Mathew Sweezey

When it comes to email marketing in the B2B space, one of the hottest new trends is drip-nurturing campaigns created with marketing automation. With the adoption of marketing automation reaching as high as 76% in the most progressive industries, it is easy to see why nurturing is the new “black”. So let's look at one of the biggest mistakes people make when creating lead nurturing emails.

First, let's talk about what a nurturing program actually is. Whatever term you use--drip-nurturing, lead nurturing, email nurturing, etc.--a nurturing campaign is an email program that executes automatically...

As a kid my favorite question was "Why?" I'd ask my mother and father a hundred times a day, "Why this", and "Why that"?

They were good parents and would indulge my mindless questions. I never stopped asking questions, and as a marketer you should never stop asking that most important question: "Why?"

Marketing automation is a recent phenomenon and has made huge waves. Clicz.com reported 76% of the worlds largest SaaS companies are using marketing automation, and among these are some of the biggest brands in the world. The question you should ask yourself, is "Why?" Why are so many comapnies...

I'm so glad that Uberflip just posted this infographic on the current state of content. I just got done speaking on a panel yesterday, and content was the buzzword for the day.

As marketing changes and consumers are more empowered by the internet, marketers have to learn a new game: content creation. Content is something we all consume--and in large amounts! We are more connected than ever before, and consuming content the entire time. In fact, a study in the UK reveals that we are in front of a screen for 12 hours a day! 

With a captive audience, instant publishing platforms (blogs, Twitter,...

Over the past few years, I've come to realize that my time here at Pardot has been nothing short of amazing. I love to watch our engineers take customer feedback and use it to develop new features. Just the other day, we rolled out a brand new feature that opens up a lot of doors for marketing and sales--an integration with UserVoice that will allow marketing and sales to identify both happy and unhappy consumers instantly, and apply business rules to these situations.

UserVoice is an application used by over 16,000 companies to help track suggestions and feedback from their users. At Pardot,...

I was doing some consulting recently for a company and they asked a great question, so I wanted to share it (and the solution, of course).

We were discussing sales enablement drip programs, and how to help sales keep up with more prospects over a long sales cycle. We discussed putting in place some very specific drip programs which would come from the sales reps. They loved the concept, but wondered what would happen if a prospect got an automated email and a "real" email from the sales rep in the same day?

This is a great question, and one that not enough marketers ask themselves. If you don't...

While reading a recent article posted by Chris Penn called Which 3 Metrics Should You Pay Attention To?, I found myself thinking that his suggestions were great for a majority of companies... but what about those companies wanting to be agile with their marketing? Do those metrics work for agile marketing teams?

Agile marketers look at their campaigns, and their metrics, in a way that's slightly different from most. For instance, Chris' post says that the three most basic metrics for any business are audience, leads, and sales.

I would agree these are key areas to measure regardless of whether...

Last week I had the pleasure of listening to Lori Wizdo from Forrester Research on a webinar with our own Adam Blitzer. It was a great learning experience, covering how the sales and marketing processes have changed in recent years. Since it's so hard to give up an hour to attend a webinar these days, I wanted to share a few key takeaway from Lori's presentation.

Stat #1: 86% of B2B buyers engage with social media while working

I love this stat, and here's why. As marketers we have two weapons at our disposal: tools and techniques. Most marketers use the same set of tools; it's the techniques...

As a follow-up to the article I wrote for ClickZ the other day, I wanted to talk a bit more about the use of technology and the adoption of best practices in large B2B organizations.

My research for the ClickZ article looked at B2B companies on the Fortune 500* and their adoption of modern marketing tools. But when you look at the raw data, it becomes clear that there are three easy lessons for any B2B marketer.

Lesson 1: Technology is only the beginning

When adopting radical new technologies, the technology itself is often only part of the story. The other part is a shift in thinking or action....

50 years ago we only had a few media outlets: print, television, radio, and maybe one or two others. Now it seems we have a new media outlet everyday. Case in point: just the other day Twitter released Vine.

Vine, for those of you late to the party, is a 6 second video loop. Imagine Instagram for video, meets Twitter. Twitter calls it, “The best way to see and share life in motion." The 6 second lenth is the key here. Sally Hogshead states that with the increased volume of content these days, we only have 9 seconds to reach someone with our message. Putting constraints on the length of video...

During a game of trivia the other night, I decided to cheat! I pulled out my phone, and was able to find out “Silent Bob’s” real name in less than 10 seconds.

This availability of information has programmed our society to have very high expectations when it comes to the question-and-answer process. If we have a hard time finding the answer to a question, we often get frustrated and build a negative connotation with brands that make it difficult to find information we seek.  This is not a new concept, so when I went to check out some of the most prolific B2B brands, I was surprised to see how...