The concept for the webinar is straightforward enough: a live interview on April 13 of leading sales and marketing executives on their innovative approaches to outbound sales and marketing.

The live webinar is entitled:  The Outbound Renaissance – How Faster and Smarter Prospecting is Dramatically Improving B2B Demand Generation.

I made the fateful decision to choose an image from the Renaissance period to which I take full responsibility.

We are overwhelmed by the puzzling reception to our email.

Without disrupting our testing, I can confirm the following:

• Swirling rumors of the uncanny resemblance of the image to Umberto Milletti, CEO & Founder of InsideView.
• Excessive clicking on one of the registration links caused disruption to our server farm.
• Extraordinary landing page visits that can be construed as outright gawking.

To preserve the integrity of our test and in the name of marketing science, I would ask that you please do not sensationalize our webinar but rather, recommend to your colleagues the webinar based on the educational content alone.

Ask your colleagues to responsibly click on one of the registration buttons and register for our webinar in an unemotional and unbiased manner.

The results of our test will be presented at the webinar.

I hope that this blog post will help to rectify this situation and preserve the integrity of our test.

The value proposition resonates, the offer is tempting and the graphic design is pleasing to the eye.

Your reaction: disappointment and frustration.

Why?  You are already a customer and have been spammed by your vendor.

An example: a data provider to my organization sent an email to me with an offer to upgrade our solution.   However we had already upgraded.

Another data provider sent an email with an offer to me with no recognition that we had recently downgraded our subscription nor that we were already a customer on the basic version.

In both cases it was a data provider who sent a Batch & Blast email to the same email address that I had used to register our subscription.  Clearly, the data providers did not run their email list against a suppression file of customers.   In an earlier post on Batch & Blast email, I describe how the market is moving away from this approach.

It’s ironic that both data providers who promote the quality of their data, do not take the extra step of treating customers differently that prospects.   Neither are small vendors.

Second, if email is widely recognized as more beneficial for retention than acquisition, why are customers not treated with distinct messaging?

When I read a recent post from Adam Needles on taking email segmentation to the next level, I can’t help but feel that the next level is a quantum leap for many B2B marketers whose email marketing is at the rudimentary Batch & Blast stage.

You know – a humongous email broadcast – the digital equivalent of a large mail drop.

Otherwise known as Batch & Blast email, B2B marketers have viewed this type of email as best for retention marketing, rather than acquiring customers.

In the early days of email marketing, two powerful types of email were unavailable to B2B marketers:

But all that is changing as…

1) Multi-Function Email Suites dominate B2B email marketing.
2) Retention email marketing takes a back seat to acquisition marketing.
3) Marketing automation vendors are extending their applications.
4) The marketing automation and email vendors consolidate.

Multi-Function Email Suites dominate B2B email marketing
Although no one (except me, ahem) labels these applications ‘multi-function email suites’, I am using the term to describe multi-faceted marketing applications that include the functionality of the three types of email marketing that I have noted above: Batch & Blast, 1to1 Sales emails and Trigger emails. Of course, the functionality of these applications goes well beyond email marketing to include content management, web analytics, CRM integration etc.

When we surveyed 249 B2B marketers last year, we were surprised to find that marketing automation suites (or multi-function email suites) dominated the rankings of email applications.

Upshot: if you are not yet using or at least looking at these multi-function suites, you may be lagging the market.

Retention email marketing takes a back seat to acquisition marketing
With the widespread use of email filters and the need for recipients to opt-in to email communications, retention marketing has been the primary goal for email marketing.

1to1 Sales email and Trigger emails provide a level of personalization, immediacy and relevance that Batch & Blast emails cannot deliver allowing B2B marketers to target prospects, rather than just customers, with compelling emails.

The broad market acceptance of lead management and sales enablement applications is paving the way for the widespread use of 1to1 Sales emails and Trigger emails for lead generation, lead nurture and conversion.

Upshot: Marketers and sales reps now have robust email marketing tools available for lead generation.

Marketing automation vendors are extending their applications
As vendors push to increase their scale, the competition is intensifying.

Recently, Genius launched a lead management application to complement their leading sales enablement solution. While Eloqua and Marketo have launched a broadside to Genius by moving into the sales enablement space from lead management.

For a terrific overview of this standoff, read Laura Ramos’ recent post on her blog. Laura is VP / Principal Analyst, Forrester Research.

Upshot: enhanced competition should provide more attractive options for buyers to buy full application suites.

The marketing automation and email vendors will consolidate
I asked Jon Miller, VP of Marketing, Marketo about how buyers will look at evaluating marketing applications:

Q: Will B2B sales or marketing teams stop buying one-dimensional email applications? i.e. Batch & Blast applications only

A: I definitely think this is true; people don’t have time or energy to cobble together piece part solutions.

As marketing automation vendors scramble to extend their applications into other types of email marketing, two analysts see the market consolidating.

In a webinar earlier this year, Alexander Drobik, Managing VP Gartner Research simply states:

In the current era of economic uncertainty and increasing IT productivity, users will congregate their IT software spend in megavendors and their ecosystems.

(For free access to the Gartner webinar slides, click here.)

David Raab, a consultant specializing in marketing technology and analysis, noted in a well-written review of Marketo Sales Insight, that the revenue opportunity on sales enablement tools will be very attractive to sales automation vendors (i.e. CRM vendors) and those vendors will ‘take the business for themselves’.

Upshot: B2B marketers may find standalone, Batch & Blast vendors to be a dying breed as robust sales & marketing automation suites dominate the market. Our research shows that of the Batch & Blast vendors, it was mostly the budget-friendly vendors, who held significant market share.

(Image copyright – Fox Media. The resemblance to the author is purely accidental.)

Although it is often suggested that email is best suited for customer retention, this survey of 249 B2B marketers indicates that email is a key tool for customer acquisition.

The story gets more interesting as we take a look at what brands B2B marketers are using:

• Two economical email providers are ranked highly – Constant Contact and Vertical Response are favored over more expensive email tools (see below).

• Lead Generation Suites and CRM systems are often used for email marketing – its significant to note that a lead generation suite such as Eloqua leads this segment, even though email marketing is just one of its functions. Salesforce.com, a CRM tool and other lead generation suites such as Vtrenz, Aprimo and Marketo also crack the top 20 list.

For the survey, we defined lead generation suites as a group of two or more lead generation tools. For example most suites include both email and web analytics modules.

According to survey responders, Eloqua is the dominant player in lead generation suites, garnering more responses than the next four vendors combined.

So there you have it, even an old Web 1.0 tool like email continues to evolve.

Source: Directory of Lead Generation Tools 2008

We presented highlights from our recent research on how B2B marketers were using online media.

We discussed how webinars, search and email were widely deployed by B2B marketers (see chart `Lead Generation Goal by Medium`).

Although Chris was somewhat surprised that 49% of respondents are using blogs for lead generation, I noted that this in sync with other surveys. B2B marketers have leveraged blogging to boost their organic or natural search rankings. Higher rankings translate to more web inquiries.

Traditional content such as newsletters, press releases and case studies ranked highly for lead generation.

This chart pertains to a question asking marketers about content residing on their website.

Although media such as blogs, video and podcasts are ranked much lower, their ranking is signifcant given their newness.

Although these results were similar to previous studies, some marketers were confused by the findings. See Mike Stelzner`s blog for some comments.