Raab Associates Inc.

July 30, 2013 — Acquisitions have changed the face of the B2B marketing automation industry, according to a new study released by Raab Associates Inc.

“Just eighteen months ago, none of the major B2B marketing automation vendors was part of a public company, compared with seven of the 23 vendors in our latest report,” said Raab Associates Principal David M. Raab.  “Given the tendency of public firms to focus on selling to large enterprises, we believe this opens a new opportunity for smaller vendors to grow their sales to small- and mid-sized marketing departments.”

The new report, B2B Marketing Automation Vendor Selection Tool (VEST), provides detailed information, vendor rankings, and industry background on systems designed to help business marketers to capture new prospects, nurture relationships, and coordinate lead treatments with sales departments.  It is the latest in a series of Raab Associates reports tracking the industry since 2008.

“No new vendor has become a top-three industry leader since Pardot in 2011,” Raab said.  “But we are now seeing year-on-year client growth in the 60% to 100% range from companies including Act-On, Right-On, eTrigue, and LeadFormix, which almost surely is faster than the current leaders are moving,”  He cautioned that the current leaders stopped releasing client counts when they became part of larger public firms, so estimates of market position are less accurate.

Act-On in particular, with more than 1,600 clients, may have approached or even exceeded the client count of Pardot, whose last reported count was 847 in January 2012, eighteen months ago.  However, Pardot’s higher prices probably ensure that its total revenue is still substantially higher.

The two largest remaining private vendors, Infusionsoft and HubSpot, reported client growth rates of 63% and 24% respectively, concentrated among smaller businesses.

Other trends apparent in the report include:

• more activity in selling to very small businesses, illustrated by inclusion of two new small business vendors, Optify and Venntive, and by growth rates above 50% for all five vendors concentrated in that category.

•  expanded service offerings aimed at helping clients make full use of their systems, provided through vendors’ own professional services, agency partners, and app marketplaces.  These are concentrated in the small and mid-size business segments.

• expansion of social marketing features, including Facebook forms, social sign-on, and capturing social behavior in personal profiles.

About the VEST Report

The VEST Report is based on nearly 200 data points covering features, technology, services, and resources of each marketing automation vendor.  The report uses these to prepare separate suitability ratings for very small, mid-size, and large businesses, using weights that reflect the different needs of each group.  Buyers can also apply their own weights to identify which vendors best fit their own needs.  The VEST is available at www.raabguide.com/vest and priced at $795.