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
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