Marketing Insights » Productivity Tools for Marketers

2010 Goal #1 – Benchmark and Assess for Demand Generation Improvement

Laura Cross — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:49:32 +0000

As I mentioned in my blog post on January 22, 10 Goals I have for Marketers in 2010, the first one is to benchmark and assess for improvement in marketing effectiveness. According to Merriam-Webster, benchmark means to have a point of reference from which measurements may be made OR something that serves as a standard by which others may be measured OR a test that serves as a basis for evaluation or comparison.

As we begin 2010, think of ways you can create points of reference within your organization where you can create standards. Then evaluate and compare against past performance to ensure you are improving your overall marketing effectiveness.

Standards should be created in each of the four disciplines of the Demand Lifecycle™ – lead management, contact management, campaign management and marketing effectiveness.

To get you started, Eloqua Best Practice recommends the following standards for measurement to create a baseline for evaluation and comparison.

Demand Lifecycle(TM) Recommended Metrics for Benchmarking

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Zero To Social In Three Steps

Rhonda Wunderlin — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:38:07 +0000

As more and more buyers go online for information, more information is being provided online by sellers. As more information is made available, the search a buyer goes through to find what’s relevant to them is becoming more and more challenging. When faced with this dilemma, recent research by the Nielsen Company shows “there is a segment of the online population that uses social media as a core navigation and information discovery tool”. Why? Not only do buyers trust third party insight, but social media acts as a filtration tool for information.

As an online marketer trying to figure out how to leverage social media, you may be facing a similar information overload of content on *social marketing how-to* leaving you unsure of where to start. In the guest post below, Joe Chernov, Director of Communications & Social Media at Eloqua, shares how Eloqua can get you from Zero to Social in three easy steps.

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It’s virtually impossible to discuss marketing without the conversation shifting to social media. For many of us, social media and marketing have become almost synonymous. But with this spike in attention comes a surge in information. There are countless books, blogs, reports, tweets and articles on the topic of social marketing. This staggering amount of content can cause marketing paralysis: With so many paths to follow, taking the first step can be daunting.

When facing an impasse, it’s best to keep moving. And when it comes to social media marketing, the best move is the one that allows you to get started. It’s this awareness – the notion that marketers don’t want to do everything in social media, they want to do something in social media – that drove us to create our new Social Sharing & Reporting tools. What is it? It’s a simple way for our clients trigger conversations about their products and join conversations already underway. Because when it comes to social media, all conversations matter.

In the end, social media isn’t about products, marketing or even media. It’s about people. So my colleague, Jody Mooney, created this super-short video in which she explains, person to person, how Eloqua can take you “from zero to social” in three easy steps.

Once you get started in social media, it’s critical to stay engaged. You cannot pop in and out when it suits you. Unlike traditional communications, in which marketers dial-up and dial-down messaging based on corporate developments, social media is not a sine wave. It’s a flat line. It’s an ongoing conversation with your customers, your partners, your fans and even your detractors.

And for those of you who want to dive a little deeper into social media marketing, I recommend MarketingSherpa’s 2009 Social Media Marketing & PR Benchmark Guide. This book contains every chart conceivable on marketing across the social Web. You will be an expert in no time.

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Friday Quick Tip – Productivity Tool: Babel Fish

Heather Foeh — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 12:49:44 +0000

My colleague Greg Lui is located in Eloqua’s Singapore office and is responsible for managing our presence in the APAC region. As you can imagine his day includes interactions with many different languages. In cases where he needs some translation help, he recommends Babel Fish. If you interact with vendors, clients, partners and colleagues from multiple countries you may find this a helpful resource as well. (One thing Greg notes is that it’s not always completely accurate, but it’s usually close enough to give you an understanding of the text.)

Simply enter your text, choose the translation type and click the Translate button and you’re off and running!

Friday Quick Tip – Productivity Tool: Dropbox

Heather Foeh — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 10:04:03 +0000

Today’s tool is Dropbox – a handy (and FREE!) file storage system. You can sync your files across multiple computers, share files with others, and access them online. The Dropbox folks say it better than I ever could: “Put your files into your Dropbox on one computer, and they’ll be instantly available on any of your other computers that you’ve installed Dropbox on (Windows, Mac, and Linux too!). Because a copy of your files are stored on Dropbox’s secure servers, you can also access them from any computer or mobile device using the Dropbox website.”

Why I love Dropbox:

I backup some of my most critical files here (both work and personal). (Note: my old method was to email files to my Gmail account…Dropbox is simpler.)
I can easily share files with other people on my team. Dropbox automatically keeps roll-back versions of your files for 30 days so you also get the benefit of some version history as well.
I use a Mac at home and a PC at work and Dropbox works seamlessly on both.
It’s free — get up to 2 GB of storage for $0 per month.

Try it out and let me know what you think!

Friday Quick Tip – Productivity Tool: Outlook Notifications

Heather Foeh — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 06:52:23 +0000

Today’s tool isn’t really a tool, but more of a helpful hint about an application that you probably already use: Microsoft Outlook. The default setting in Outlook 2003 and 2007 is to display a small 3 line preview of incoming emails in the system tray down by the clock. This little window fades in and out innocently enough, but it’s a major distraction. There you are, hard at work on your next great marketing campaign, when up pops a little blue window notifying you that the latest ClickZ newsletter has just arrived. And wouldn’t that be a lot more fun to look at than your next great marketing campaign copy?

Don’t be lured in! I turned off these notifications two months ago and I have really noticed a difference in my workday productivity. I am able to take more tasks all the way to completion each day, and because I’m a task-oriented person, that makes me quite happy.

Here’s what to do: (Note — these instructions are for Outlook 2007, but Outlook 2003 is quite similar)

Click the Tools menu, then Options
Click the E-mail Options… button near the top of the Preferences tab
Click the Advanced E-mail Options… button (they don’t make this easy!)
In the middle of the window, uncheck the box that reads Display a New Mail Desktop Alert.
Enjoy your day with less interruptions!

Do you have a productivity tool that you love? Share it with me: heather dot foeh at eloqua dot com

Friday Quick Tip – Productivity Tool: Paint.net

Heather Foeh — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:06:22 +0000

Thanks to Joel Rothman for today’s tool: Paint.net. He summed it up nicely when he said, “It’s free and it’s awesome.” If you’re tired of the limitations of the clunky Paint program that comes with Windows, but you don’t have the budget for Photoshop, this is a great alternative. It has the concept of Layers (pioneered by Photoshop), unlimited Undo, and some built-in special effects (such as drop shadows). And did we mention that it’s free and awesome?

Do you have a software tool that you just can’t live without?
Tell me about it: heather dot foeh at eloqua dot com.

Friday Quick Tip – Productivity Tool: PDFCreator

Heather Foeh — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 07:32:18 +0000

Today’s tool is PDFCreator and it was recommended by my colleague Adrian Azcurra. This is helpful tool if you don’t have access to the full version of Adobe Acrobat for creating PDFs. You can use it from any program that has a Print function because PDFcreator installs like another printer on your computer. It can also combine multiple files into one PDF, which has come in handy for me several times when producing my expense report. Enjoy!

Do you have a tool that you just can’t live without? Tell me about it: heather dot foeh at eloqua dot com

Friday Quick Tip – Productivity Tool: SnagIt

Heather Foeh — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 07:44:38 +0000

When I polled my colleagues for their recommendations on productivity tools, Snagit was on everyone’s list and it’s definitely at the top of mine. I use Snagit approximately 8,456 times per day on average (okay, maybe not quite that many…) and I find it indispensible.

What is it? It’s screen captures on steroids. You can highlight areas of your screen, combine two captures into one, make notes with the text tool, and much more. The new version 9 also has excellent image tagging and library functionality which have been a lifesaver for me.

As marketers, much of our work life is visual and Snagit makes it easy for me to share those images easily with my clients and coworkers.

BONUS: I encourage you to sign up for the free 30-day trial of Snagit because they have a masterful follow-up campaign. On the confirmation page for the download (right here) they only ask for one piece of info: email address. Then over the course of 30 days you learn how to use many features of the software through their drip campaign. There are some great lessons here for marketers!

Do you have a productivity tool that you can’t live without? Tell me about it: heather dot foeh at eloqua dot com.

Friday Quick Tip – Productivity Tool: Fences

Heather Foeh — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 07:00:05 +0000

I’m excited to tell you about Fences – it’s a tool to organize your Windows desktop and keep all of your icons tidy. It’s been a tremendous help to me, especially my new little Fence for “To Do” documents. One of my favorite features about this tool is the ability to hide all of the items on your desktop with a double-click in a non-fenced area. I do many web conferences during the week and often share my desktop, so this feature has been been a hit.

Thanks to Chad Horenfeldt for telling me about Fences.

Do you have a productivity tool that you use regularly? Share it with me: heather dot foeh at eloqua dot com.

Friday Quick Tip – Productivity Tool: PureText

Heather Foeh — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:08:49 +0000

For the next several weeks I will be focusing the Friday Quick Tip on helpful productivity tools that can make your work life a little easier.

Today’s tool is PureText, which was suggested to me by my fellow Eloquan Andrew Stafford. This is a simple little application that runs in the background on your Windows machine (sorry, it doesn’t work in a Mac). You access it via a hotkey combo that you can customize (for example, Windows key + V). It will take the text that you’ve copied and convert it to plain text format and make it available for pasting. They explain it well on their site: “PureText is basically equivalent to opening Notepad, doing a PASTE, followed by a SELECT-ALL, and then a COPY. The benefit of PureText is performing all these actions with a single Hot-Key and having the result pasted into the current window automatically.”

How is this helpful? If you routinely copy text out of Word and paste it into your marketing automation system, for example, you’ve noticed that all of the yucky Word formatting comes along for the ride. This tool will strip out that extra “fun” and let you start with squeaky clean goodness.

Do you have a tool to share? Drop me a note and I’ll feature it in an upcoming tip (heather dot foeh at eloqua dot com).