Earlier this year I wrote an article about B2B marketing and learned that the technology is evolving quite fast in the Web 2.0 era.
According to a new report (B2B Lead Management Automation Market Overview) by B2B marketing guru Laura Ramos, Forrester defines Lead Management Automation (LMA) as:
Tooling and process that help generate new business opportunities, manage volumes of business inquiries, improve potential buyers’ propensity to purchase, and increase alignment between marketing activity and sales results.
Major functions you can expect to find in LMA solutions include: 1) Lead capture, profiling, and scoring; 2) Dialog tools that nurture leads not ready to purchase; 3) Process that aligns marketing activity with sales results.
Props to pioneering vendors like Eloqua and Vtrenz (now part of Silverpop) for seeing the opportunity 5+ years ago. According to the Forrester report, Eloqua has over 600 active customers and booked $30M+ in 2008. Silverpop’s B2B Engage solution generated around $10M last year.
But newer entrants like Genius.com and Marketo are growing fast, and “cross-over” vendors like Aprimo and Unica want a piece of the action, too. That leaves a lot of room for vendor creativity, and also leads to a confusing market. The LMA market is not neat and tidy, because a variety of players have taken interest from different starting points in marketing and CRM technology, as this chart indicates.
In some cases analyst reports quantify what most everyone knows. But in this case, if you’re in the market for LMA tools, this report is well worth the money in my opinion. It covers key LMA functions, vendors and best practices and will help buyers see through the fog of vendor hype. In all, Ramos analyzed 11 vendors on a variety of product and business factors.
The LMA market has some strong and innovative players, but as Laura concludes, “no technology supplier is yet in a breakaway position.” That means you’d better do your due diligence before making an investment.
Appreciate you comments on the report. It was several months in the making and the vendors were both very involved and cooperative.
My greatest concern is whether the market will continue to grow standalone — or if it will become part of a larger marketing automation platform. Without broader adoption, and shared success stories that attract more confident investment, I am simply undecided about its future fate.
This means marketers making an investment today need to think potentially about alternative plans, which adds risk to the decision. Software as a service deployments lessen this burden but not entirely. I’d like to see the vendors concentrate more on establishing best practices and helping marketers increase the professional stature of the community than competing for market share.