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Browse all Marketing Tech Stack articles, from the newest to the oldest.
How to Nurture Your Email Database (Without Being Annoying)
Lead nurturing is key to building relationships with the prospects and customers in your email database. It’s sort of like how you keep in touch with that long-distance friend from college. You check in every so often to make sure they don’t forget about you and then do it all again a few weeks later. […]
How AI in Marketing is Going to Change the World (No, Seriously)
Modern marketers need an in-depth understanding of their customers as individuals, not a smushed-together whole, as well as the agility and ability to act quickly and effectively to changes in the market and consumer sentiment. They need to be able to make real-time, data-driven decisions, but we all know this isn’t always possible when we’re […]
Marketing Confession: I Never Revisit My Lead Scoring
Dear Irene, All the best practices on lead scoring say it needs to be an iterative process. I know I’m supposed to revisit things every once in a while to make sure the model is working. I’m a marketer in the 21st century; I’m supposed to learn from the data and get better. I get […]
UTM Parameters 101: What are they? How can you use them?
Have you been on a call where someone slyly mentions UTMs? Maybe they said something like, “We can just include some UTMs for tracking this campaign.” Maybe they were also wearing sunglasses. Did you silently nod, hoping someone else would respond? UTM parameters appear at the end of links and help with attributing traffic to […]
Google Passage-based Indexing: What Content Marketers Really Need to Know
When Google first announced the impending roll-out of its passage-based indexing update, it created a bit of a stir in the digital marketing community. The biggest concern centered on assumptions that it would usher in a new era of rules for SEO practices. Fast-forward to now – more than a year after the update – […]
Startup Marketing Metrics: How to Establish Your Own
One of the hardest parts of working for a startup is making every penny count. What’s the best way to ensure you’re being cost-effective and generating the right leads? Well, throw a digital strategy against the wall and see what sticks, obviously. KIDDING. If that were the method, this would be a very short article. […]
SEMRush for Newbies: Tips to Build Your SEO Strategy
First, a word of caution. I’m new-ish to SEMRush and am absolutely not claiming to be an expert on every facet of this powerful tool (or, for that matter, an SEO expert). If you’re also new to SEMRush (or maybe you still haven’t figured out where best to start), I’ll share my experiences using it […]
Startup Marketing: Should I Focus on Paid or Organic Tactics First?
“Gee, looky here! A brand-new widget from a brand-new company that I’ve never heard of, AND my colleagues have never heard of, AND the internet has apparently never heard of. I am IN!!!” — said nobody, ever If you’re in the early stages of starting a business, it’s time to get your startup marketing plan […]
Looking Ahead: 4 Trends in Martech for 2022
There’s no doubt about it; marketing technology, or martech, is here to stay. It’s seen a boom over the past decade, growing from around 2,000 solutions in 2015 to more than 8,000 today. A new year is the perfect time to think about your goals and how technology can play a role in helping you […]
Salesforce Marketing Cloud or Pardot: Which Do I Need?
Note: The humble author of this article has worked as a Pardot consultant for five years. In comparing Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Pardot here, he is attempting to be as objective as possible. But, please be aware that there may be a slight conflict of interest (specifically, needing to pay his rent). I open the […]
No Cookies? No Problem. Intent Marketing to the Rescue!
With third-party cookies doling out their last crumbs until Cookiepocalypse implodes in 2023, first-party data will become more important than ever. Why? Without all the great third-party data that comes from those little cookie crumbs, you’ll be left to mine customer insights from your own sites to create your marketing strategy. While a cookieless future […]
Pitching Martech to the Dunder Mifflin Team (Or Your Own Team)
Pitching new martech in a way that actually gets buy-in (and eventually, broad adoption) can be tough. You need to find the right spin for each decision maker, influencer and even those good ol’ challengers. This article takes a look at how we would position a martech stack to a well-known organization with a wide […]
Our Writer’s Favorite Articles: 2021 in Review
What the Heck is Headless CMS? By Karen Tizer You know what makes an article about martech great? When the author distills a complicated topic so it’s easy to understand. That’s exactly what Karen does in my favorite article from 2021. I’m not too proud to admit that I had a hard time understanding where […]
Cookieless Reporting: That’s the Way the Data Crumbles
Just for fun, let’s imagine the late great Don LaFontaine (aka the King of Movie Trailers) voicing this intro: IN A WORLD WITHOUT COOKIES, marketers will face grave challenges. The digital universe as they know it will change. How will they track and measure campaign impact? How will they prove the VERY WORTH of their […]
5 Sales Automation Ideas to Make Your Work Day a Bit Easier
Logging into the CRM, a pang of guilt washes over me. “You shouldn’t be spying on them,” an inner voice whispers. “But I’m just checking on their progress for my own reporting purposes,” I reply, perhaps a tad defensively. I open a lead record. I scroll down to the sales activities – and not a […]
A Monday.com Review from a Former Basecamp User
Monday.com review: Top takeaways What’s awesome Ah, project management…#thestruggleisreal. I have tried many different project management software solutions over the years in an attempt to find the one that actually makes it easier to manage lots of people, projects and chaos. I’ve mostly found more frustration. But honestly, when I first got this tool, I […]
HubSpot ABM Tools Are So Easy, Everyone Can Use Them
At least, every B2B company that already has a HubSpot Marketing Hub Pro or Enterprise account and is interested in making the jump into account-based marketing should be using the HubSpot ABM tools. All you B2C marketers can feel free to focus on the other great HubSpot marketing hub features. In 2020, HubSpot released its […]
Customer Data Platform (CDP), or, Where Should the Data Live?
Hey, got data? No doubt you do. The question is, where you got data? In a lot of organizations, customer data tends to linger in varying systems used by departments ranging from sales to customer service to product development to, obviously, marketing. Then there’s all the data customers leave behind every time they interact with […]
So, What Is Predictive Lead Scoring, and How Can It Help?
Let’s imagine your sales team is completely overwhelmed with marketing qualified leads. They’ve asked you multiple times to stop all marketing, to take a sabbatical and learn soap making or basket weaving. But your manager just sent an email with an idea for a new campaign. What now? Back before fancy technology like machine learning, […]
Couples Therapy: In-house Marketer and Agency
Relationships are hard. It’s no different at the office (maybe even more so when said office is virtual and/or teams are distributed). This can be especially true of the in-house marketer and agency one. To get a perspective from both sides, I sat down with two MTS contributors who have each had a chance to […]
Salesforce Campaign vs. HubSpot Campaign: Can You Spot the Difference?
The average marketer probably uses the word ‘campaign’ 500 times in a typical work week, referencing different platforms, initiatives, and content. For teams that use HubSpot for their marketing automation platform and Salesforce (SFDC) as their CRM, their platform-specific definitions are a common source of confusion and even consternation. To help untangle this, let’s review […]
Startup Marketing: 10 Questions to Ask when Marketing on a Budget
Budgets for startup marketing are always a little tricky, and very fluid. However, when you have a tight budget, staying on that budget is incredibly important. Some of the challenges you might face when developing your budget include: a lack of data (what was last year’s avg CPL [cost per lead]? Beats me!), unrealistic expectations […]
8 Tips & Tricks for You to Optimize SEM Campaigns
Previously, we talked about the differences between search engine optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM). TL;DR? Quick recap: SEO refers to organic (free) tactics that boost your online visibility and rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs; OMG so sorry about the alphabet soup). Meanwhile, SEM refers to paid advertising to increase traffic to […]
LinkedIn: Tips for B2B Lead Generation That Will Fill Your Lead Funnel
So you’re traditionally a B2C marketer, but you’ve landed your first B2B marketing gig (go, you!) and are tasked with lead generation. Suddenly, you think – is the process the same for generating leads in the B2B landscape as it is for B2C? Well, yes and no. According to Marketo, lead generation, “the marketing process […]
Demystifying Multi-touch Attribution
We, as marketers, have been forced to live with a profound and undiscussed assumption for years. Saying it out loud is taboo. We cringe every time we have to present our marketing and sales funnel findings, in the hope that no one points out our assumption as false. The assumption? That only one prospect interaction […]
Pardot Connected Campaigns Sound Great, But How Do You Use Them?
When asked to provide ROI for your inbound campaign and the countless hours of work crafting blog posts and nurture series, it can be tempting to say, “Trust me. There’s a reason our sales numbers have improved.” But, when that’s just not enough, Pardot Connected Campaigns are there. For years, Pardot users painstakingly maintained separate […]
What Is SEM (Search Engine Marketing)? (Hint: It’s Not SEO)
Let’s clarify something and get our acronyms spelled out at the same time: search engine marketing (SEM) is not the same thing as search engine optimization (SEO). But please! Don’t feel bad if you’ve been using the two interchangeably. In fact, SEM used to be an umbrella term for these core digital marketing strategies. Over […]
Why Adobe Marketo Tokens Are a Game-Changer
No matter how you may feel about Adobe Marketo as a marketing automation platform, everyone agrees that the token feature is the bee’s knees. It is an incredibly simple feature that provides infinite value to both the marketers using the tool and the contacts that receive emails that use them. All MAPs have a token-like […]
Welcome to Marketing Grit: Marketing for Startups
Welcome to Startup Land, where budgets are razor thin, you’re always out of time and you’ve got sky-high goals and targets. Buckle up! Hi there, fellow marketer. I assume you’re reading this post because you’ve gotten on the wild ride of marketing for startups. Or maybe you’ve been doing this for a while already, and […]
Hey, Marketing Ops, Can’t You Just [Fill in the Blank]?
Dear Irene, In my role of marketing ops, I’m really busy. I make sure our campaigns run on time, keep our systems and tools from becoming a swamp of bad data, and I pull the reports to make sure that our marketing strategy is delivering ROI. For the most part, I feel like my role […]
What the Heck Is Headless CMS?
If a phrase ever conjured up an image for me, headless CMS is it. (Bloody-stumped torso, if you’re wondering.) Sorry for that visual, friends. That’s ba-SCUSTIN, as my 3-year-old would say. But moving past the off-putting name, headless CMS is a technology that marketers should familiarize themselves with. We’ll go a bit more in-depth later, […]
Title Tags & More: Google vs. Businesses?
Google: can’t live with it, can’t live without it? As a marketer, I’ve spent much of my career kneeling at the altar of Google. If you want your site to be found, you have to follow their rules. But it’s felt like the last year has been full of marketers scrambling to adjust to changes […]
Lead Scoring Strategy and Pitfalls: A Few Things to Consider
You’re staring at your screen, trying to determine the point value for email opens. Should it be one point or two? Zero? You move on to forms. You go with your intuition: ten points. Lead scoring allows you to identify your most interested prospects based on their engagement with your content. People earn higher scores […]
How to Balance Customization & Complexity When Picking a New Marketing Automation Platform
When choosing a marketing automation platform (MAP), it’s easy enough to create a list of requirements for your business and to do the research to find products that meet those requirements. But one thing that’s often undervalued is the tradeoff between customization and complexity. As you do your research, you’ll find platforms that offer extreme […]
Hey, SEO Is Really a Content Strategy
I got my very first side gig through a friend who was churning out something like a hundred articles for a website owner and needed help finishing the project. How thrilled was I to be a legit freelance writer? So imagine my disappointment upon sharing my first piece with my fellow writer friend – if […]
HubSpot CRM Review: Is Sales Hub a Good CRM Option?
HubSpot CRM Review: Top Takeaways What’s awesome: HubSpot was started in 2006 by founders Dharmesh Shah and Brian Halligan in the halls of MIT’s Sloan Business School. They shared an interest in helping SMBs with marketing and sales and, from those humble-ish beginnings, have grown HubSpot into more than $1B in annual revenue. HubSpot will […]
Top 10 Mistakes When Building a Marketing Tech Stack
So you’re thinking of building a marketing tech stack? Of course you are! Now that the COVID-19 pandemic is waning and the economy seems to be growing again (fingers crossed…), all of the marketing budget cuts that happened as a result are likely to be reversed as companies try to stay competitive. Marketing teams (read: […]
The New(ish) Eloqua Salesforce Integration App: What I Really Think
Eloqua “recently” (okay, months ago) decided to “encourage” (force) clients to move away from their native integration with Salesforce to the new Eloqua Salesforce integration app. They did this by announcing that, as of February 2021, the native integration would “still work”, but support would no longer be able to help with any issues. If […]
Zoho Marketing Pitfalls: What Every New User Should Know
All marketing automation platforms have their eccentricities that you only discover once you’ve gotten started. I’ve discovered a few Zoho Marketing’ pitfalls the hard way, so you don’t have to. Here’s everything you need to know to work around them, from day one. Zoho Forms integration challenges If you’re integrating two apps built by the […]
Getting Started on Zoho Marketing Plus: A User’s Guide
Congratulations! You picked Zoho Marketing Plus as your marketing automation platform. Zoho offers a comprehensive suite of apps to accomplish (almost) any business objective. This particular package of nine apps offers small businesses a great jumping-off point to launch marketing campaigns and engage with customers. And while Zoho isn’t the most complicated tool out there, […]
Zoho Marketing Review: How to Evaluate the App Set
Zoho Marketing review: Top takeaways: What’s awesome Zoho Marketing Plus has come a long way from an add-on to the Zoho CRM into a marketing automation platform that stands on its own. One of the best things about this tool is that it connects to and is supported by a full suite of cloud tools […]
MQL, SQL or…Plain Old Crap? How to Define Your Lead Stages
As a marketer, one of the most important things you can do is clarify the stages of your marketing funnel. We’ll get into what that means, but first, let me back that statement up. Without defined stages, you won’t know which leads are ready for sales outreach. You’ll end up stirring them around with no […]
Pardot Engagement Studio: 6 Steps to an Awesome Inbound Campaign
After lunch, you’re just settling in behind your laptop. You decide to check for any recent conversions in Pardot. You see a name, Victor Hugo, and the time a download took place, 12:30 p.m. You let out a “Booya” in celebration. After all that hard work: writing an eBook, setting up a landing page, and […]
Sales Rejects All of My Qualified Leads As “Not Leads” – What Do I Do?
Dear Irene, I enjoy my work; I really do. But my sales team seems dead set on rejecting all of the (obviously) qualified leads I’m generating for them! I spend a lot of time creating and gating content, promoting it, converting cold leads and then nurturing them through email. Then the critical moment arrives and […]
Marketing Personalization: We’re Not Talking “Dear Name” Anymore
Remember the good old days, when marketing personalization was a novelty in your toolbox? I mean, getting that first direct mail postcard with your name in the headline…ah, the feels! Things have evolved, to put it mildly. You can’t just pop your recipient’s name into an email subject or headline and expect it to do […]
Data Privacy & Martech: Protecting Your Visitors (And Your Brand)
Disclaimer: I’ve only visited a law school once, for a few minutes, to admire the library. This article isn’t legal advice. If you’re navigating compliance for your company, working with a legal professional will help ensure you’re on the right track. In 2018, the General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) introduced us to terms like legal […]
Don’t Get Trapped by These 3 Adobe Marketo Pitfalls
Every marketing automation platform has their really good points…and a few things that just kind of suck. Well, Adobe Marketo is no different. But by learning from others who have gone before you, you can avoid falling into some of the most common traps. This article aims to help you avoid three key Marketo pitfalls, […]
Getting Started on Adobe Marketo? What You Need to Know First
First, congrats on getting started on Adobe Marketo! It’s a great, flexible and powerful marketing automation platform. You do have a bit of work ahead of you, but a strong implementation makes for much easier usage later. Here are a few things I’d recommend to keep in mind, based on my experience as a consultant […]
Should I Use Dynamic Content or Just Write Two Emails?
Dynamic content can save you time when personalizing emails. Instead of copying the same email multiple times, making adjustments to each, and building multiple lists, you can prepare one email with one or two pieces of dynamic content. But sometimes it’s easier and less stressful to just write two emails. I once set up an […]
Salesforce Pitfalls: 3 Big Things to Avoid
“I see you have three contacts named Brandon Donovan. Is that…right?” I ask suspiciously, eyeing her account on the screenshare. “Oh, yeah, that’s just Kevin in sales,” she says with a chuckle. “He creates a new contact record every time a client calls him. It helps him stay organized.” “Ahhh…” I reply, increasingly concerned. Note […]
Getting Started on Salesforce Sales Cloud: 5 Things to Consider
Did you decide to take the plunge and implement Salesforce? Or, are you still deciding, wondering what would you be getting yourself into? (If that’s the case, check out our Salesforce Cloud Review). Getting started on Salesforce is like taking your first step on a long hike through unfamiliar woods. There are many factors to […]
Salesforce Review: Is Sales Cloud the Right CRM for You?
Salesforce review: Top takeaways What’s awesome: Salesforce launched in 1999 in a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill. In a year, founders Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Frank Dominguez and Dave Moellenhoff built a company that grew to forty employees. (And traded their apartment for an 8,000 square foot office. These days, their office is […]
Adobe Marketo Review: Useful Insights from a Power User
Adobe Marketo review: Top takeaways What’s awesome Adobe Marketo is one of the best and most scalable marketing automation platforms available, because it was designed for marketing teams to run campaigns without IT support (unlike most other enterprise MAP platforms) while still allowing for customization and complexity to fit any business requirement. Also, Marketo has […]
Sales and Marketing Alignment: Closing the Gap…Like a Boy Band?
What can I say about sales and marketing alignment? When I was a little-bitty editorial assistant at my first post-college job, I shared a cubicle wall with the organization’s top sales rep. Nice guy; he spent a lot of his time on the phone, naturally, and I pretty much tuned him out. Except that sometimes […]
ABM Technology is Cool and All, But ABM Is Really a Strategy
When marketers think about account-based marketing, ABM technology quickly springs to mind: tools that let you find, target, track and convert the accounts you want most. While technology is an important part of the puzzle, it’s easy to be lulled into thinking that in order to do ABM well, you just need to invest in […]
Eloqua Pitfalls: 6 Common “Traps” to Avoid
Eloqua is a really powerful marketing automation platform, and there’s a ton it can do. However, it’s not the most intuitive system I’ve ever used. I’ve gathered this list of problems I’ve run into over the years — let’s call them Eloqua pitfalls — to help you avoid some of these same traps. 1. Programs […]
Getting Started on Eloqua: 6 Tips for a Better Implementation
Getting started on Eloqua might feel a little overwhelming, and in truth, it’s not the easiest project you’re ever going to take on. It’s a powerful tool but it’s also very complex, and the available training is a little on the limited side. There are some important strategic things you’ll need to think through before […]
Eloqua Review: Everything You Need to Know Before Buying
Eloqua review: Top takeaways What’s awesome Eloqua offers a rich set of tools to support multi-step and drip campaigns, with lots of logic and available plugins to help you get really specific with your customer journey (and who doesn’t love that?). Eloqua is really customizable, so you can make it your own. Almost any function […]
3 Key Pardot Pitfalls to Keep on Your Radar
What are some Pardot pitfalls to avoid? This question might be on your mind whether you’re just starting with Pardot or you’ve used the platform for months (or maybe you’re just evaluating it — if that’s the case, check our our Pardot review). As a Pardot consultant, I’ve run into some common problem areas. By […]
Getting Started on Pardot: 3 Strategies for an Easier Implementation
Getting started on Pardot can feel like a lot. Their implementation guide is a good start, but you may want more guidance and perspective from someone with experience to help you sort through the considerations that aren’t likely to make it into a guide. I’m talking about things like who to involve in the technical […]
Pardot Review: Is Pardot the Right Platform for Your Team?
Pardot review: Top takeaways To add some confusion to your life, I wanted to share that Pardot has a different name. It is now Marketing Cloud Account Engagement. The rebrand hasn’t affected the existing features, login or pricing tiers of Pardot. The changes are more related to the Pardot branding and product positioning. This change […]
Marketing is Science, So Stop the Salesplaining
Dear Irene, I have an issue in my organization and I hope you can help. I’m a few years into my marketing career, and I know I’m not quite an expert yet, but I do know my stuff. However, every campaign I suggest or advert I create gets pummeled to the ground by our head […]
Help, I Don’t Understand Third-Party Data v. First-Party Data
Dear Irene, I shouldn’t admit this, but I’m a career marketer who’s been trying to follow all the news lately, and…I don’t really understand the difference between first-party data and third-party data. It seems like it’s pretty important. Please help! Sincerely, Faking It Till I Make It Dear Faking It, I’ll let you in on […]
Save Yourself! Learn from 5 of My HubSpot Pitfalls
While it’s fairly easy to use (see our review for more), I have made a few HubSpot pitfalls that I’ve learned from, and maybe you can, too. 1. System fields can’t really be customized as much as you’d want Okay, I refuse to take full responsibility for this as a “mistake”, because in almost every […]
Getting Started on HubSpot: A Real-World Overview That Just Makes Sense
Getting started on HubSpot can be intimidating. We’re here to give you a no-nonsense guide (from someone who’s actually done it) on what you need to think about to get your marketing automation up and running. 1. All about the data: The first step in getting started on HubSpot, or any marketing automation platform really, […]
HubSpot Review: An Honest Look at When It Is (and Isn’t) Right for You
HubSpot review: Top takeaways What’s awesome HubSpot put a lot of thought into how sales and marketing folks work, and how they work together, so a lot of the platform is pretty intuitive. There’s a sales activity feed which shows all of the recent activity that’s relevant to me at a glance. There’s a […]
How to Choose Martech: 3 Steps to Find the Perfect Fit
Having to choose martech (marketing technology) for your company can feel…well, like a lot. There are so many solutions on the market (with more rolling out all the time), and a lot of overlap among them. How are you supposed to know how to build the right marketing tech stack, one that fits your budget […]