Manhattan Associates

October 22, 2012 by Marc Hausman

Marketing Moves from Conceptual to Technical at PerkinElmer

As readers may recall from our recent Q&A with Autumn Coleman of Manhattan Associates, one of the most anticipated aspects of Eloqua’s annual user conference is the opportunity to network with other Eloqua users and share tips and best practices.

This opportunity becomes more valuable as marketing teams increasingly rely on reports and analytics to understand customers and accomplish their mission. In today’s technology-saturated environment, customers are further along the purchase process than they’ve ever been—without ever having been in contact with a vendor. Marketers can no longer rely on age-old methods for success and must, instead, embrace new technologies and tactics to reach potential leads.

We recently had the opportunity to speak with Dave Liloia, Associate Director of Global Marketing Operations at PerkinElmer, a global technology leader, focused on human and environmental health. During our conversation, Dave shared with us how his company is engaging Eloqua to support sales and marketing efforts and how he handles the role of being the “marketing geek.”

Can you provide us with some background on PerkinElmer and your role within the organization?
PerkinElmer is a global technology leader in the scientific manufacturing space. Over the past 75 years that the company has been in business, we have expanded into four core areas of science: software informatics, genetic diagnostics, analytical sciences, and life science and technologies. From critical therapeutic and disease research and prenatal screening, to environmental testing and industrial monitoring, PerkinElmer is actively engaged in improving health and advancing quality and longevity of life all around the world.

Within the company, I am the Associate Director of Global Operations. As part of the CMO staff, I provide a bevy of services to the sales and marketing departments. My areas of responsibility range from improving and maintaining data hygiene, to coordinating and operationalizing trade shows and field events, to analyzing and improving process development. I also own the Eloqua platform and handle all analytics and reporting, SEO, web content, campaigns, and automated programs that look at progressive profiling, lead scoring, and lead nurturing. I look at and analyze the digital body language of current and potential customers.

How do you use Eloqua to support your organization’s sales efforts?
At PerkinElmer, we view Marketing Operations as a centralized, shared resource with very streamlined programs and processes that can be deployed to any of our business units. Our team works as a single unit, but we’ve found success by assigning individual roles. For example, we have a single process for all activities within Eloqua but assign specific resources to support the sales and marketing teams for a particular facet of our business. This ensures success whenever we receive a qualified lead, based on the information we’ve gathered from Eloqua, and that all of our constituents get the highest quality service and support. We’re always careful to take into consideration the nuances present in each line of business and look out for their best interest by not applying the same template to everyone, but instead customizing defined processes to meet their individual goals.

What are you looking forward to most at this year’s Eloqua Experience conference?
The most valuable aspect of attending an event like Experience is the networking opportunities. Through the conference, Eloqua is able to bring together the best marketers from around the world who employ the most cutting-edge, innovative and intelligent approaches in marketing and marketing automation.

During EE, attendees don’t see themselves in competition with each other and aren’t looking to hold back proprietary processes or restrict information. They are all very open and honest about challenges and solutions. It’s a great time to share (and steal) some great ideas! This is the same reason why I’m an avid member of Topliners and participate daily.

I’m also looking forward to engaging with other industry professionals who share my role and responsibilities and discussing how they handle strategic and cultural challenges within their own organizations. We’re the technical arm of marketing and as we develop additional expertise our roles are changing. We are shifting from being a tactical support team to becoming a strategic partner at the table.

If you had any advice for Eloqua to make Topliners better, what would it be?
The gamification of being a member of the Eloqua community has made Topliners a truly addictive place to spend my time. But is that sufficient to maintain a community for an extended period? I don’t think so. To take the next steps forward, Eloqua needs to continue to develop functionality that allows users to define their own communities within the larger population as well as to continue to build on the successes they have achieved so far.

October 18, 2012 by Marc Hausman

Penton Media’s VP of Lead Services Talks Going Digital with Eloqua

One struggle any modern marketer is familiar with is the evolution of an industry. When the inevitable happens, marketers have two choices: either keep up with business as usual and hope you survive, or reevaluate your methods and better position yourself for success.

One industry that has undergone significant changes in recent years is that of the media. Rhonda Wunderlin, Vice President of Lead Services with Penton Media, Inc., the largest B2B media company in the U.S. has witnessed the evolution of the industry firsthand. In today’s exclusive Q&A, Rhonda opens up on Penton Media’s move toward offering more services in the digital realm, how her firm uses Eloqua and her motivation for attending the Eloqua Experience conference each year.

Can you provide us with a little background on Penton Media’s transition to digital and how your firm uses Eloqua’s marketing automation software?
Let’s begin with the dramatic shift that we’ve witnessed in the media industry over the last several years. Much like any other media organization in the B2B space, we’ve had to change our approach with how and where we communicate with buyers. And much of this change is attributable to a transformation of buyer behavior, especially as buyers are now further along in the purchase process before they reach out to a vendor.

While we have 17 vertical markets that we provide media coverage to, there really is no sense in publishing solely in print when the majority of our audiences are in the digital space. Therefore, we’ve made adjustments in our approach to incorporate more digital services to help our clients effectively reach the right audience.

As a response to this transition, Penton Media launched Penton Marketing Services, which provides end-to-end marketing services to help clients create programs that integrate print, social and digital.

My area of focus is with programs that effectively move leads from the top to the bottom of the funnel with the use of various digital campaigns that can include content development and lead generation tactics. And this is where Eloqua comes into play for us, as their marketing automation platform can be used across various markets, to help our clients engage with their target audience, continue the conversation and help guide those engaged contacts through the decision process.

What motivates you to attend Eloqua Experience? What do you intend to walk away with at this year’s conference?
Considering that I was an Eloqua employee for six years, going to the Experience is almost like going to a high school reunion. It’s exciting to see old colleagues and clients that I’ve known for years. Also, it’s great to see where people are now, how their careers have progressed and new ways they’re using Eloqua’s marketing automation to drive results.

I also look forward to seeing what the next best thing is at each event. This year, I’m especially curious to learn more about how industries that previously have not leveraged marketing automation are driving adoption and change within their organizations.

Any funny stories or anecdotes from previous Eloqua Experience conferences to share?
I was fortunate to attend the inaugural Markie Awards in 2007, which was a lot of fun. At that time, the event was a lot smaller, a whole lot smaller! It was held in a small room set up sort of like a cocktail lounge, and everyone stood around while Joe Payne handed out six crystal engraved awards. It was intimate, kind of like a family affair. It’s remarkable to compare then to now. Now you have a much larger event in a giant ballroom, with really tough competition, community buzz for months prior, 20 categories as compared to 6 and instead of a crystal engraved award, you get a statue and status that compares to the Emmy of marketing automation.

It’s quite fascinating to see how the conference has grown over the years which I believe speaks to the commitment Eloqua has in ensuring their clients success.

October 9, 2012 by Marc Hausman

Marketing Automation in Manhattan: Q&A with Autumn Coleman of Manhattan Associates

One of the things we love most about Eloqua is its incredibly supportive community of staff and users. If you’ve ever visited Topliners, Eloqua’s own social media community, you’ve felt the buzz and excitement that this user group generates over marketing automation.

Once a year, this community comes out from behind the computer screens and engages face-to-face at Eloqua’s annual user conference. From novices seeking to understand more about the Eloqua platform to super-users sharing their successes and pain points, Eloqua enthusiasts around the country gather with one goal in mind: to enhance their marketing automation skills.

We recently had the privilege of speaking with Autumn Coleman, Senior Marketing Operations Manager at Manhattan Associates, a best-in-class global solutions provider for supply chain leaders out of Atlanta, Georgia. She shared with us how her team is using Eloqua and what she’s hoping to accomplish at this year’s user conference.

Can you provide us with an understanding of how Manhattan Associates uses Eloqua?
We’re getting more and more advanced by the day as we use Eloqua for a variety of projects and tasks. We use Eloqua for small, tactical projects like internal emails and landing pages, as well as larger projects like event automation and database segmentation. We’ve had great success using Eloqua cloud connectors to drive registrations for webinars and other events.

We’re also working towards nurturing a database of ideal “buyer personas” for our business. Eloqua is especially great for lead nurturing and getting the right content in front of the right people at the right time based on the person’s behavior and how engaged they are with us.

Can you talk a little about how your team goes about crafting content?
At Manhattan Associates, crafting content is a collaborative approach among a variety of different people across the organization and Eloqua is the technology that supports the distribution process. Using the intelligence we can gather from Eloqua, we craft white papers, case studies and webinars, and manage our corporate websites with up-to-date SEO.

We also like to re-purpose content that we’ve found to be successful in the past based on web and email click-through activity that we’ve been able to gather using Eloqua reporting. Testing engagement with subject lines and sample segmentation is a good marketing automation best practice as well.

The first step towards effective lead nurturing is to flesh out the buyer personas for our ideal customer. Having a complete picture of our ideal customer by gathering demographic information like industry, title and role has helped us create workflows that will send the person through Eloqua derived from their activity with Manhattan. Using this information, we can intelligently craft content based on the needs and pain points of our target customer base.

How will you determine if your time at Eloqua Experience has been successful?
Being that this is my second year attending the user conference and having upgraded to the new version of the Eloqua system, I’m definitely going into the conference with a few goals I’d like to accomplish.

First of all, I’m always on the lookout for any tips, training or best practices I can pick up about how to leverage the cloud for automation and operational efficiency, improve and maintain data quality, and anything else that allows me to show the value of Eloqua’s system.

Second, I’ll definitely be looking for information and training to further enhance the reporting of the system to the C-suite. The new version of Eloqua comes with a new business intelligence tool that offers deeper insights and metrics. I’m hoping to pick up some additional training and best practices on reporting at the executive level.

Lastly, I’m really excited to network with my Eloqua peers and meet other enterprise B2B customers and learn how they’re using the system. It’s easy to feel like you’re all alone in the world of marketing automation, but Eloqua has an amazing user group with a great sense of community. They want everyone to be successful. I really enjoy engaging in Topliners and building relationships with other Eloqua users who can be a great resource for information.

If there was one piece of advice you could share with Eloqua, what would it be?
I think training is key. Being in operations, developing my team’s training all the way down the line is important to me. The more training we can have from a beginner to an advanced level, the better. Make the best use of your clients’ time with training and availability.

Marketing Moves from Conceptual to Technical at PerkinElmer

Penton Media’s VP of Lead Services Talks Going Digital with Eloqua

Marketing Automation in Manhattan: Q&A with Autumn Coleman of Manhattan Associates

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