Challenges the Marketing Automation Industry By Offering Controversial #DeathByMA Software Trade-Up Program

Marketing Automation software has been credited with helping companies streamline sales and replace high-touch, repetitive manual processes with more efficient automated solutions.

Today, inbound marketing software company HubSpot, which recently acquired social media marketing company oneforty and the most innovative marketing automation company Performable, laid out a challenge to the industry with a software trade-up program it calls #DeathByMA.

“Marketing Automation software was created to help marketers send out more emails more efficiently, which unfortunately often results in a company just sending out more SPAM,” said HubSpot Chief Marketing Officer, Mike Volpe, who announced the #DeathByMA program in the first of his two sold-out Death by Marketing Automation sessions at Dreamforce yesterday.

“Unfortunately, most marketing automation software lacks key functionality that marketing professionals need because it is based on old methods of marketing rooted in the 1990’s.”

In his Death by Marketing Automation session, Volpe explained that:

  • Industry sources show that your lists degrade at 25% per year, yet marketing automation does nothing to help you attract more leads using blogging, search engines and social media.
  • Prospective customers interact with your company using social media and mobile applications; yet marketing automation has no way of capturing that data and using it to personalize the relationship with your leads.
  • The way people shop for and buy products has greatly changed, but marketing automation was built in the 1990’s before the social and mobile revolutions.

“A lot of what the industry refers to as ‘lead-nurturing’ via marketing automation isn’t lead nurturing at all—it’s SPAM. Every time you send SPAM-my, impersonal, irrelevant email to a lead or prospect, pretend that a kitten dies,” said Volpe. “If you’re not comfortable killing kittens, you should take advantage of our #DeathByMA offer.”

HubSpot Co-Founder and CEO, Brian Halligan, had this to say about his company’s #DeathByMA program: “5,000+ HubSpot customers grow their lead generation by 32% every month using our software. But generating traffic and leads is just the beginning. You’ve got to master the middle-of-the-funnel, too. You’ve got to sell more like salesforce, and market more like amazon. That’s what we’re helping our customers do.”

HubSpot customers indeed seem to be doing quite well. HubSpot’s 2011 ROI report states that HubSpot customers average four times more traffic and 25 times more leads than they did prior to purchasing HubSpot software (within 6-12 months), at an increase of 13-32% per month. HubSpot itself generates more than 40,000 new leads per month, and hosts nearly 900 landing pages that have collectively amassed 3.8 million views and have an average conversion rate of 37%.

“Three years ago our company spent roughly $200,000 in advertising to achieve about $4,000,000 in total sales; this year, at current pace, we will spend about $18,000 in order to achieve roughly $5,000,000,” wrote HubSpot customer Marcus Sheridan, owner of one of the largest swimming pool builders in the US on tech-news blog BostInnovation this week. “HubSpot has changed my life. It saved my business.“

Companies interested in taking advantage of HubSpot’s limited-time #DeathByMA offer can go to this special page for full details. HubSpot is making a special offer for any company looking to upgrade from marketing automation to inbound marketing with special pricing including unlimited marketing contacts and database size. The program runs now through September 30, 2011.

Volpe will do an encore of his Death By Marketing Automation session at Dreamforce on Friday, September 2, at 8:30 a.m. in Moscone West room 2014.

Originally published Sep 1, 2011 3:05:00 PM, updated January 17 2023

Topics:

Marketing Automation