Category Archives: Marketing Technology

marketing automation

Why Is Marketing Automation Maturity Still Woeful?

Almost 5 years ago, our agency conducted a survey to determine whether B2B companies were getting maximum value from their investment in marketing automation.  The conclusion: most B2B companies were failing to follow even the most basic lead management best practices, even in areas that one would assume were a… Read More

embedded forms

Hosted Landing Pages vs. Embedded Forms

A client asks: “Should we be hosting our campaign landing pages in Marketo?  We’ve always hosted them on our main site and simply embedded Marketo forms.  Is there a big advantage to hosting them separately?” This question comes up all the time in client work, and not just with Marketo… Read More

demand gen predictions

6 B2B Demand Gen Predictions for 2020

The rate of change in B2B marketing and marketing technology continues to accelerate, and 2020 promises to be no different. I asked the best subject matter experts I know, my colleagues at Spear Marketing Group, what trends they think will highlight the next 12 months in B2B demand generation. Here’s… Read More

third-party intent data

Do You Want Intent Data with That?

If you could layer third-party intent data into every lead gen program you run, would you do it?  In other words, would you only ever want marketing leads from prospects pre-determined to be actively researching your category, solution, use case, etc.?  My argument: no, you wouldn’t.  I was part of… Read More

email bots

Email Bots: What They Are, Why They Matter, and How to Stop Them

Congratulations: your last email campaign generated a really high click-through rate.  Or did it? It’s an issue that B2B marketers are experiencing with increasing frequency: open rates and click-through rates that don’t quite match up, typically in the form of an abnormally high “click to open” (CTO) rate.  The culprit?… Read More

8 Questions to Ask Before Investing in Marketing Attribution

[Thanks to Anne Angele, Spear’s esteemed Director of Marketing Technology, for this month’s guest post.] Marketing attribution is a hot topic these days in B2B circles.  Yet, for all the interest, precious few B2B companies achieve the holy grail of knowing exactly how – and where – their marketing investment… Read More