Marketing automation platform Silverpop’s recent push into revenue analytics for B2B marketers culminated Tuesday in the launch of Marketing Automation for Ecommerce.
The product addresses a multitude of B2C needs, at the core of which is the ability to tie email to revenue. The problem with attributing email to purchase activity is that a customer may get two or three emails leading to a decision to buy. A marketer that runs a three-part email “welcome” series can now see how all of those messages drove specific actions.
“They’re able to see which one was actually closest to the conversion and how did the other one impact that process based on, ‘Did the person click through to the site and do other things?’” said Bryan Brown, VP of product strategy for Silverpop. “You can see how your overall campaigns and your emails work together.”
While traditional ecommerce analytics measured how many people clicked and ultimately bought as a result of an email message, which is still valuable, Silverpop saw a need in its customer base to address larger customer lifecycle management questions such as recency, frequency and monetary value (RFM) to determine when to reengage a company’s best customers that may have lapsed or to appropriate campaign efforts elsewhere.
For instance, if an ecommerce marketer is focused on daily deals, their attribution curve may only span a short window of time, Brown explained. Big ticket items with longer purchase cycles, by contrast, require deeper insight into how various campaigns led to a purchase decision.
While marketing automation used to largely exist within the realms of B2B, B2C companies are increasingly applying traditional B2B marketing activities like contact scoring.
“I would say it’s a result of the desire to move from audience-based, segmentation marketing to individual marketing,” Brown said, noting that Silverpop in 2010 relaunched its platform “with a new base of technology that would allow B2B and B2C marketers to do nurturing and lifecycle marketing across any channel.”
Frost and Sullivan analyst Hiral Jasani has noted that companies seek to unify all marketing content in one place in order to drive consistency in all brand-related communications, as well as give the marketer more insight into other departments – such as finance and revenue. This contributes to the blend of B2B and B2C marketing practices.
Ad tech also is becoming a part of the mix. Email in particular is the common denominator within this convergence. For instance, earlier this year TellApart acquired email marketing optimization platform AdStack and Criteo a couple of weeks ago acquired email marketing and retargeting technology company Tedemis.
