits and the time
saving provided by Salesforce. They gain skills and are more efficient thanks to the tools which
brings a significant marketing ROI for the company. As seen above, being customer oriented is
critical for a company but also generating revenue is a goal they need to reach in order to be
competitive. Salesforce emphasizes the accomplishment of these objectives by an important
increase of sales and opportunities when the system is implemented. A better communication
between customers and the sales team, a high satisfaction rate and thus an incredible customer
loyalty are the keys for Salesforce to grow companies’ revenues. Nowadays, this is more and
more difficult to satisfy customers because they are better informed and have more demanding.
Hence, it is absolutely necessary if no vital for an entity to be able to handle this change and to
adapt. Using a CRM system is therefore essential and revenue will grow quickly if well
implemented.
4.2.3 Utility and accessibility
To continue, Salesforce is also that popular and used by a lot of companies for a simpler
reason: the system itself. It is simple to implement, easy to use and available anywhere from any
device at any time as long as there is Internet access. This is given possible by the use of
technology and the fact that Saleforce.com is available online which means there is no need of an
IT team to use it, no updates required. A login, a password and a subscription: that all you need
to connect and use this tool. Salesforce took advantage of the technology boom and decided to
focus on innovations as well. As a result, the company has been awarded most innovative
company for 5 years in a row by Forbes from 2011 to 2015. Less hardware, more innovation:
that’s how Salesforce defines themselves and keeps increasing over the years. The place where
products (the clouds) are proposed is called PaaS: Platform as a Service, the next generation.
This implementation allows companies to save 42% on IT costs on average and to give the latest
updates to customers about using the system efficiently.
These cloud-based applications are thus always the latest versions and customizations
don’t change due to this update. Hence, customers can really take advantage of this system
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without doing anything, it’s online. This action even makes Salesforce different than their
competitors. Moreover, the important amount of data flowing is absolutely secured;
Salesforce.com protects customer data with encryption, firewall, user authentication and other
security features.
The accessibility as described above does not only concern the devices, it also deals with the
business itself. Indeed, no matter how big a company is, Salesforce will be able to deliver the
same service.
All of these combined make Salesforce a fast, easy and effective tool to implement. Users
will benefit from fast results, low cost and a focus on innovation that maintains customers up-to-
date. Marketing, sales, communication, community service and finance are influenced by this
SaaS. This CRM tool has the advantage of mixing different services and offers low risk to a
potential user. This is what the next section is about: the results and feedback of Salesforce users.
4.3 Results and feedback
After demonstrating the benefits of using Salesforce.com, let’s take a closer look at a specific
example of a company using it and the feedback given by both customers and professionals
dealing with the tool. Results of the Salesforce implementation will also be discussed.
4.3.1 Airbus Helicopters Inc implementation
The reason of choosing Airbus Helicopters Inc as an example of a company that implemented
Salesforce is because I’m currently doing an internship here and I have access to the tool that I
use on a daily basis, as explained earlier in the introduction.
AHI (Airbus Helicopters Inc) started using the tool at the beginning of 2016 mainly due
to the reasons explained in the previous section and also because the former tool they used
seemed to be outdated and irrelevant in this evolving industry. AHI was only relying on Excel
spreadsheets and there was a lack of communication and information between departments
within the company. “Basically, we had to ask every sales manager what information they had
concerning a customer and we spent a lot of time doing that” said Leigh Cathro, Demand
Generation Manager at AHI. Indeed, there was not a common place where sales and marketing
team could share their information and communicate. This was a handicap knowing the fact that
sales managers are located across the United States and Canada.
So, after just a couple of months using the system, the results have been really positive overall.
Indeed, the company witnessed a significant increase of leads and noticed a better visibility on
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the business in general. The Chatter, a Salesforce feature, is used a lot on a daily basis by all the
Marketing and Sales team in order to communicate effectively and to share information
regarding a lead or a specific activity. Moreover, this is also the place where they share some
documents and ask for specific request to the person related (“Assign a task”). It is a mix
between Facebook and Twitter: employees are able to comment and like a post that can contain a
“hashtag” related to a trend or a topic. Statistics displayed in the Dashboards section demonstrate
that users often log in: 32 out of 53 total users logged in for the last seven days (March 21st
-
March 28th
2016).
When implementing a new tool and making the employees use it for a company is not an
easy exercise because they need to accept it and embrace it. Change is not always well seen
especially for the sales team that has their habits. In that case, the transition was perfectly
managed: the sales and marketing team went along to understand and to use Salesforce. They
were inclined to use it knowing the benefits it would bring them. Plus, the tool was really easy to
implement and is intuitive which facilitates the change. It is interesting to underline that AHI
Customer Service is using Siebel CRM, a different CRM tool. After witnessing the success of
SalesForce implementation in the Sales and Marketing team, the company is considering using it
as well for the customer service instead of Siebel.
As a result, most of the employees, part of the Marketing and Sales team, are willing to
recommend Salesforce to a colleague. A common feedback is that they are still discovering the
tool and learning how to use it at best in an efficient way. But so far results are encouraging for
team which encourages them to use the tool expecting high achievements in the future.
4.3.2 Customers success stories
As explained in the previous pages, Salesforce is available for any kind of businesses and there is
no restriction about the size of the company. With more than 150,000 customers, it is interesting
to discover what the general trend is, what is the main opinion about Salesforce.
According to a study made by Bluewolff, a consulting firm with expertise in cloud
technologies, 54% of Salesforce customers use two or more Salesforce clouds today. Sales Cloud
and Service Cloud are the most used products among all. Plus, 84% of customers would
recommend the product to peers and 87% of users think Salesforce is heading in the right
direction. All these statistics testify Salesforce’s success towards customers that seem to be
satisfied using it. Large companies such as L’Oréal, Coca-Cola, Pernod Ricard or Yamaha are
already customers and use the system.
More specifically, let’s take a look at L’Oréal America’s case. They’re the world’s
largest beauty and cosmetics company which means they absolutely need to engage with
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customers that are millions to use their products every day. Furthermore, L’Oréal acquired
multiple brands in order to expand which brought a communication challenge. To help
promoting new products and building strong relationships, the French company decided to adopt
Salesforce. They used it adding an employee social network that facilitates communication
across brands and is also effective for management that is able to keep the employees aligned.
Barry Gilmore, CEO of L’Oréal Americas said “Salesforce is vital to our unending quest to
understand our customers" stressing the importance the company puts concerning CRM and how
to master it.
At a different level, Carlo’s bakery is also a user of Salesforce due to the incredible
success they witnessed. This is not a large corporation interfering on an international scale but a
small family business bake shop. The company had to face a tremendous growth and couldn’t
stay with the old pencil and a piece of paper for orders. They decided to switch to Salesforce in
order to keep up with their customers and satisfy the demand. "The Salesforce Customer Success
Platform helped me grow my business like a boss" (Buddy Valastro CEO and Cake Boss)
underlining the outcome of using this system. To be more precise, Salesforce really helped
Carlo’s bakery understanding their customers thanks to Sales Cloud and Chatter among others.
Customer service is more efficient, productivity increased and the store is expanding more and
more (investment into new headquarters, online cooking programs, and use of social media
channels). As of today, they sell 24,000 cupcakes each week and launched a customized app
“Cakeforce” showing the use of the App cloud and the benefits they got from it.
“With Salesforce, not only do we get real time reporting, but by consolidating all of our feedback
almost 55,000 cases each year, we can get more accurate reporting, spot trends more quickly,
and identify and fix issues” adds Anthony Grieco, Senior Director, Customer Service & Transit
Information, NJ Transit summarizing the effect of Salesforce. The statistics above give a clear
sneak peek of what Salesforce customers notice when they use it.
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Figure 9: Customer feedback about Salesforce impact
These data are more sales oriented due to the customer experience Salesforce provides. Indeed, if
a customer becomes loyal to a company, he will most likely recommend it in the future which
will bring new leads and thus new opportunities. The streamline of the data and the information
by Salesforce is a key player in these significant figures. Thanks to this automation, customers
don’t lose time and give an appropriate and customized response to the right person. Plus, all the
relevant information they deal with allow them to focus on closing deals and therefore gaining
productivity. A more accurate forecast (48%) allows them to align with company’s objectives
and to earn profit.
4.3.3 Limitations
Overall, Salesforce has a lot of cases like these ones above with all kind of companies from the
American Red Cross to the city of Boston, this is much diversified.
However, some limitations affect the tool that contains some drawbacks that are important to
take into account.
First, Salesforce.com is more designed for B2B companies, the CRM system is not
oriented to the B2C industry. In addition to that, Salesforce does not support public clouds which
mean this could be an issue for hosting options and will therefore limit the field of action of the
company in the future. Hence, IT costs will increase significantly and logistical issues will most
likely arise for customers. Customization toolkit is not really helpful and appeared to be
cumbersome with too many administrators which could confuse users. Unlike competitors, they
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do not allow to have multiple roles for users which affect their flexibility especially if they are
present in different countries.
Then, pricing is also a component that mitigates Salesforce’s success that is the highest
priced product in the cloud CRM industry. Indeed, this is a service that a company rents and pays
monthly. Plus, in order to fully get access to the benefits of Salesforce, it is often recommended
to use multiple services and therefore pay for each of them. This could be a huge drawback for a
small company that couldn’t afford this service.
Moreover, Salesforce lacks in marketing software performance compared to their
competitors. To achieve lead scoring, marketing automation or campaigns, Marketing Cloud is
not enough and customers often use another tool in order to do these exercises. Marketo is one of
them and will be discussed into more details in the next section.
5. Marketo, a promising marketing tool
Marketo is a quite young company whose specialty is to help marketers thanks to their system. It
is becoming more and more popular towards companies nowadays thanks to the results they
obtained. Marketing automation being considered as the future of marketing, Marketo will play
an important role as well and will be a key player in this industry.
5.1 Marketing automation oriented
5.1.1 Overview of the company
Salesforce.com was created from an apartment, Marketo was created after some cold
callings made to marketers. In 2006, Phil Fernandez, CEO of Marketo, and his cofounders asked
CMOs (Chief Marketing Officers) what kept them up at night. With all the answers they
retrieved, they decided to create a system that will help marketers facing their challenges and
engaging with customers in a valuable and personalized manner. Besides, they define themselves
as “a company for marketers, by marketers”. Not used by a great part of the industry yet,
Marketo became nevertheless the leader in marketing automation. This is a true challenge in the
coming years because marketing automation software is able to change the sales process,
marketing and customer service of an organization if well implemented.
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Marketo’s software enables companies to change their relationships with customers by
establishing a meaningful, long time and personalized interaction. The outcome of Marketo is to
engage with customers and to gain profit by maximizing marketing investment (Marketing ROI).
This system is available for both small and large companies and is mainly B2B oriented (for
marketers, by marketers). Marketo has 2,300 customers, about 300 employees, over 100,000
users worldwide and keeps growing years after years. To be more specific, they declared a
3.545% increase over a 3 year period from 2009 to 2011 and Inc magazine named them the 78th
fastest growing business in 2012. This is a SaaS system just like Salesforce.
About the industry Marketo evolves in, it’s already a high competitive one with other
strong competitors. Hubspot, Pardot or Eloqua can also pretend to be the main actors in this
industry. Indeed, they have been established in the industry for about the same time than
Marketo if not longer and have pretty good results as well. All of them including Marketo base
their system on new technology and are available online.
5.1.2 Applications
Marketo proposes different options in order to fully take advantage of marketing automation and
reach company’s business objectives. The goal of these Marketo applications is to provide
relevant information to customers in order to know what they want and what their needs are.
Before making any decisions, they also need to know what your company’s products are.
 Email
This application is used to engage with customers and to provide information. Emails in Marketo
are created and designed freely by the user so that email campaigns can be ran easily and faster
with relevant information. Plus, a great feature about this application is the A/B testing option:
two email samples are sent and the user can see who between those two have the best success
rate. This is an incredible way to personalize messages and content for customers and therefore
to improve results.
Moreover, Marketo also offers a way to assess emails sent by setting up a report showing how
many emails were delivered and that they are located in the Inbox section, not the spam. If an
email goes there, Marketo will show it as a “bounced” email in the report.
 Mobile
As discussed above, customers are more and more connected which means they spend a lot of
time on their mobile device. Indeed, this is the channel they use most and Marketo proposes an
option based on this behavior: users can engage conversations with customers wherever they are
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and are able to give a quick response to their concerns should they have some. That will
maximize the impact and enhance customer relationship thanks to the personalized message
delivered. Mobile marketing allows to check who is connected and to assess performance thanks
to the dashboards.
 Social
Social app is a critical feature because social media needs to be a part of the marketing strategy.
This democratized tool is the perfect way to learn about company’s customers, to engage with
them and to understand what they are looking for. On the customer’s side, this is a great platform
to share their experience and content which is why it’s important to set these tools in an easy way
to encourage them doing so. Plus, social media is performing to show personalized ads to
customers depending on their preferences and what they were and are looking for. It’s important
to notice that Marketo allows a potential lead to give his personal information based on his social
media profile.
 Digital ads
The digital application is a way to target the good customer with the appropriate message. This
app offers the possibility to customize ads customers will see by classifying them into different
sections depending on their actions. This optimization favors an important ROI and a
personalized message to the right person.
 Web
Marketo’s system allows the user to be aware of who connected on their website. This is a huge
asset for users that can convert anonymous leads by providing messages, call-to-actions and
nurture then in order to keep them informed. Even if the visitor is anonymous, companies can
target them with a specific message if these visitors come from a specific account. Plus, this web
feature also provides metrics to monitor activity from any device thanks to the analytics section.
Reports, dashboards, maps, etc. are used to assess campaigns performance and the level of
activity.
5.1.3 Marketo terms
Just like Salesforce.com, Marketo system has its own specific vocabulary and it is essential for
users to know how to use this tool at best. Most of these terms such as landing pages or forms
have already been described in the “Marketing automation” section above so we will exclusively
focus on Marketo terms users will deal with on their account (called “My Marketo”). The items
displayed will vary depending on the type of subscription users enrolled with.
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 Marketing activities
This is the location where marketers will develop their content and send out messages to leads.
This section contains all programs users need in order to develop their business and to use
Marketo functionalities. This is probably the place where they will spend most of their time
launching campaigns, emails, engagement, reporting, landing pages and lead status. Programs
are sub-classified into channels allowing marketers to focus on specific types of initiatives and to
create reports on lead status and activities.
 Design Studio
This section is the place to create and design all the tools marketers will use in their programs for
customers. Landing pages, forms, emails, images and files are located in the Design Studio and
can’t be active until they are moved to the Marketing Activities section. In order to be used,
these creations have to be “approved” by the marketer. Even if the item is located in Marketing
Activities, it has to be approved in order to be active otherwise it is just saved as a “draft”.
 Lead database
Lead database regroups all the leads captured by the company and are classified into different
categories (“smart lists”) set up by marketers. Unknown leads are also displayed so that the
company is aware of his website activity. Segmentation based on the industry the lead evolves in
is also displayed to save time to users finding the right information as fast as possible.
 Analytics
All the reports and statistics monitoring company’s performance are located in this section. This
is an incredible asset for marketers because they can assess exactly what is working and what
needs to be improved in their programs. Email performance, lead performance, web page
activity, program performance… are just a few examples of what analytics can provide to
marketers. All reports are classified as well depending on what users set up.
Calendar, Community and SEO are also features available in this section but are not directly
linked to the business activity itself so we will not expand on that topic. The following picture
shows what Marketo home page looks like and what means the shortcuts in it.
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Figure 10: Marketo home page
5.1.4 Utilization and implementation
Marketo is an intuitive and easy to use tool for users that implemented it. Several functionalities
are available for marketers in order to take fully advantage of the benefits Marketo offers. Lead
acquisition is essentially what Marketo is about: attracting leads. This is possible thanks to the
tools at disposal such as landing pages, lead scoring, lead nurturing and emails.
• Landing pages
They are one hundred percent customizable and Marketo offers some basic models for beginners
so that they can get used to it. Moreover, forms used in landing pages are able to recognize
visitors on the website; A/B testing is available as well in order to use the best form thanks to the
Marketo network. Landing pages are one of the best features to attract and convert leads in the
way that they provide customer’s information to marketers. This will be saved in the database
and will be used later by the system based on the demographic information potential lead gave.
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However, forms are designed separately from the landing pages so that they can be used for
other landing pages instead of a specific one.
As explained above, progressive profiling is used to fill these landing pages for visitors which
increases conversation rate. It is easy to set up and appreciated by leads that don’t need to answer
all the questions related to them. It’s a gain of time for both the user and the lead.
When designing a form or a landing page, Marketo will automatically register them into the
“Design Studio” where the pages will be saved as draft. Marketers will to approve the page so
that it can be used and moved to “Marketing Activities” as seen in the previous section. A
landing page needs to be appealing in order to catch attention which means they shouldn’t be
overloaded with too much information to digest. Same goes for the forms, the shortest the better
with relevant information in it obviously.
• Emails
They are the most common and preferred way to communicate with customers; they are
personalized and targeted to the right person. Target lists are set up by the system which will
increase the response rate. They are part of a Marketo program and can be scheduled to be sent
out at a specific time increasing flexibility marketers have.
• Lead scoring
Lead scoring is also a necessary action marketers need to apply in order to assess their activities
and to classify who are the most interesting leads. The scores are based on the demographic
information (industry, company, location…) and the BANT (Budget Authority Need Time)
retrieved from data. Key leads are those who will be most likely inclined to generate revenue to
the company.
• Lead nurturing
When company sets up lead scoring and focus on their key players with the best scores, it is
essential not to forget those or are not eligible yet to be considered as “hot lead”. In that case,
because of their lower score, marketers need to nurture them and engage with them by providing
relevant information that might catch their interest. By doing so, they give lead a chance to
increase their score based on their behavior in order to become “top leads” for the company. This
appears under a campaign form and keeps the lead involved and the relationship is therefore
maintained. Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads (The Annuitas
Group) and there are 50% more marketing qualified leads from lead nurturing (Marketo)
stressing the importance of this action to marketers.
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These are the main and most important features that will be used by marketers; they’re located
under programs and campaigns more specifically. Marketo offers great visibility to the
performance of these campaigns by regrouping the assets (landing pages, emails) with the
corresponding reports. This is really intuitive and gives great flexibility, relevant information and
a large sphere of action for marketers to convert leads.
5.2 Marketo benefits
This section will summarize the main benefits a company could gain from Marketo. As
described above, this is an easy tool to implement with significant outcome that will be discussed
in more details below.
5.2.1 A maximized productivity
Marketo users witnessed a significant increase of productivity across Sales and
Marketing. Indeed, the system is responsible for a tremendous growth number of leads and
opportunities by all the information and freedom given to marketers. They are able to track more
effectively potential leads and to engage with them in a personalized way. This will bring
qualitative leads thanks to the lead scoring where marketers will be able to focus on. In addition
to the customized message sent to potential leads, marketers will also have to take into
consideration those who do not have such a good score (see lead nurturing). Doing so will
strengthen the relationship and will attract new qualified leads. Marketing campaigns used to be
done manually, they can now be ran automatically thanks to this system. Marketing can run more
campaigns with fewer people, and still deliver more qualified leads to sales.
Then, Marketo improves sales productivity immediately: “a 10% improvement in lead
quality can result in a 40% improvement in sales productivity” (Stu Schmidt, Vice President of
Solution Sales at Cisco Webex). Here, there is a correlation between lead quality and sales
productivity that is facilitates by Marketo. Indeed, the more qualitative lead the more sales
productivity improvement makes sense in the way that Marketo delivers high quality information
to marketers. Hence, they save a lot of time looking for information and can strongly focus on
leads. Marketing automation (and therefore Marketo) makes users respond quickly, responses
time are much shorter.
Moreover, Marketo optimizes marketing and sales spend by providing regular reports. In
this sense, they give the possibility to marketers to assess their campaigns and the messages
delivered to customers. Marketing strategy costs a lot of money to companies and having this
feedback so quickly (reports can be delivered on a daily basis) enables marketers to adapt to the
current situation and take accurate decisions. They have a higher visibility and are more and
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more flexible. The majority of companies see ROI from using marketing automation within a
year, according to a Focus Research study.
5.2.2 A revenue increase
All the features explained above Marketo offers to users result in a revenue growth for
the company by 40%. Actually, marketers have more time to focus on priorities and hot leads
that will bring money to them. Growing number of opportunities mean higher chance of closing
deals and building more relationships with customers. According to a survey in 2011 of over 250
Marketo customers, they witnessed a 22% increase in qualified leads and 21% more leads
converted to opportunities. These figures are closely related to the productivity gain discussed in
the previous section because a higher productivity also means higher revenue generated. One-to-
one communications with personalized recommendations have increased revenue per email click
by 700% analyzed Julia Linker, director of CRM at Auction.com. Thus, Marketo plays an
important role in faster revenue growth.
Then, Marketo is also able to increase some company’s revenues by optimizing ROI. To
be more specific, the survey also points out that the system reduces customer acquisition costs by
15%. In order to optimize the ROI, every marketer need to analyze their current situation and
assess what is working and what is not so that they can align with strategy and improve. That
being done, they have to coordinate the team they’re working with for better results. Marketing
automation and Marketo specifically is the specialist for this. Reports show what program has
the most influence, they monitor each stage of the revenue cycle with key metrics and provides
high visibility for the team. Acteva, an online event registration service, has achieved 350% ROI
and 100% annual growth implementing marketing automation and using it with Marketo. This is
also due to the fact that Marketo highly relies on technologies and innovation enabling the
optimization of marketing programs and therefore a better ROI.
Furthermore, Marketo has a great impact on conversion rates especially thanks to the
engagement program it offers. Indeed, the system includes some possibilities within programs to
directly engage with customers. It could be a seminar, a direct email or a tradeshow that the user
would send to customers that would be more inclined to become a MQL. If a lead attends a
seminar or a tradeshow, that means they show a strong interest in the product or service a
company offers. Hence, conversion rate will increase which means revenue will as well. “In our
second year of using Marketo, we now drive significantly more sales opportunities with the same
budget and have increased sales-ready leads by 400%” observes John Watton, VP Marketing at
ShipServ. This would not be possible without a marketing automation system set up; it delivers
some relevant information that marketers are ready to use and to adapt their actions based on it.
Page 36
5.2.3 Marketing and Sales alignment
Marketing and Sales alignment is a challenge for every company and is not easy to get but if
that’s the case, positive results will come both for the company (more revenue) and customers
(better relationship). In many cases, they are disconnected because they have different goals and
are working with different tools and prospects suffer from this lack of communication. All the
benefits explained above would be increased with a marketing and sales team aligned.
Marketo, and marketing automation in general, drives marketing and sale teams toward a
common goal. The system streamlines the data collection process, show information in real time
to team members which mean they can be on the same page with the same information available
and thus are able to work in the same direction to track leads. The accurate data, the information
about lead and reports increase communication between both teams which will have an impact
on the prospects as well. Taking notes and updating profile which was a pain for marketing and
sales members is now done thanks to marketing automation. Instead, they can focus on their
primary activity and collaborate in order to reach that common goal.
Lead qualification is another influencer of the marketing and sales team alignment
because team members often don’t have the same definition of what a qualified lead is.
Marketing automation provides common metrics to the teams so that they can define together
what a good lead is by establishing the same criteria. When this is done, they will collaborate
thanks to the reports Marketo send out. They will be able to assess their performance and to
check lead scoring with real time notifications. These features combined will increase cohesion
between sales and marketing teams which will result in a revenue increase.
Having Marketing and Sales alignment provides a better insight and a better efficiency.
Marketo’s “sales insight” is a great tool to have visibility on a company’s business activity and to
monitor lead’s actions. In order to have both teams aligned, there is a common place where they
can share information and processes so that both teams can be transparent from one to another:
This is considered as a SLA (Service Level Agreement). Scheduling a time where they could
meet in order to exchange ideas and propose help would increase team work and will lead to a
better alignment between the sales and marketing services.
Marketo is an easy, powerful and complete tool for marketers that have the possibility to drive
their business into the direction they want to and to achieve company’s objectives.
5.3 A result-oriented system
Marketo is a real performing SaaS and a key marketing automation actor. All the features offered
are globally made to attract more leads and to help a company building relationship with them.
Page 37
The following sections will deal with feedback from users and also the improvements that can be
made to this tool.
5.3.1 Marketo at Airbus Helicopters Inc
Just like with Salesforce, Airbus Helicopters Inc implemented Marketo less than a year
ago. The difference is that it is only used by some members of the marketing team and not the
sales team. The main reason is sales team don’t really need it at that time, the tool is expensive
(subscription is per person) and new to the company so they want to experience it first before
releasing it to the rest of the team. Before using it, there was no tool dedicated to this
performance except in France where the company’s headquarters are located where they use
Oracle, another software.
After a couple of months using it, it’s too early to have a critical opinion about Marketo
but so far the results have been encouraging. Indeed, the marketing employees using it agree that
Marketo gave them access to a large lead database that could be easily been managed. Sales team
members are aware of Marketo’s performance and start working closely with marketing team
with specific requests the tool can do. It is amazing how much visibility Marketo offers by
sending daily reports which allow the team to track leads and to deliver a personalized message
to the right person.
Moreover, Marketo is really flexible concerning content sent out to leads whether it is email,
landing pages, forms…. Everything is monitored regularly and Marketo has a customer service
dedicated to help users that don’t know how to use the tool. First, they provide online courses
(Marketo University) with tutorial on all the features available, how to use the tool, what do
these signs mean. Once the marketer learned by himself, Marketo offers online classes and
online private sessions with Marketo consultants that are experts. The general feeling of the AHI
marketing team about this resource is satisfaction: experts always answered their concerns and
are always at disposal for any questions they may have. As explained above, it is a little bit too
early to compare the period before Marketo and the period using Marketo. However, it is
important to underline, that results are good so far: more leads are saved in AHI database, new
ones are tracked, good quality of the piece of content sent and more and more relationships are
built with customers thanks to the tool specifically. Plus, the time Marketo takes to explain the
system and to help users encourage marketers to learn about the tool and to take fully advantage
of it. If well implemented, results with benefits discussed above should arrive.
5.3.2 Customers feedback
Marketo’s customers are especially small B2B companies and a few large ones. This is a young
company looking to grow in the future by taking advantage of the marketing automation practice
Page 38
that is considered to be the future of marketing. They have to face a strong competition
especially with Hubspot, the trigger for this marketing automation infatuation. Here are a few
examples of companies that implemented Marketo and the difference they notice prior
utilization.
SchoolDude is a good case of a company that took advantage of using Marketo to face
their biggest challenge. They are a platform of cloud solutions for schools and universities to
manage facilities, maintenance and technology. The biggest issue they had was their customer
database that was too diverse and complex. Hence, their objective was to tailor what they offer
based on the challenges and concerns of each audience. After implementing Marketo, the team
was delighted by the real time personalization offered by the system. More specifically, they
used it to leverage data in such a way that it would encourage prospects to engage with the
products or to assist to demo and seminars so that they can learn more about the company’s
services. All the demographic data they collected (school, location, job title…) was so important
that they had to deliver a specific message every time. As a result, SchoolDude witnessed an
amazing engagement increase in the first 90 days which means they had to adapt their service
regarding this incredible engagement rate (they increased average session duration by 394% and
average pages per session by 405%).
“Marketo enables us to transform the way we operate. We’re now focused on multi-channel,
multi-touch campaigns, aligned to buyer pain and the buyer journey. We are better able to
leverage the right marketing asset based on fit, behavior, and journey. Marketo Real-Time
Personalization is a critical part of this holistic, 360-degree approach” (Nick Mirisis, Director of
Marketing, SchoolDude).
This quote testified the flexibility Marketo provides to marketers as well as the important amount
of information processed. As of today, SchoolDude is the leader in this industry and plans on
extending his leadership with the Marketo features.
Panasonic is an example of a large company that was able to take advantage of this
technology based tool. Their goal was to improve the working lives of business professionals and
to help their organization’s efficiency and performance. More specifically, they were looking for
a tool that would enable the company to find new markets and new customers, a tool able to
drive a high return on investment and to support this expansion. After implementing Marketo
three years ago (2013), marketing’s weight to the company’s overall revenues went from under
10% to 26%. Communication between sales and marketing team happens more often and is
enriching. Thanks to these results, conversations with prospects are more relevant and targeted
which would lead to strong relationships and engagement.
“Marketo gives us a competitive advantage since most companies have CRM but not Marketing
Automation. It allows us to create a unique one-to-one customer dialogue and, through
Page 39
workflow, makes our organization dynamic and intelligent in the eyes of the customer.” (Stephen
Yeo, European Marketing Director).
This quote points out the main difference between CRM and marketing automation: CRM is
more sales focused and marketing automation marketing focused. Marketo was able to meet
Panasonic’s requirements in a short amount of time and this performance encouraged employees
to keep going this way.
5.3.3 Axis of improvements
Despite all the good feedback presented above, Marketo is still a tool comprising drawbacks that
could be significant for companies that would be interested in it. Technology keeps evolving, so
do behaviors which means marketers have to adapt to this environment. Marketo caught that
trend and strives to provide marketers a competing and performing tool that will help them
achieve their business goals. However, here are some drawbacks that could weaken a potential
user’s interest.
First, Marketo is expensive to get for a company: they offer three standard pricing tiers,
at $895, $1,795, and $3,175 per month. The difference between these prices is the features
unlocked if a company is willing to pay more. There is a big price difference between these
offers just to have access to some extra features. It’s one of the most expensive automated
marketing tools on the market compared to his competitors and all the plan they propose are also
confusing with all the combinations possible. This could be a brake for Marketo considering
small sized businesses may need this system but just can’t afford it. This is therefore a risk for a
company that invested that much money to get in the future a high marketing ROI.
Then, set up could also appear to be complicated with Marketo. Indeed, personalization
options they provide require a lot of knowledge and time to make them work properly. Thus,
companies with a strong software and good support will handle this more easily than a company
that does not have this accessibility. This loss of time and knowledge requirement might make a
company to call out a specialist to fix this. Presented as a system that would make marketing
easier, Marketo really needs to improve this implementation and make it more accessible for
users.
Furthermore, Marketo struggles to handle a high traffic in their system: if the lead
database is too important and web activity crowded, the system will slow down and will become
more difficult to use. That requires a great optimization and organization for a company in order
to take advantage of the system and to obtain significant results. The important amount of data
and information provided by the system needs to be classified specifically by the user so that he
can’t get lost with these data. During training sessions, Marketo consultants always ask users to
Page 40
categorize their files and to set up everything regularly. Hence, training and planning are
questions that need to bet taken into account by potential users before investing in Marketo.
Overall, Marketo offers some great advantages and features but the pricing issue along with the
set up requirements and the system capability limits could discourage companies to use Marketo.
In order to make that purchase decision, they need to assess what their needs are and if this
system would offer the corresponding and expecting answer.
5.4 Marketo and Salesforce.com
Marketo being marketing automation oriented and Salesforce CRM oriented, these tools
combined offer a great experience to a company if well implemented. There is even an
agreement between the two companies that can match their activities if the user paid for the two
systems.
Leads, sales insight, customer database, content… is accessible on both systems that can share
information. Salesforce offers a Marketo app in order to take advantage of the two systems that
will allow a marketer to combine CRM and Marketing automation. The figure below highlights
the stages where CRM and marketing automation play an important role in the sales funnel.
Figure 11: CRM and Marketing automation
Page 41
With both tools combined, the first part of the funnel would correspond to Marketo field
of action. The system is efficient to track leads and to build relationships with prospects by
nurturing them, ranking them and providing a customized and personalized answer. Salesforce
would be then “responsible” of the last part of the funnel with SQL that are ready to move to the
next stage of the process. Having Marketo and Salesforce working together for a company will
result in a tremendous gain of time, more leads converted and an improved streamline of
information. Plus, marketers will have more visibility on their activity based on the data provided
by these tools.
As an example, Airbus Helicopters Inc is currently using them at the same time and
results are encouraging. Indeed, the company witnessed a significant increase of their activity
thanks to the information easily accessible and the easy implementation of the tools. Between
last year’s first quarter and this year’s, they increased their bookings (they sell helicopters) by
100%. It is the highest result the company had for the last 10 years thanks to Salesforce.
Salesforce.com was generally well welcomed by the marketing and sales teams and the results
provided motivate them to use this tool in the future even if they are still learning how to use at
best this tool. Marketo is just accessible to marketing team members and might be available to
the entire sales and marketing team in the future.
Page 42
6. Conclusion
The aim of this study was to present Marketo and Salesforce.com and to explain how and
why they could possibly play a primary role for companies in the future. They are based on CRM
and marketing automation that are nowadays a challenge for companies and marketers more
specifically.
In an evolving world with technologies always more improved, Marketo and
Salesforce.com are key actors in the future of marketing and CRM. Both of them us technology,
they are a SaaS (Software as a Service) and exclusively focus on marketing automation and
CRM. “Changing behaviors forced companies to change how they market and sell” highlights
perfectly the business world nowadays and the asset these technologic tools bring. Main benefits
companies would gain from these tools are significant. Indeed, both systems generate more
revenue for companies and are easy to use. More specifically, Salesforce is exclusively customer
focused and provide real time data, relevant information to marketers and build strong
relationships with customers. Putting the customer as the center of attention for a company is
critical because that will drive their sales. Salesforce strives to deliver specific information
regarding leads that marketers can use in order to deliver a customized message to the right
person. The online availability of the tool makes it simple to implement, fast and effective which
leads to a higher conversion rate and therefore more leads in the database to exploit. Salesforce
was elected #1CRM for all businesses (CRM Magazine) six years in a row.
Marketo is more marketing focused and has a tremendous impact within the company’s
organization. Indeed, this system increases employees’ productivity by providing qualitative
information and leads to them. Plus, regular reports provided allow marketers to have a great
visibility on their activity and thus to take specific actions based on the reports displayed. Hence,
messages and content sent will be more targeted and sent out to the right person saving time. In
addition, Marketo is responsible for marketing and sales alignment which is a huge asset and a
big challenge for companies. This SaaS enables sales and marketing teams to work together by
sharing information and defining a common goal for both teams. Data they receive and
automated information allow teams to have a common definition of what a good lead is and
therefore are able to work together in order to track them and optimize the lead database. It is an
easy, powerful and complete solution.
However, these systems are not perfect and can still be improved. Besides, Salesforce is evolving
and 66% of companies believe Salesforce delivers more value today than it did one year ago.
Marketo is an expensive system to implement which could restrict small companies to use it
because they might not afford it. Plus, Marketo is B2B and small size businesses oriented, B2C
companies can’t really use it so far. The level of competition in this industry is high but
Salesforce and Marketo are well established thanks to their performance and the good feedback
they receive from a majority of users.
Page 43
This memoir aimed to make understand how these tools are important for companies and
how profitable they can be for a company (ROI) if well implemented. With technologies arising,
more marketers will be interested in using Salesforce and Marketo if they keep performing this
way. It is a real challenge for companies, some are using these tools and witnessed significant
results really quickly and strongly recommend using it. It will be interesting to see in the future
the evolution of companies using Marketo and Salesforce.com that should become essential
actors in global businesses.
Page 44
7. BIBLIOGRAPHY
- http://fortune.com/change-the-world/
-http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/marketing.html#ixzz40XdnRo00
-http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/salesforce-com.html#ixzz40Xg3pIMA
- http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/definition/CRM
- https://www.marketo.com/marketing-automation/
- The definitive guide to lead generation, Dayna Rothman
-Engagement 3.0 Report
- https://hmn-uploads-eu.s3.amazonaws.com/thunderhead-
production/uploads/2014/02/Engagement_3-0_US_Report-PDF-web.pdf
-Marketing 2020 Report
-Social CRM Model, Australasian Marketing Journal, 12/05/2014
-The definitive guide to Marketing automation (https://learn.uncw.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-
1340639-dt-content-rid-7687499_1/courses/22796.201520/The-Definitive-Guide-to-Marketing-
Automation2.pdf)
- The ROI of Marketing automation , a Pardot White Paper
- Ten Most Significant Cultural Trends of the Last Decade by Andy Crouch
- Mary Wisniewski American Banker Magazine, (Feb 1, 2016): “the evolution of marketing”
Volume 126, Issue 2, p. 7
- KnowThis: Marketing Basics, 2nd Edition by Paul Christ (2012)
-Bournemouth University, Foundation Degree South West website on Marketing
- Peter, J.P. and Olson, J.J. (1996) Consumer Behaviour and Marketing Strategy, USA: Irwin
- John M. McCann (1995) The Changing Nature of Consumer Goods Marketing & Sales
- http://www.census.gov/hhes/computer/files/2012/Computer_Use_Infographic_FINAL.pdf
- Razorfish Digital Outlook Report, Vol 10 (2009)
- http://cultbranding.com/ceo/52-types-of-marketing-strategies/
Page 45
- IBM data driven Marketing by Tim Bohling (2014)
- Jared Reitzin, Start Small Business Blog (April 26th, 2007): “What is Digital Marketing? “
- Lauren Drell, Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing Infographic (October 30, 2011)
- The Art of SEO, mastering Search Engine Optmization, 2nd
edition (October 2009) by Eric
Enge, Stephan Spencer, Rand Fishkin, and Jessie C.Stricchiola
- The beginners guide to SEO (December 18th
, 2015), by Rand Fishkin and Moz Staff
- “How do they find you? What happens next?” By Bryan Carter, Manufacturing in Mississippi
(Fall & Winter 2015), page 90
-”A Beginner's Guide to Generating Business Leads the Inbound Way” by Anum Hussain
(February 11, 2016)
- http://www.lsoft.com/products/about_whyemailmarketing.asp
- “Why Landing Pages Are an Indispensable Part of Marketing” by Pamela Vaughan (April 27,
2012)
- “MQL vs. SQL” by Jenna Puckett (August 10, 2015)
- https://www.act-on.com/marketing-automation/
- http://www.crmsearch.com/salesforce-com.php
- http://searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com/definition/Software-as-a-Service
- http://saascribe.com/saas-market-overview-2015/
- “Why Competition Is So Bitter in SaaS: Oligopolies and Dominant Strategy Equilibriums” by
Jason Lemkin (October 2nd
, 2012).
- “Salesforce.com for Dummies”, 5th
edition by Liz Kao and Matt Kaufman
- https://www.salesforce.com/what-is-salesforce/
- https://www.salesforce.com/crm/top-rated/
- https://www.salesforce.com/crm/
- https://www.salesforce.com/crm/reviews/
- “The Salesforce advantage: how salesforce powers customer success” Pdf
- “The State of Salesforce, 2014 – 2015” by Louis Columbus published by Forbes (October 12,
2014)
-”Salesforce FY2015Annual report for Web”, Pdf
- http://www.crmexposed.com/compare-salesforcecom-advantages-disadvantages.php
Page 46
- http://www.salesboom.com/salesforce.com-crm-product-limitations.html
- “The state of Salesforce, Annual Report 2015-2016” by Bluewolf (February 1, 2016)
- “Marketo vs Eloqua vs Pardot: A Massive Review” by Marcus Sheridan (2013)
- https://www.marketo.com/company/
- http://www.marketingautomationinsider.com/marketo/
- https://www.g2crowd.com/products/marketo/details#video-demo-header
- “5 Keys to Sales and Marketing Alignment” by Mathew Sweezey (January 23, 2014)
- “What’s The Difference Between CRM and Marketing Automation Software?” by Abigail
Justen ( September 2, 2014)
- http://www.webpagefx.com/internet-marketing/is-marketo-the-right-fit-for-my-business.html
Page 47
8. APPENDIX
Figure 1: Marketing promotion by Michelin in the early 1900s
Figure 2: Buying behaviors, then and now
Page 48
Figure 3: The connections of digital marketing
Figure 4: What defines marketing automation
Figure 5: The different stages of the Marketing funnel
Page 49
Figure 6: Marketing automation, a game changer
Page 50
Figure 7: Salesforce terminology
Page 51
Figure 8: Customer experience maturity is linked to Business performance
Figure 9: Customer feedback about Salesforce impact
Page 52
Figure 10: Marketo home page
Page 53
Figure 11: CRM and Marketing automation
Page 54

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Memoir

  • 1. The major challenge of the new marketing tools Salesforce.com and Marketo for companies today Corentin Natali Memoir Spring 2016
  • 2. TABLE OF CONTENT Research Method…………………………………………………………. 3 1. Introduction…………………………………………………………... 4 2. Definition of Marketing and CRM………………………………….. 5 3. Evolution of Marketing………………………………………………. 6 3.1 History of Marketing……………………………………………... 6 3.1.1 Mass Marketing………………………………………... 7 3.1.2 Direct Marketing………………………………………. 7 3.1.3 Social Influence Marketing……………………………. 7 3.2 Digital Marketing ………………………………………………… 8 3.2.1 Definition……………………………………………….. 9 3.2.2 Inbound and Outbound Marketing………………….. 10 3.2.3 SEO…………………………………………………….. 10 3.3 Marketing Automation…………………………………………... 11 3.3.1 Definition………………………………………………. 11 3.3.2 Lead generation……………………………………….. 12 3.3.3 Email Marketing………………………………………. 13 3.3.4 Landing pages and Forms…………………………….. 14 3.4 Marketing and Sales……………………………………………… 15 4. SalesForce.com, a strong CRM asset………………………………... 16 4.1 A recognized software solution……………………………………16 4.1.1 History…………………………………………………. 17 4.1.2 The SaaS industry……………………………………… 17 4.1.3 Products: the “clouds”…………………………………. 18 4.1.4 Specific vocabulary……………………………………... 19 4.2 Salesforce.com benefits…………………………………………..... 22 4.2.1 Customer focused……………………………………….. 22 4.2.2 Revenue growth…………………………………………. 23 4.2.3 Utility and accessibility…………………………………. 24 4.3 Results and feedback………………………………………………. 25 4.3.1 Airbus Helicopters Inc implementation……………….. 25 4.3.2 Customers success stories………………………………. 26 4.3.3 Limitations………………………………………………. 28 Page 1
  • 3. 5. Marketo, a promising marketing tool ………………………………… 29 5.1 Marketing automation oriented……………………………………. 29 5.1.1 Overview of the company……………………………….. 29 5.1.2 Applications……………………………………………… 30 5.1.3 Marketo terms…………………………………………… 31 5.1.4 Utilization and implementation………….…………….. 33 5.2 Marketo benefits…………………………………………………….. 34 5.2.1 A maximized productivity…………………………….... 34 5.2.2 A revenue increase……………………………………....... 35 5.2.3 Marketing and Sales Alignment ………………………… 36 5.3 A result-oriented system…………………………………………….. 37 5.3.1 Marketo at Airbus Helicopters Inc…………………….... 37 5.3.2 Customers feedback……………………………………… 38 5.3.3 Axis of Improvements……………………………………. 40 5.4 Marketo and Salesforce.com…………………………………….… 41 6. Conclusion………………………………………………………………... 43 7. Bibliography…………………………………………………………….. 45 8. Appendix………………………………………………………………... 48 Page 2
  • 4. RESEARCH METHOD Marketo and Salesforce.com appeared to be some essential marketing tools for companies today using new technologies. This is a recent and ongoing phenomenon and a major part of companies are still trying to look for a suitable solution for their activities. Salesforce.com is more known due to its seniority which is not the case for Marketo, a recent and evolving company. Therefore, the information that will be used in this paper will come from specific books, articles, statistics, websites and testimonials coming from professionals using either Marketo or Salesforce.com or even both. I also conducted some interviews with members of the Marketing and Sales team at Airbus Helicopters Inc. Existing surveys will be used and some piece of information will also come from some classes taken at UNCW (Marketing Strategy and Sales Force Automation) during spring 2015. The goal of this study is to prove how these marketing tools will become more and more popular in the future and commonly used by companies. How can the system they provide help marketers in this technology based environment? Page 3
  • 5. 1. Introduction Nowadays, technology evolves quickly and offers new challenges for companies which need to follow-up that phenomenon. In the 90’s, Windows was the main technology tool available for both companies and the average consumers. A big change appeared in 1998 with the launch of Google, who became one of the most successful companies in history (ranked #2 among companies that change the world in 2015 according to Fortune). This was a global phenomenon that changed this world: it was the beginning of the New Technologies revolution. Microsoft with Windows, Google and Apple are tech companies that took advantage of this transition and are now one of the largest companies worldwide. In order to reach this level, they had to manage and best use their resources in particular the use of Marketing. Indeed, this new trend had to be publicized so that consumers are aware of what is going on within this specific industry. Moreover, this trend also affected companies, from the SMEs to the largest ones which underline the importance of Marketing when well implemented. It is usual now that companies, if not all, use a computer with either Windows or Apple and have Google as the browser by default. This case even applies for practically anyone on earth, mentalities have evolved and so did the human being. In the 90’s the Personal Computer was mainly used as the best way to connect to other people worldwide and to use Technology. As of today, in 2016, consumers have the choice to be perfectly connected between computers, tablets or smartphones which strengthen the evolution of our behaviors. As the world is evolving with launch of new technologies, so are businesses and marketers that need to adapt and give an appropriate answer to this new demand. Salesforce.com and Marketo are two companies that try to provide marketers the accurate tool that would allow them to face new challenges. The following sections will present these two tools based on CRM and marketing automation that are potential solutions for companies. As a college student, I had the opportunity to discover and to learn about Salesforce and Marketo in some of my classes. These tools represent the transition to the future of marketing strategy; they’re incredibly helpful when well implemented. In a world where new technologies are constantly evolving and the center of attention, being able to master these tools offer a huge asset to companies. This critical challenge drawn my attention and also because this is a new phenomenon, not all the companies have heard about SalesForce.com and Marketo. We could classify them into the growth stage of the product life cycle. Another relevant point that motivated me to write a memoir on this topic is my internship with Airbus Helicopters Inc: on a daily basis, I have the opportunity to use both of these tools in order to fulfill my tasks. This experience is a tremendous way to learn more in details about these tools and thus being able to talk about them more easily. Page 4
  • 6. 2. Definition of Marketing and CRM In order to understand what this topic is about, it is important to define the concepts linked to the tools Marketo and Salesforce.com and their meaning. According to the Business dictionary, marketing is the management process through which goods and services move from concept to the customer. It includes the coordination of four elements called the 4 P's of marketing (Product, Price, Promotion, Placement). In other words, it could be defined as the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising. Marketing is vital within a company, this is the image they show to customers representing the company. Marketing goes along with sales, they’re closely related to one another which is why it is important to have an efficient marketing system set up. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) regroups the practices, strategies and technologies that companies use to manage and analyze customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle. This is critical for a company to take advantage of CRM because this will leverage their profit if well implemented, it’s a relationship built with the customer. If he is satisfied with the service delivered, he will become the best ambassador towards his entourage (advocacy and recommendation) and he will hopefully become a loyal customer which is the goal of companies. Indeed, the most difficult exercise is not to attract customers but to retain them. Marketo makes marketing automation software for companies. It helps marketers master the art and science of digital marketing to engage customers and prospects (Marketo.com). Salesforce.com is a global web-based software and cloud computing company best known for its customer relationship management (CRM) product that capitalizes on commercial applications of social networking through acquisition (Business dictionary). It is important to consider the fact that these concepts were not as relevant a couple of years ago as they are nowadays. CRM and marketing occupy a central position for companies that need to adapt their strategy and their objectives using these concepts. Page 5
  • 7. 3. Evolution of Marketing 3.1 History of marketing Marketing as we think of today is a recent concept that appeared in the early 1900s where advertising was the main goal and activity for companies and retailers. After the industrial revolution (18th -19th centuries), a period of social changes occurred: behaviors evolved with the mass production and the improved ways of transportation. Hence, producers had to find a way to distribute their goods more efficiently in creative manners as competition grew as well. Thus, it is interesting to notice that already at that time, sellers had to adapt based on the technological changes and the tools available. Figure 1: Marketing promotion by Michelin in the early 1900s The figure above shows how companies found new way to advertise their products or services (in that case Michelin with Bibendum, the “Michelin man”). Marketing witnessed evolution with some trends about the way of marketing products and services. Page 6
  • 8. 3.1.1 Mass Marketing The idea of Mass marketing is to target as many people as possible. The strategy behind it is to broadcast a message reaching everyone ignoring the market segmentation. It first appeared in the 1920s with the massive use of radio by corporations and was used a lot during World War II. This “mass” idea comes from the form of mass demand, mass communication and massive stores at a time when the US economy was recovering and growing after the War. Companies like Procter & Gamble took advantage of that new concept by advertising a lot their products through TV during the shows (ads) knowing they could reach out directly to consumers. This was made possible by the amount of many invested in these promotions but also by the use of technology which was a critical factor of success for these companies. Even nowadays, this marketing technique still exists and is used by several companies like Apple. Indeed, this company can still benefit from traditional mass marketing thanks to the brand’s popularity. 3.1.2 Direct Marketing Then, technology evolved quickly and became available to the population and not only to specific organizations. According to the Census Bureau, 8.2% of all households had a computer at home (1984) versus 78.9% in 2012 and from 1990 to 2011, global cell phone subscriptions increased from 12.4 million to over 6 billion which highlights the democratization of the technology and the easy access to it. Direct marketing is a type of advertisement campaign that targets a selected group of customers through the use of different platforms such as billboards, cell phones, direct emails, radio or television. Unlike mass marketing, this is a targeted message that will help increasing the sales of a company and feed its database with useful information about customers (age, gender, buying habits, location...). 3.1.3 Social Influence Marketing Nowadays, a new critical factor appeared in determining marketing strategies: social media. Indeed, this phenomenon became so important because it spread really quickly and is available to anyone which shows how critical this tool is for companies. The growth of social influence marketing stresses the transition from the Web 2.0 to the Web 3.0 generation. In other words, Web 2.0 is seen as the change from static to interactive (peer to peer marketing) by people sharing information online. Then, Web 3.0 corresponds to anywhere, anytime from any device which highlights the ease of access and popularity of the technology tools. Because social marketing is a viable platform for companies, earned media is the new advertising. Page 7
  • 9. Even if these ways of marketing products or services are different, it is important to state that even nowadays; all three of them are still used even if social influence marketing becomes more and more popular and appears to be the main challenge. This picture below summarizes the transition of the buying behaviors due to the new technologies and the easy access to information. Years ago, ways of communications were not really diversified from one person to another. TV, radio, billboards were advertising the same content to a massive audience that did not have the choice. Nowadays, this same audience has more power and more tools to be reached. A single person has access to a significant number of social platforms which means they are more informed and have more choice. This change needs to be taken into account by businesses that need to adapt their strategy in order to face this behavior change. Figure 2: Buying behaviors, then and now 3.2 Digital Marketing Marketing is a broad term: it exist a lot of different types of Marketing (52 according to the Cult Branding Company) which is why this memoir will only focus on the main marketing activities directly linked to Salesforce.com and Marketo. Digital marketing is an ongoing phenomenon with multiple aspects that will be described below. Page 8
  • 10. 3.2.1 Definition Digital Marketing is the “practice of promoting products and services using database- driven online distribution channels to reach consumers in a timely, relevant, personal and cost- effective manner” (Jared Reitzin, CEO of mobileStorm Inc, April 26th , 2007). This definition helps understanding what digital marketing is about and its challenges: customers are targeted and reached more easily with the objective of promoting the brand, building awareness and directly engage with these customers in order to increase sales for the company. On average, 60% of a marketers' time is devoted to digital marketing activities (Source: Smart Insights and Ecommerce Expo). Once again, thanks to the new technologies (electronic media in this case specifically) and the evolution of mentalities, this activity is growing more and more and starts becoming essential if not the case already. It is also important to take into consideration that digital marketing (also called internet marketing) is the base for other kind of marketing activities that are commonly used nowadays and are constantly evolving. Because they are new and not known by everyone yet, they represent an incredible challenge for companies and a potential great source of revenue if well implemented. Indeed, marketers need to adapt to this trend and fully embrace the new technologies in order to be fully efficient. Web design, email marketing, a competitive SEO (Search Engine Optimization) are examples of duties directly linked to Digital marketing and its use. Figure 3: The connections of digital marketing **Note: the scheme comes from Newtek “The Small Business Authority” Page 9
  • 11. 3.2.2 Inbound and Outbound Marketing Due to the Internet revolution, marketing has evolved over the years and the use of traditional ways of communication (TV, billboards, radio) is no longer the most appropriate one. Called outbound marketing, a one way communication that pushes services/products on customers, this method is no longer relevant in this society surrounded by new technologies and is getting replaced little by little by inbound marketing. Indeed, this new marketing method is a two way communication facilitated by the use and popularity of social media that relies on earning people’s interest. In other words, the customer comes to the company and a relationship is built where the marketer will bring an added value which was not the case in the past. Content marketing and social media activities are important features that help developing inbound marketing and the conversion of leads. This new way of marketing is a part of digital marketing. In this situation, Marketo is a tool that combines the use of Outbound and Inbound marketing through the use of emails that are part of the campaigns, landing pages and forms that are part of the tool. This topic will be explained into more details later. It is interesting to highlight some key figures about the differences between inbound and outbound marketing which show why marketers are more and more considering using inbound marketing. According to Lauren Drell, Mashable's Branded content editor, inbound marketing costs 62% less per lead than outbound marketing which underline a more important Return On Investment (ROI) for inbound marketing. Then, 57% of businesses have acquired a customer through their company blog and the average budget spent on company blog and social media has doubled in the last two years. This is a relevant statistic because it shows how marketing content is critical for a company and how social media can become a tremendous source of revenue if well implemented. On average, inbound marketing costs less, have better results and is more accepted by customers over outbound marketing. 3.2.3 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) According to comScore, approximatively 400 million web searches were performed every day as of January 2009.This figure really shows the popularity and the massive use of the Web to do researches with Google, Yahoo and Bing who are the main actors of this platform. SEO is a “methodology of strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase the amount of visitors to a website” (Webopedia). Incredibly helpful for a company, SEO will play an important role in the future with the changing habits of customers. It is very critical to have a performing SEO for a company because it makes their website easy to use and to understand with the important flow of information potential leads have to deal with. Indeed, they may be searching for what a company sells but will they find it? A majority of person will not go any further than the first results if they can’t find what they are looking for which highlights the high Page 10
  • 12. level of exigency customers reached. 5-7 seconds is all you have to convert a user that they are on the right page with relevant results to their search (Source: Baymard Institute). If well implemented, a good SEO will allow the prospects to become leads by converting them into opportunities. With marketing strategies evolving and consumers becoming more demanding, SEO is Keywords, forms, Call to Actions (CTA), content...are examples of features necessary to have a good SEO for a company. They will be explained into more details later with Marketo which is a relevant case because it deals with these features specifically. 3.3 Marketing Automation 3.3.1 Definition Marketing automation is the technology that allows companies to streamline, automate, and measure marketing tasks and workflows so they can increase operational efficiency and grow revenue faster (Marketo, the definitive guide to Marketing automation). It also includes a significant marketing ROI (Return on Investment) for companies thanks to the time saving and the efficiency marketing automation offers. Indeed, marketing automation retains and extends customer relationship, increases alignment with Sales and gives a new vision of marketing to marketers with new sales opportunities. According to Nucleus Research about marketing automation effectiveness, companies using marketing automation can expect an increase marketing staff productivity between 1.5% and 6.9%. Plus, enabling marketing automation will decrease company administrative overhead between 1.5% and 5.2% (3.4% on average). This figures show the importance of marketing automation and the difference it makes when it is used. “Marketing has changed more in the last five years than in the last four decades” (Bryan Carter, an industry expert, president of Think Webstore). This change needs to be fully embraced by marketers nowadays who therefore need to adapt in order to take advantage of this system. As shown above, if well implemented, marketing automation is a real game changer and a key player in marketing with new technologies. It is important to stress that marketing automation interacts with other concepts and facilitates the communication and effectiveness between sales and marketing. The following schema summarizes the role of marketing automation and the different concepts it involves. Page 11
  • 13. Figure 4: What defines marketing automation 3.3.2 Lead Generation Lead generation describes the marketing process of stimulating and capturing interest in a product or service for the purpose of developing sales pipeline (Marketo, the definitive guide to lead generation). A good lead differs from a company to another depending on the criteria they use to define a lead (demographics, need, buying behavior…). However, a lead means the same thing for a company because it is a person who showed an interest in the products or services proposed. Converting this lead is the same goal for companies since it is a source of revenue that needs to be exploited. This method refers as inbound marketing as explained above (the prospects comes to you) and is mainly used in lead generation. Indeed, a lead is informed about the company because of the information provided on the website (content marketing). The blog of a company for example is an important location for a lead in the way he will be provided some relevant information about the products or services he is interested in. Social media also plays a key role in attracting and converting a lead by the interaction between a person and a company. Chris Brogan (CEO and Founder, Human Business Works) said “For successful lead generation on social, equip your buyer for success. Be personable, connect with your prospect’s challenges, and give them a next step to move forward.” This is exactly what lead generation and marketing automation are about: personalization. Nowadays, it is really easy to access information given possible by technologies and its popularity, customers are prepared. Therefore, companies need to adapt and give a personalized message to leads that showed interests. According to the Engagement 3.0 Report, a large number of customers (82%) feel that being treated with a one-size fits all approach results in a negative perception of that business. However, despite being a difficult exercise, this process is a source of potential huge benefits for companies. Indeed, leads are able to share their experience via social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn…) and thus save time and money for the company since the lead would do this process by itself. Page 12
  • 14. Usually, potential leads are categorized depending on the stage they are based on their actions. They move from prospects to new customers and in order to visualize this progression, stages are often presented with a funnel (Top of the Funnel being the 1st stage, Middle of the Funnel until the last stage which is “new customers”). Every time a lead moves from a stage to another, it status changes and the more it goes further, the more chance to close a deal the company has. Figure 5: The different stages of the Marketing funnel 3.3.3 Email Marketing Email marketing is essential in marketing automation because this is the message a company sends out to potential leads which will determine their actions. This is a way to build relationships with customers, exchange information and interact with them. In other words, the piece of content the company delivers will influence the leads’ action which is why it is critical to use this system correctly. Usually, emails are personalized depending on the lead it is addressed to and is the starting point of campaigns, landing pages, promotions, converting potential leads…This topic will be explained into more details later with Marketo who’s really efficient with targeted emails. Page 13
  • 15. One great advantage nowadays with email marketing is its accessibility: anyone can send emails from any devices (laptops, tablets, smartphones) anywhere at any time. This works for both companies and customers who are thus more easily reachable. Moreover, this method is cost-effective and fast for marketers which explain the popularity and massive use of it. In fact, 72% of people prefer to receive promotional content through email according to MarketingSherpa. Furthermore, email marketing is also an important feature in lead generation because it is easily measurable. Hence, this allows marketers to adapt their messages in the future and therefore will improve results. These marketers see an average increase of 20% in sales when using personalized web experiences (Monetate) underlining the importance of a personalized content. 3.3.4 Landing pages and Forms Landing pages are customized pages where potential leads click on thanks to a Call-to- Action (CTA) on a company website for example. The form is the structure within the landing page that indicates the actions a lead needs to take by asking to fulfill some personal information. Just like email marketing, landing pages and forms are personalized with some specific content depending on the situation. However, they “live separately” from the website and need to be clear and quick. Indeed, in just a few seconds, potential leads can be very impatient and leave the website if the message is not clear and visible. The main goal of a landing page is to keep a customer interested in what a company has to offer. If that’s the case, he will then fill out a form with its personal information which will allow the company to follow up with him and then start building a relationship. This is a big difference compared to simple home pages because it designed for specific leads with some appropriate content. This is a real challenge for marketers, 90% of consumers expect personalization (Source: IBM Institute for Business Value and Center for Applied Insights). The information provided will increase the lead conversion rates that will move in the marketing funnel next. In order to reach this goal, a good message is necessary instead of a general one like on the home page. By providing a strong message match, the visitor will have the impression that he was doing well by clicking on the links. It is important to notice that the appeal of the landing page is critical as well and determining just like its content. Indeed, this is the impression someone will have when visiting the company’s website. If the landing page is overloaded with information and images, the lead most likely would not go further and thus won’t provide any personal information. However, if the landing page looks good with relevant information and a clear Call to Action, then the lead Page 14
  • 16. will be encouraged to stay and provide more details about him. The more landing pages the better: this will increase opportunities for companies to attract leads. Plus, this is a good way to collect demographic information about prospects and to know more about them (who is more engaged?). By doing this, it also allows a company to make promotions on specific offers and to fuel other marketing channels. 3.4 Marketing and Sales Marketing and Sales represent the image of the company, they’re at the heart of it and are the ones responsible for generating revenue. So it is vital to have these two departments working in coordination for the health of the company. When making a decision, communication has to be effective and take into account marketing and sales, a harmony is essential for the well-being of a company and its business growth. A company with a marketing and sales alignment will increase its marketing ROI, sales productivity and will perform a tremendous growth as well. More specifically, marketing and sales help each other to move forward a lead in the funnel to the next stage; contacts are established with the prospects. As seen above with the marketing funnel, the lead will be at a time considered as MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) before moving to the next stage: SQL (Sales Qualified Lead). A “visitor” will be considered as a MQL when he demonstrated interest in the company’s website content. Yet, he is most likely not ready to buy at that stage. A lead is registered as SQL when they have specific questions and are ready for some one-on-one time with the sales department. In that case, leads showed intent to buy and enter in the sales cycle. It is important to mention that this transition requires marketing and sales alignment. The more communication there is, the smoother the transition between stages. Once sales and marketing are aligned, they will be able to focus on hot leads, those who are most likely to buy which will therefore increase conversion rate. Marketing and Sales strategy needs to be consistency with the business strategy which is why marketing and sales tactics have to be aligned. Lack of communication between these departments was a reason some companies failed to achieve their business goals or to attract leads. According to a Hubspot study, companies with good marketing practices in place generated 208% more revenue from marketing efforts. In addition, when sales and marketing teams work together, companies see 36% higher customer retention and 38% higher sales win rates. These figures stress how important it is for companies to have their marketing and sales department aligned in order to be efficient and achieve their business goals. As demonstrated above in the previous section, marketing automation is a great way to bring effectiveness within a company. It is also a huge asset to align Sales and Marketing which is why corporate decisions need to use marketing automation so that they can be as accurate as possible. This is a game changer and companies using it see its effectiveness and can then focus Page 15
  • 17. more on customers and understand which marketing programs are performing. Marketing automation aligns sales and marketing thanks to the mutual decisions it provides to both the teams that are encouraged to communicate more with accurate information at their disposal. Gleanster realized a survey by probing top companies using marketing automation: 69% of them consider marketing and sales team alignment as the most critical driver for maximizing marketing automation ROI. Figure 6: Marketing automation, a game changer 4. SalesForce.com, a strong CRM asset Salesforce is acknowledged to be a huge performer in CRM thanks to the features it provides and is forecast to play an important role in the future for companies that can gain significant benefits by using this system. The following sections will explore into more details how this company, created in an apartment 17 years ago, became a key player in this industry and will play an important role in the future. 4.1 A recognized software solution Page 16
  • 18. 4.1.1 History SalesForce.com was founded in March 1999 and his headquarters are located in San Francisco, California. They were unique and launched their Sales Force Automation application that was absolutely unknown at that time. The goal of the creators (Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff and Frank Dominguez) was to run businesses from anywhere without the constraint of hardware or software. They became the pioneer of the CRM and are now the main actors to broadcast it worldwide for different companies. The years following this launch saw the company gaining an incredible number of customers and a solid reputation in the tech industry. In 2004, Salesforce.com was inducted to the NASDAQ with the sign “CRM” testifying their exponential evolution. They grew more and more by purchasing brands and companies just like Kieden in 2006 or RelateIQ in 2014 that play an important role in the CRM and tech industry. These acquisitions and joint-venture allow Salesforce.com to diversify and to be more competent in specific domains thanks to the knowledge and skills shared. In 2001, customers grew to 3,500 with 53,000 users and as of April 2013, Salesforce.com is translated in 16 different languages, has 82,400 regular customers and over 2,100,000 subscribers. This show how fast and how important this company became: they employ 19,000 persons and their revenue is in 2016 $6.667 billion. All these results make Salesforce.com the market share leader in his sector in term of CRM revenues, customer acquisitions and number of subscribers. 4.1.2 The SaaS industry With all these acquisitions, they have achieved an unbelievable growth in the SaaS (Software as a Service) industry. SaaS is a “way of delivering applications over the Internet as a service” (Salesforce.com) and is closely linked to ASP, Application Service Provider. In other words, this is not necessary anymore to download and install software; it is accessible via the Internet which is really easy, intuitive and does not require any updates. Plus, it provides a better collaboration and a great compatibility because software is the same for everyone. Nowadays, SaaS is a hot trend and a growing trend that is becoming more and more used despite of the high number of existing users. Indeed, SaaS and cloud-based business application services revenue will grow from $13.5B in 2011 to$32.8B in 2016 (a SaaScribe study by Alex Theuma, 2015) which represent a 143% increase in 5 years. An important feature linked to the topic of this memoir is the use of social media that are being tremendously included in SaaS. Competition is not that strong in this emerging market: a few leaders own almost the entire market share (oligopolistic situation). The cost to develop these apps keeps increasing because of its popularity which therefore appears to be a strong barrier for companies willing to enter this market. A specific point about competition in this industry is the ability for the Page 17
  • 19. customer to use multiples software since this is internet based. Thus, one could use at the same time Salesforce.com and Oracle or NetSulte, other SaaS actors. 4.1.3 Products: the “clouds” Salesforce.com offers different products with specific attributes for a company depending on what they are looking for and what part of their business needs to be improved. All the services provided have a cost that varies based on the features the company will purchase. A great advantage about these products is that they are available no any businesses no matter what is their primary activity or what industry they evolve in, it is diversified.  Sales Cloud Sales Cloud helps selling products and services, increasing interaction within the company, building relationships with customers and closing more deals. This is the most common feature used by businesses and the number 1 CRM application worldwide. No hardware, everything is online and an internet connection to the account is the only requirement. Using this feature increases revenue by 37% on average. SalesforceIQ is another platform that is possible to purchase. It is designed for smaller businesses, simple and smart. Data.com is also available for the Sales department specifically for B2B businesses by bringing the most accurate and best contact information to the team. Hence, productivity will increase and this will also save a considerable amount of time to the company.  Service Cloud Service cloud’s specialty is to focus on customers by providing more visibility, smarter and faster service. The solutions proposed are more responsive, customized depending on the customers and especially anticipate their needs thanks to the information saved available. More specifically, Service cloud includes a call center case management designed to face the customers’ concerns or potential questions which enhance the interaction between them and the company. According to Salesforce.com, using this feature increases customer satisfaction by 45%. Desk.com is another platform owned by Salesforce.com in the form of an app designed for small businesses. In fact, this is an “all in one” customer support tool able to offer a personalized service in a timely manner. Page 18
  • 20.  Marketing Cloud Marketing cloud allows a better customer engagement interaction trough personalized emails, channels and a strong social media experience. Here again, the customer is put forward on this digital marketing platform. Pardot, a marketing solution option as well, is more focused on B2B interaction using marketing automation. The goal of this service is to drive sales and accelerate pipeline by generating high quality leads, connecting faster from any device anywhere and by calculating marketing ROI in order to have more visibility on its activity.  Community Cloud Community cloud is more about the manner of interacting efficiently with both customers and employees. Social media plays an important role here and thus creates a strong online interaction from any device (tablets, smartphones, computers). This outcome stimulates employees’ productivity and encourages them to build relationships with customers. Salesforce.com introduces this feature as an online collaboration where they can approach any topics. Chatter is a powerful feature that is driving interaction within the company only between employees. They are able to share data, files, give updates on deals, ask for assistance or give recommendations. The basic chatter is free and thus permits to share knowledge using technology from any device anywhere as well.  Analytics This is a critical aspect of Salesforce.com products in so far as analytics allow a company to have visibility on their activity and therefore ensure an effective follow up. Indeed, customer information is collected, analyzed and displayed depending on the settings the company put in place. This specificity is a huge safe of time for employees since they have access to the relevant information by themselves without asking for an analyst. It is also available from any device strengthening that speed access in real time using technology.  Apps As explained above, the main purpose of Salesforce.com creators was to run business from anywhere without the issue of hardware or software. Thus, some apps are available from any device allowing users to optimize their time and take actions in real time when necessary. Page 19
  • 21. The App Cloud is the “world’s #1 enterprise cloud platform” (Salesforce.com website) that permits in average 48 cost savings for companies and a faster access. Force.com and Heroku Enterprise are other examples of Apps delivered by Salesforce that are really secure as well and flexible for users. 4.1.4 Specific vocabulary Using Salesforce.com requires a specific vocabulary to use the different products available. The following table summarizes the most used features that will be accessed frequently. For each record, each activity and action, there is a specific icon designed to help the user indicating the type of record being viewed. Lead, Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities, Activities, Reports, Dashboards and Chatter are important terms that are used by Salesforce and need to be digest by users in order to use the tool at best and save time. Page 20
  • 22. Figure 7: Salesforce terminology Page 21
  • 23. 4.2 Salesforce.com benefits Salesforce.com is a popular tool used by several companies (150,000) worldwide from small ones to big international leading corporations and also by entrepreneurs. So, why these companies granted their confidence to this online software? The following deals about the main benefits of using Salesforce.com and the asset it provides to their users. 4.2.1 Customer focused Salesforce.com is efficient in interacting with customers and building relationships with them. The company is even considered as the #1 CRM for all businesses and the #1 recommended solution by Software advice. The reason for that is the customized and unique service proposed by Salesforce to customers. Indeed, the technology used allows a faster response and a personalized solution to the customer’s concern. The use of social media strengthens this interaction and enhances employees’ productivity as much as the availability from any device anywhere at any time that plays a key role in their customers’ success stories. An interesting statistic about customers’ interaction catches attention on this trend: in 2014, there were1.8 billion mobile devices showing their easy access to information. Even if competitors are pushing into the cloud (SAP, Oracle, Microsoft), the number of Salesforce.com customers keeps increasing every year (around 30% growth rates) stressing the performance and the popularity of the online company. Salesforce was chosen as CRM Magazine’s best Enterprise CRM for 6 consecutive years between 2009 and 2014. Then, Salesforce has a specific way to treat customers on their platform depending on the information they gave and what action they did. Depending on these, the software will classify them into different categories and they will be able to move to the next step when one employee will decide to do so which gives the company high flexibility. For example, a new lead will be saved in the database with all the information about it being under the “Contacts” logo. It could be linked to an “Account” which represents the company the lead represents. In order to close deals and follow-up with the current stage, the company using SalesForce will have to update their “Opportunity” and be the ones that decide at which stage the deal is. Hence, they will be able to move it from one to another (“Negotiating” to “Booking” for example) based on the customer interaction and what has been done. This feature gives a great visibility to the company and can improve customer experience. Moreover, it is important to highlight the fact that this customer focus offers an opportunity to find new deals based on the actions customers do and the information they provide. Indeed, Salesforce covers all the stages of the customer lifecycle which enables employees to be flexible and deliver an appropriate response in a record time. Page 22
  • 24. As mentioned in the previous sections, a majority of the products that Salesforce offers are customer oriented: sales cloud, marketing cloud, community cloud…all of them they put forward customer experience and encourage the company-customer interaction. Figure 8: Customer experience maturity is linked to Business performance The table above shows how important and valuable customer experience is for a company. A single and personalized relationship, keeping customers satisfied by anticipating their needs and solving their problems is a great way to increase revenues in the future. “Salesforce helps us connect more closely with our 600,000+ customers.” says Dan Page, VP of Sales Automation at ADP. Indeed, this is a tremendous platform to engage with them and to ensure an efficient follow-up as demonstrated above. Everything is made to make the customers heard which is not the case for other CRM software companies. 4.2.2 Revenue growth Salesforce.com is a great way for a company to drastically increase their revenue and lower their costs. Indeed, this is an online platform which means they just have to pay a subscription to the products they wish to use. According to a survey published on February 2009 by Randy Rodriguez, Managing director at BlueWolff group, Salesforce users report average ROI of 45% achieved in 8 to 9 months. This is given possible by the streamline of data and Page 23
  • 25. information enabling employees to focus on the most relevant tasks without losing time. More specifically, users will gain time thanks to the “Dashboards” set up on Salesforce. Indeed, this specificity is a huge help to have a global visibility on business outcomes by providing clear, complete and easy-to-read graphs or diagrams depending on the selection. A lot of data can be monitored through these tables such as sales by quarter, by region, products… This is the main metric Salesforce provides to measure success and alignment with business objectives. The measurable business outcomes attributed to Salesforce is truly significant based on “the State of Salesforce report 2015-2016” by Bluewolf (February 2016). Indeed, the customer experience is improved by 32% and the tool is responsible for a 46% increase of collaboration. On an employee standpoint, productivity gains are of 57% thanks to the benefits and the time saving provided by Salesforce. They gain skills and are more efficient thanks to the tools which brings a significant marketing ROI for the company. As seen above, being customer oriented is critical for a company but also generating revenue is a goal they need to reach in order to be competitive. Salesforce emphasizes the accomplishment of these objectives by an important increase of sales and opportunities when the system is implemented. A better communication between customers and the sales team, a high satisfaction rate and thus an incredible customer loyalty are the keys for Salesforce to grow companies’ revenues. Nowadays, this is more and more difficult to satisfy customers because they are better informed and have more demanding. Hence, it is absolutely necessary if no vital for an entity to be able to handle this change and to adapt. Using a CRM system is therefore essential and revenue will grow quickly if well implemented. 4.2.3 Utility and accessibility To continue, Salesforce is also that popular and used by a lot of companies for a simpler reason: the system itself. It is simple to implement, easy to use and available anywhere from any device at any time as long as there is Internet access. This is given possible by the use of technology and the fact that Saleforce.com is available online which means there is no need of an IT team to use it, no updates required. A login, a password and a subscription: that all you need to connect and use this tool. Salesforce took advantage of the technology boom and decided to focus on innovations as well. As a result, the company has been awarded most innovative company for 5 years in a row by Forbes from 2011 to 2015. Less hardware, more innovation: that’s how Salesforce defines themselves and keeps increasing over the years. The place where products (the clouds) are proposed is called PaaS: Platform as a Service, the next generation. This implementation allows companies to save 42% on IT costs on average and to give the latest updates to customers about using the system efficiently. These cloud-based applications are thus always the latest versions and customizations don’t change due to this update. Hence, customers can really take advantage of this system Page 24
  • 26. without doing anything, it’s online. This action even makes Salesforce different than their competitors. Moreover, the important amount of data flowing is absolutely secured; Salesforce.com protects customer data with encryption, firewall, user authentication and other security features. The accessibility as described above does not only concern the devices, it also deals with the business itself. Indeed, no matter how big a company is, Salesforce will be able to deliver the same service. All of these combined make Salesforce a fast, easy and effective tool to implement. Users will benefit from fast results, low cost and a focus on innovation that maintains customers up-to- date. Marketing, sales, communication, community service and finance are influenced by this SaaS. This CRM tool has the advantage of mixing different services and offers low risk to a potential user. This is what the next section is about: the results and feedback of Salesforce users. 4.3 Results and feedback After demonstrating the benefits of using Salesforce.com, let’s take a closer look at a specific example of a company using it and the feedback given by both customers and professionals dealing with the tool. Results of the Salesforce implementation will also be discussed. 4.3.1 Airbus Helicopters Inc implementation The reason of choosing Airbus Helicopters Inc as an example of a company that implemented Salesforce is because I’m currently doing an internship here and I have access to the tool that I use on a daily basis, as explained earlier in the introduction. AHI (Airbus Helicopters Inc) started using the tool at the beginning of 2016 mainly due to the reasons explained in the previous section and also because the former tool they used seemed to be outdated and irrelevant in this evolving industry. AHI was only relying on Excel spreadsheets and there was a lack of communication and information between departments within the company. “Basically, we had to ask every sales manager what information they had concerning a customer and we spent a lot of time doing that” said Leigh Cathro, Demand Generation Manager at AHI. Indeed, there was not a common place where sales and marketing team could share their information and communicate. This was a handicap knowing the fact that sales managers are located across the United States and Canada. So, after just a couple of months using the system, the results have been really positive overall. Indeed, the company witnessed a significant increase of leads and noticed a better visibility on Page 25
  • 27. the business in general. The Chatter, a Salesforce feature, is used a lot on a daily basis by all the Marketing and Sales team in order to communicate effectively and to share information regarding a lead or a specific activity. Moreover, this is also the place where they share some documents and ask for specific request to the person related (“Assign a task”). It is a mix between Facebook and Twitter: employees are able to comment and like a post that can contain a “hashtag” related to a trend or a topic. Statistics displayed in the Dashboards section demonstrate that users often log in: 32 out of 53 total users logged in for the last seven days (March 21st - March 28th 2016). When implementing a new tool and making the employees use it for a company is not an easy exercise because they need to accept it and embrace it. Change is not always well seen especially for the sales team that has their habits. In that case, the transition was perfectly managed: the sales and marketing team went along to understand and to use Salesforce. They were inclined to use it knowing the benefits it would bring them. Plus, the tool was really easy to implement and is intuitive which facilitates the change. It is interesting to underline that AHI Customer Service is using Siebel CRM, a different CRM tool. After witnessing the success of SalesForce implementation in the Sales and Marketing team, the company is considering using it as well for the customer service instead of Siebel. As a result, most of the employees, part of the Marketing and Sales team, are willing to recommend Salesforce to a colleague. A common feedback is that they are still discovering the tool and learning how to use it at best in an efficient way. But so far results are encouraging for team which encourages them to use the tool expecting high achievements in the future. 4.3.2 Customers success stories As explained in the previous pages, Salesforce is available for any kind of businesses and there is no restriction about the size of the company. With more than 150,000 customers, it is interesting to discover what the general trend is, what is the main opinion about Salesforce. According to a study made by Bluewolff, a consulting firm with expertise in cloud technologies, 54% of Salesforce customers use two or more Salesforce clouds today. Sales Cloud and Service Cloud are the most used products among all. Plus, 84% of customers would recommend the product to peers and 87% of users think Salesforce is heading in the right direction. All these statistics testify Salesforce’s success towards customers that seem to be satisfied using it. Large companies such as L’Oréal, Coca-Cola, Pernod Ricard or Yamaha are already customers and use the system. More specifically, let’s take a look at L’Oréal America’s case. They’re the world’s largest beauty and cosmetics company which means they absolutely need to engage with Page 26
  • 28. customers that are millions to use their products every day. Furthermore, L’Oréal acquired multiple brands in order to expand which brought a communication challenge. To help promoting new products and building strong relationships, the French company decided to adopt Salesforce. They used it adding an employee social network that facilitates communication across brands and is also effective for management that is able to keep the employees aligned. Barry Gilmore, CEO of L’Oréal Americas said “Salesforce is vital to our unending quest to understand our customers" stressing the importance the company puts concerning CRM and how to master it. At a different level, Carlo’s bakery is also a user of Salesforce due to the incredible success they witnessed. This is not a large corporation interfering on an international scale but a small family business bake shop. The company had to face a tremendous growth and couldn’t stay with the old pencil and a piece of paper for orders. They decided to switch to Salesforce in order to keep up with their customers and satisfy the demand. "The Salesforce Customer Success Platform helped me grow my business like a boss" (Buddy Valastro CEO and Cake Boss) underlining the outcome of using this system. To be more precise, Salesforce really helped Carlo’s bakery understanding their customers thanks to Sales Cloud and Chatter among others. Customer service is more efficient, productivity increased and the store is expanding more and more (investment into new headquarters, online cooking programs, and use of social media channels). As of today, they sell 24,000 cupcakes each week and launched a customized app “Cakeforce” showing the use of the App cloud and the benefits they got from it. “With Salesforce, not only do we get real time reporting, but by consolidating all of our feedback almost 55,000 cases each year, we can get more accurate reporting, spot trends more quickly, and identify and fix issues” adds Anthony Grieco, Senior Director, Customer Service & Transit Information, NJ Transit summarizing the effect of Salesforce. The statistics above give a clear sneak peek of what Salesforce customers notice when they use it. Page 27
  • 29. Figure 9: Customer feedback about Salesforce impact These data are more sales oriented due to the customer experience Salesforce provides. Indeed, if a customer becomes loyal to a company, he will most likely recommend it in the future which will bring new leads and thus new opportunities. The streamline of the data and the information by Salesforce is a key player in these significant figures. Thanks to this automation, customers don’t lose time and give an appropriate and customized response to the right person. Plus, all the relevant information they deal with allow them to focus on closing deals and therefore gaining productivity. A more accurate forecast (48%) allows them to align with company’s objectives and to earn profit. 4.3.3 Limitations Overall, Salesforce has a lot of cases like these ones above with all kind of companies from the American Red Cross to the city of Boston, this is much diversified. However, some limitations affect the tool that contains some drawbacks that are important to take into account. First, Salesforce.com is more designed for B2B companies, the CRM system is not oriented to the B2C industry. In addition to that, Salesforce does not support public clouds which mean this could be an issue for hosting options and will therefore limit the field of action of the company in the future. Hence, IT costs will increase significantly and logistical issues will most likely arise for customers. Customization toolkit is not really helpful and appeared to be cumbersome with too many administrators which could confuse users. Unlike competitors, they Page 28
  • 30. do not allow to have multiple roles for users which affect their flexibility especially if they are present in different countries. Then, pricing is also a component that mitigates Salesforce’s success that is the highest priced product in the cloud CRM industry. Indeed, this is a service that a company rents and pays monthly. Plus, in order to fully get access to the benefits of Salesforce, it is often recommended to use multiple services and therefore pay for each of them. This could be a huge drawback for a small company that couldn’t afford this service. Moreover, Salesforce lacks in marketing software performance compared to their competitors. To achieve lead scoring, marketing automation or campaigns, Marketing Cloud is not enough and customers often use another tool in order to do these exercises. Marketo is one of them and will be discussed into more details in the next section. 5. Marketo, a promising marketing tool Marketo is a quite young company whose specialty is to help marketers thanks to their system. It is becoming more and more popular towards companies nowadays thanks to the results they obtained. Marketing automation being considered as the future of marketing, Marketo will play an important role as well and will be a key player in this industry. 5.1 Marketing automation oriented 5.1.1 Overview of the company Salesforce.com was created from an apartment, Marketo was created after some cold callings made to marketers. In 2006, Phil Fernandez, CEO of Marketo, and his cofounders asked CMOs (Chief Marketing Officers) what kept them up at night. With all the answers they retrieved, they decided to create a system that will help marketers facing their challenges and engaging with customers in a valuable and personalized manner. Besides, they define themselves as “a company for marketers, by marketers”. Not used by a great part of the industry yet, Marketo became nevertheless the leader in marketing automation. This is a true challenge in the coming years because marketing automation software is able to change the sales process, marketing and customer service of an organization if well implemented. Page 29
  • 31. Marketo’s software enables companies to change their relationships with customers by establishing a meaningful, long time and personalized interaction. The outcome of Marketo is to engage with customers and to gain profit by maximizing marketing investment (Marketing ROI). This system is available for both small and large companies and is mainly B2B oriented (for marketers, by marketers). Marketo has 2,300 customers, about 300 employees, over 100,000 users worldwide and keeps growing years after years. To be more specific, they declared a 3.545% increase over a 3 year period from 2009 to 2011 and Inc magazine named them the 78th fastest growing business in 2012. This is a SaaS system just like Salesforce. About the industry Marketo evolves in, it’s already a high competitive one with other strong competitors. Hubspot, Pardot or Eloqua can also pretend to be the main actors in this industry. Indeed, they have been established in the industry for about the same time than Marketo if not longer and have pretty good results as well. All of them including Marketo base their system on new technology and are available online. 5.1.2 Applications Marketo proposes different options in order to fully take advantage of marketing automation and reach company’s business objectives. The goal of these Marketo applications is to provide relevant information to customers in order to know what they want and what their needs are. Before making any decisions, they also need to know what your company’s products are.  Email This application is used to engage with customers and to provide information. Emails in Marketo are created and designed freely by the user so that email campaigns can be ran easily and faster with relevant information. Plus, a great feature about this application is the A/B testing option: two email samples are sent and the user can see who between those two have the best success rate. This is an incredible way to personalize messages and content for customers and therefore to improve results. Moreover, Marketo also offers a way to assess emails sent by setting up a report showing how many emails were delivered and that they are located in the Inbox section, not the spam. If an email goes there, Marketo will show it as a “bounced” email in the report.  Mobile As discussed above, customers are more and more connected which means they spend a lot of time on their mobile device. Indeed, this is the channel they use most and Marketo proposes an option based on this behavior: users can engage conversations with customers wherever they are Page 30
  • 32. and are able to give a quick response to their concerns should they have some. That will maximize the impact and enhance customer relationship thanks to the personalized message delivered. Mobile marketing allows to check who is connected and to assess performance thanks to the dashboards.  Social Social app is a critical feature because social media needs to be a part of the marketing strategy. This democratized tool is the perfect way to learn about company’s customers, to engage with them and to understand what they are looking for. On the customer’s side, this is a great platform to share their experience and content which is why it’s important to set these tools in an easy way to encourage them doing so. Plus, social media is performing to show personalized ads to customers depending on their preferences and what they were and are looking for. It’s important to notice that Marketo allows a potential lead to give his personal information based on his social media profile.  Digital ads The digital application is a way to target the good customer with the appropriate message. This app offers the possibility to customize ads customers will see by classifying them into different sections depending on their actions. This optimization favors an important ROI and a personalized message to the right person.  Web Marketo’s system allows the user to be aware of who connected on their website. This is a huge asset for users that can convert anonymous leads by providing messages, call-to-actions and nurture then in order to keep them informed. Even if the visitor is anonymous, companies can target them with a specific message if these visitors come from a specific account. Plus, this web feature also provides metrics to monitor activity from any device thanks to the analytics section. Reports, dashboards, maps, etc. are used to assess campaigns performance and the level of activity. 5.1.3 Marketo terms Just like Salesforce.com, Marketo system has its own specific vocabulary and it is essential for users to know how to use this tool at best. Most of these terms such as landing pages or forms have already been described in the “Marketing automation” section above so we will exclusively focus on Marketo terms users will deal with on their account (called “My Marketo”). The items displayed will vary depending on the type of subscription users enrolled with. Page 31
  • 33.  Marketing activities This is the location where marketers will develop their content and send out messages to leads. This section contains all programs users need in order to develop their business and to use Marketo functionalities. This is probably the place where they will spend most of their time launching campaigns, emails, engagement, reporting, landing pages and lead status. Programs are sub-classified into channels allowing marketers to focus on specific types of initiatives and to create reports on lead status and activities.  Design Studio This section is the place to create and design all the tools marketers will use in their programs for customers. Landing pages, forms, emails, images and files are located in the Design Studio and can’t be active until they are moved to the Marketing Activities section. In order to be used, these creations have to be “approved” by the marketer. Even if the item is located in Marketing Activities, it has to be approved in order to be active otherwise it is just saved as a “draft”.  Lead database Lead database regroups all the leads captured by the company and are classified into different categories (“smart lists”) set up by marketers. Unknown leads are also displayed so that the company is aware of his website activity. Segmentation based on the industry the lead evolves in is also displayed to save time to users finding the right information as fast as possible.  Analytics All the reports and statistics monitoring company’s performance are located in this section. This is an incredible asset for marketers because they can assess exactly what is working and what needs to be improved in their programs. Email performance, lead performance, web page activity, program performance… are just a few examples of what analytics can provide to marketers. All reports are classified as well depending on what users set up. Calendar, Community and SEO are also features available in this section but are not directly linked to the business activity itself so we will not expand on that topic. The following picture shows what Marketo home page looks like and what means the shortcuts in it. Page 32
  • 34. Figure 10: Marketo home page 5.1.4 Utilization and implementation Marketo is an intuitive and easy to use tool for users that implemented it. Several functionalities are available for marketers in order to take fully advantage of the benefits Marketo offers. Lead acquisition is essentially what Marketo is about: attracting leads. This is possible thanks to the tools at disposal such as landing pages, lead scoring, lead nurturing and emails. • Landing pages They are one hundred percent customizable and Marketo offers some basic models for beginners so that they can get used to it. Moreover, forms used in landing pages are able to recognize visitors on the website; A/B testing is available as well in order to use the best form thanks to the Marketo network. Landing pages are one of the best features to attract and convert leads in the way that they provide customer’s information to marketers. This will be saved in the database and will be used later by the system based on the demographic information potential lead gave. Page 33
  • 35. However, forms are designed separately from the landing pages so that they can be used for other landing pages instead of a specific one. As explained above, progressive profiling is used to fill these landing pages for visitors which increases conversation rate. It is easy to set up and appreciated by leads that don’t need to answer all the questions related to them. It’s a gain of time for both the user and the lead. When designing a form or a landing page, Marketo will automatically register them into the “Design Studio” where the pages will be saved as draft. Marketers will to approve the page so that it can be used and moved to “Marketing Activities” as seen in the previous section. A landing page needs to be appealing in order to catch attention which means they shouldn’t be overloaded with too much information to digest. Same goes for the forms, the shortest the better with relevant information in it obviously. • Emails They are the most common and preferred way to communicate with customers; they are personalized and targeted to the right person. Target lists are set up by the system which will increase the response rate. They are part of a Marketo program and can be scheduled to be sent out at a specific time increasing flexibility marketers have. • Lead scoring Lead scoring is also a necessary action marketers need to apply in order to assess their activities and to classify who are the most interesting leads. The scores are based on the demographic information (industry, company, location…) and the BANT (Budget Authority Need Time) retrieved from data. Key leads are those who will be most likely inclined to generate revenue to the company. • Lead nurturing When company sets up lead scoring and focus on their key players with the best scores, it is essential not to forget those or are not eligible yet to be considered as “hot lead”. In that case, because of their lower score, marketers need to nurture them and engage with them by providing relevant information that might catch their interest. By doing so, they give lead a chance to increase their score based on their behavior in order to become “top leads” for the company. This appears under a campaign form and keeps the lead involved and the relationship is therefore maintained. Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads (The Annuitas Group) and there are 50% more marketing qualified leads from lead nurturing (Marketo) stressing the importance of this action to marketers. Page 34
  • 36. These are the main and most important features that will be used by marketers; they’re located under programs and campaigns more specifically. Marketo offers great visibility to the performance of these campaigns by regrouping the assets (landing pages, emails) with the corresponding reports. This is really intuitive and gives great flexibility, relevant information and a large sphere of action for marketers to convert leads. 5.2 Marketo benefits This section will summarize the main benefits a company could gain from Marketo. As described above, this is an easy tool to implement with significant outcome that will be discussed in more details below. 5.2.1 A maximized productivity Marketo users witnessed a significant increase of productivity across Sales and Marketing. Indeed, the system is responsible for a tremendous growth number of leads and opportunities by all the information and freedom given to marketers. They are able to track more effectively potential leads and to engage with them in a personalized way. This will bring qualitative leads thanks to the lead scoring where marketers will be able to focus on. In addition to the customized message sent to potential leads, marketers will also have to take into consideration those who do not have such a good score (see lead nurturing). Doing so will strengthen the relationship and will attract new qualified leads. Marketing campaigns used to be done manually, they can now be ran automatically thanks to this system. Marketing can run more campaigns with fewer people, and still deliver more qualified leads to sales. Then, Marketo improves sales productivity immediately: “a 10% improvement in lead quality can result in a 40% improvement in sales productivity” (Stu Schmidt, Vice President of Solution Sales at Cisco Webex). Here, there is a correlation between lead quality and sales productivity that is facilitates by Marketo. Indeed, the more qualitative lead the more sales productivity improvement makes sense in the way that Marketo delivers high quality information to marketers. Hence, they save a lot of time looking for information and can strongly focus on leads. Marketing automation (and therefore Marketo) makes users respond quickly, responses time are much shorter. Moreover, Marketo optimizes marketing and sales spend by providing regular reports. In this sense, they give the possibility to marketers to assess their campaigns and the messages delivered to customers. Marketing strategy costs a lot of money to companies and having this feedback so quickly (reports can be delivered on a daily basis) enables marketers to adapt to the current situation and take accurate decisions. They have a higher visibility and are more and Page 35
  • 37. more flexible. The majority of companies see ROI from using marketing automation within a year, according to a Focus Research study. 5.2.2 A revenue increase All the features explained above Marketo offers to users result in a revenue growth for the company by 40%. Actually, marketers have more time to focus on priorities and hot leads that will bring money to them. Growing number of opportunities mean higher chance of closing deals and building more relationships with customers. According to a survey in 2011 of over 250 Marketo customers, they witnessed a 22% increase in qualified leads and 21% more leads converted to opportunities. These figures are closely related to the productivity gain discussed in the previous section because a higher productivity also means higher revenue generated. One-to- one communications with personalized recommendations have increased revenue per email click by 700% analyzed Julia Linker, director of CRM at Auction.com. Thus, Marketo plays an important role in faster revenue growth. Then, Marketo is also able to increase some company’s revenues by optimizing ROI. To be more specific, the survey also points out that the system reduces customer acquisition costs by 15%. In order to optimize the ROI, every marketer need to analyze their current situation and assess what is working and what is not so that they can align with strategy and improve. That being done, they have to coordinate the team they’re working with for better results. Marketing automation and Marketo specifically is the specialist for this. Reports show what program has the most influence, they monitor each stage of the revenue cycle with key metrics and provides high visibility for the team. Acteva, an online event registration service, has achieved 350% ROI and 100% annual growth implementing marketing automation and using it with Marketo. This is also due to the fact that Marketo highly relies on technologies and innovation enabling the optimization of marketing programs and therefore a better ROI. Furthermore, Marketo has a great impact on conversion rates especially thanks to the engagement program it offers. Indeed, the system includes some possibilities within programs to directly engage with customers. It could be a seminar, a direct email or a tradeshow that the user would send to customers that would be more inclined to become a MQL. If a lead attends a seminar or a tradeshow, that means they show a strong interest in the product or service a company offers. Hence, conversion rate will increase which means revenue will as well. “In our second year of using Marketo, we now drive significantly more sales opportunities with the same budget and have increased sales-ready leads by 400%” observes John Watton, VP Marketing at ShipServ. This would not be possible without a marketing automation system set up; it delivers some relevant information that marketers are ready to use and to adapt their actions based on it. Page 36
  • 38. 5.2.3 Marketing and Sales alignment Marketing and Sales alignment is a challenge for every company and is not easy to get but if that’s the case, positive results will come both for the company (more revenue) and customers (better relationship). In many cases, they are disconnected because they have different goals and are working with different tools and prospects suffer from this lack of communication. All the benefits explained above would be increased with a marketing and sales team aligned. Marketo, and marketing automation in general, drives marketing and sale teams toward a common goal. The system streamlines the data collection process, show information in real time to team members which mean they can be on the same page with the same information available and thus are able to work in the same direction to track leads. The accurate data, the information about lead and reports increase communication between both teams which will have an impact on the prospects as well. Taking notes and updating profile which was a pain for marketing and sales members is now done thanks to marketing automation. Instead, they can focus on their primary activity and collaborate in order to reach that common goal. Lead qualification is another influencer of the marketing and sales team alignment because team members often don’t have the same definition of what a qualified lead is. Marketing automation provides common metrics to the teams so that they can define together what a good lead is by establishing the same criteria. When this is done, they will collaborate thanks to the reports Marketo send out. They will be able to assess their performance and to check lead scoring with real time notifications. These features combined will increase cohesion between sales and marketing teams which will result in a revenue increase. Having Marketing and Sales alignment provides a better insight and a better efficiency. Marketo’s “sales insight” is a great tool to have visibility on a company’s business activity and to monitor lead’s actions. In order to have both teams aligned, there is a common place where they can share information and processes so that both teams can be transparent from one to another: This is considered as a SLA (Service Level Agreement). Scheduling a time where they could meet in order to exchange ideas and propose help would increase team work and will lead to a better alignment between the sales and marketing services. Marketo is an easy, powerful and complete tool for marketers that have the possibility to drive their business into the direction they want to and to achieve company’s objectives. 5.3 A result-oriented system Marketo is a real performing SaaS and a key marketing automation actor. All the features offered are globally made to attract more leads and to help a company building relationship with them. Page 37
  • 39. The following sections will deal with feedback from users and also the improvements that can be made to this tool. 5.3.1 Marketo at Airbus Helicopters Inc Just like with Salesforce, Airbus Helicopters Inc implemented Marketo less than a year ago. The difference is that it is only used by some members of the marketing team and not the sales team. The main reason is sales team don’t really need it at that time, the tool is expensive (subscription is per person) and new to the company so they want to experience it first before releasing it to the rest of the team. Before using it, there was no tool dedicated to this performance except in France where the company’s headquarters are located where they use Oracle, another software. After a couple of months using it, it’s too early to have a critical opinion about Marketo but so far the results have been encouraging. Indeed, the marketing employees using it agree that Marketo gave them access to a large lead database that could be easily been managed. Sales team members are aware of Marketo’s performance and start working closely with marketing team with specific requests the tool can do. It is amazing how much visibility Marketo offers by sending daily reports which allow the team to track leads and to deliver a personalized message to the right person. Moreover, Marketo is really flexible concerning content sent out to leads whether it is email, landing pages, forms…. Everything is monitored regularly and Marketo has a customer service dedicated to help users that don’t know how to use the tool. First, they provide online courses (Marketo University) with tutorial on all the features available, how to use the tool, what do these signs mean. Once the marketer learned by himself, Marketo offers online classes and online private sessions with Marketo consultants that are experts. The general feeling of the AHI marketing team about this resource is satisfaction: experts always answered their concerns and are always at disposal for any questions they may have. As explained above, it is a little bit too early to compare the period before Marketo and the period using Marketo. However, it is important to underline, that results are good so far: more leads are saved in AHI database, new ones are tracked, good quality of the piece of content sent and more and more relationships are built with customers thanks to the tool specifically. Plus, the time Marketo takes to explain the system and to help users encourage marketers to learn about the tool and to take fully advantage of it. If well implemented, results with benefits discussed above should arrive. 5.3.2 Customers feedback Marketo’s customers are especially small B2B companies and a few large ones. This is a young company looking to grow in the future by taking advantage of the marketing automation practice Page 38
  • 40. that is considered to be the future of marketing. They have to face a strong competition especially with Hubspot, the trigger for this marketing automation infatuation. Here are a few examples of companies that implemented Marketo and the difference they notice prior utilization. SchoolDude is a good case of a company that took advantage of using Marketo to face their biggest challenge. They are a platform of cloud solutions for schools and universities to manage facilities, maintenance and technology. The biggest issue they had was their customer database that was too diverse and complex. Hence, their objective was to tailor what they offer based on the challenges and concerns of each audience. After implementing Marketo, the team was delighted by the real time personalization offered by the system. More specifically, they used it to leverage data in such a way that it would encourage prospects to engage with the products or to assist to demo and seminars so that they can learn more about the company’s services. All the demographic data they collected (school, location, job title…) was so important that they had to deliver a specific message every time. As a result, SchoolDude witnessed an amazing engagement increase in the first 90 days which means they had to adapt their service regarding this incredible engagement rate (they increased average session duration by 394% and average pages per session by 405%). “Marketo enables us to transform the way we operate. We’re now focused on multi-channel, multi-touch campaigns, aligned to buyer pain and the buyer journey. We are better able to leverage the right marketing asset based on fit, behavior, and journey. Marketo Real-Time Personalization is a critical part of this holistic, 360-degree approach” (Nick Mirisis, Director of Marketing, SchoolDude). This quote testified the flexibility Marketo provides to marketers as well as the important amount of information processed. As of today, SchoolDude is the leader in this industry and plans on extending his leadership with the Marketo features. Panasonic is an example of a large company that was able to take advantage of this technology based tool. Their goal was to improve the working lives of business professionals and to help their organization’s efficiency and performance. More specifically, they were looking for a tool that would enable the company to find new markets and new customers, a tool able to drive a high return on investment and to support this expansion. After implementing Marketo three years ago (2013), marketing’s weight to the company’s overall revenues went from under 10% to 26%. Communication between sales and marketing team happens more often and is enriching. Thanks to these results, conversations with prospects are more relevant and targeted which would lead to strong relationships and engagement. “Marketo gives us a competitive advantage since most companies have CRM but not Marketing Automation. It allows us to create a unique one-to-one customer dialogue and, through Page 39
  • 41. workflow, makes our organization dynamic and intelligent in the eyes of the customer.” (Stephen Yeo, European Marketing Director). This quote points out the main difference between CRM and marketing automation: CRM is more sales focused and marketing automation marketing focused. Marketo was able to meet Panasonic’s requirements in a short amount of time and this performance encouraged employees to keep going this way. 5.3.3 Axis of improvements Despite all the good feedback presented above, Marketo is still a tool comprising drawbacks that could be significant for companies that would be interested in it. Technology keeps evolving, so do behaviors which means marketers have to adapt to this environment. Marketo caught that trend and strives to provide marketers a competing and performing tool that will help them achieve their business goals. However, here are some drawbacks that could weaken a potential user’s interest. First, Marketo is expensive to get for a company: they offer three standard pricing tiers, at $895, $1,795, and $3,175 per month. The difference between these prices is the features unlocked if a company is willing to pay more. There is a big price difference between these offers just to have access to some extra features. It’s one of the most expensive automated marketing tools on the market compared to his competitors and all the plan they propose are also confusing with all the combinations possible. This could be a brake for Marketo considering small sized businesses may need this system but just can’t afford it. This is therefore a risk for a company that invested that much money to get in the future a high marketing ROI. Then, set up could also appear to be complicated with Marketo. Indeed, personalization options they provide require a lot of knowledge and time to make them work properly. Thus, companies with a strong software and good support will handle this more easily than a company that does not have this accessibility. This loss of time and knowledge requirement might make a company to call out a specialist to fix this. Presented as a system that would make marketing easier, Marketo really needs to improve this implementation and make it more accessible for users. Furthermore, Marketo struggles to handle a high traffic in their system: if the lead database is too important and web activity crowded, the system will slow down and will become more difficult to use. That requires a great optimization and organization for a company in order to take advantage of the system and to obtain significant results. The important amount of data and information provided by the system needs to be classified specifically by the user so that he can’t get lost with these data. During training sessions, Marketo consultants always ask users to Page 40
  • 42. categorize their files and to set up everything regularly. Hence, training and planning are questions that need to bet taken into account by potential users before investing in Marketo. Overall, Marketo offers some great advantages and features but the pricing issue along with the set up requirements and the system capability limits could discourage companies to use Marketo. In order to make that purchase decision, they need to assess what their needs are and if this system would offer the corresponding and expecting answer. 5.4 Marketo and Salesforce.com Marketo being marketing automation oriented and Salesforce CRM oriented, these tools combined offer a great experience to a company if well implemented. There is even an agreement between the two companies that can match their activities if the user paid for the two systems. Leads, sales insight, customer database, content… is accessible on both systems that can share information. Salesforce offers a Marketo app in order to take advantage of the two systems that will allow a marketer to combine CRM and Marketing automation. The figure below highlights the stages where CRM and marketing automation play an important role in the sales funnel. Figure 11: CRM and Marketing automation Page 41
  • 43. With both tools combined, the first part of the funnel would correspond to Marketo field of action. The system is efficient to track leads and to build relationships with prospects by nurturing them, ranking them and providing a customized and personalized answer. Salesforce would be then “responsible” of the last part of the funnel with SQL that are ready to move to the next stage of the process. Having Marketo and Salesforce working together for a company will result in a tremendous gain of time, more leads converted and an improved streamline of information. Plus, marketers will have more visibility on their activity based on the data provided by these tools. As an example, Airbus Helicopters Inc is currently using them at the same time and results are encouraging. Indeed, the company witnessed a significant increase of their activity thanks to the information easily accessible and the easy implementation of the tools. Between last year’s first quarter and this year’s, they increased their bookings (they sell helicopters) by 100%. It is the highest result the company had for the last 10 years thanks to Salesforce. Salesforce.com was generally well welcomed by the marketing and sales teams and the results provided motivate them to use this tool in the future even if they are still learning how to use at best this tool. Marketo is just accessible to marketing team members and might be available to the entire sales and marketing team in the future. Page 42
  • 44. 6. Conclusion The aim of this study was to present Marketo and Salesforce.com and to explain how and why they could possibly play a primary role for companies in the future. They are based on CRM and marketing automation that are nowadays a challenge for companies and marketers more specifically. In an evolving world with technologies always more improved, Marketo and Salesforce.com are key actors in the future of marketing and CRM. Both of them us technology, they are a SaaS (Software as a Service) and exclusively focus on marketing automation and CRM. “Changing behaviors forced companies to change how they market and sell” highlights perfectly the business world nowadays and the asset these technologic tools bring. Main benefits companies would gain from these tools are significant. Indeed, both systems generate more revenue for companies and are easy to use. More specifically, Salesforce is exclusively customer focused and provide real time data, relevant information to marketers and build strong relationships with customers. Putting the customer as the center of attention for a company is critical because that will drive their sales. Salesforce strives to deliver specific information regarding leads that marketers can use in order to deliver a customized message to the right person. The online availability of the tool makes it simple to implement, fast and effective which leads to a higher conversion rate and therefore more leads in the database to exploit. Salesforce was elected #1CRM for all businesses (CRM Magazine) six years in a row. Marketo is more marketing focused and has a tremendous impact within the company’s organization. Indeed, this system increases employees’ productivity by providing qualitative information and leads to them. Plus, regular reports provided allow marketers to have a great visibility on their activity and thus to take specific actions based on the reports displayed. Hence, messages and content sent will be more targeted and sent out to the right person saving time. In addition, Marketo is responsible for marketing and sales alignment which is a huge asset and a big challenge for companies. This SaaS enables sales and marketing teams to work together by sharing information and defining a common goal for both teams. Data they receive and automated information allow teams to have a common definition of what a good lead is and therefore are able to work together in order to track them and optimize the lead database. It is an easy, powerful and complete solution. However, these systems are not perfect and can still be improved. Besides, Salesforce is evolving and 66% of companies believe Salesforce delivers more value today than it did one year ago. Marketo is an expensive system to implement which could restrict small companies to use it because they might not afford it. Plus, Marketo is B2B and small size businesses oriented, B2C companies can’t really use it so far. The level of competition in this industry is high but Salesforce and Marketo are well established thanks to their performance and the good feedback they receive from a majority of users. Page 43
  • 45. This memoir aimed to make understand how these tools are important for companies and how profitable they can be for a company (ROI) if well implemented. With technologies arising, more marketers will be interested in using Salesforce and Marketo if they keep performing this way. It is a real challenge for companies, some are using these tools and witnessed significant results really quickly and strongly recommend using it. It will be interesting to see in the future the evolution of companies using Marketo and Salesforce.com that should become essential actors in global businesses. Page 44
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  • 49. 8. APPENDIX Figure 1: Marketing promotion by Michelin in the early 1900s Figure 2: Buying behaviors, then and now Page 48
  • 50. Figure 3: The connections of digital marketing Figure 4: What defines marketing automation Figure 5: The different stages of the Marketing funnel Page 49
  • 51. Figure 6: Marketing automation, a game changer Page 50
  • 52. Figure 7: Salesforce terminology Page 51
  • 53. Figure 8: Customer experience maturity is linked to Business performance Figure 9: Customer feedback about Salesforce impact Page 52
  • 54. Figure 10: Marketo home page Page 53
  • 55. Figure 11: CRM and Marketing automation Page 54