Marketo Announces Winners of Marketo Idol Showcase

Leading Companies Honored for B2B Marketing Excellence at Marketo User Summit 09

SAN MATEO, CA (October 06, 2009) –

Marketo, the revenue-focused marketing automation company, today announced the winners of its inaugural Marketo Idol Showcase awards program. The Marketo Idol Showcase awards recognize B2B marketers that have demonstrated excellence, innovation and ingenuity in their use of Marketo Lead Management and Marketo Sales Insight to drive revenue growth and accelerated time-to-value from their demand generation campaigns and marketing and sales activities.
What It Takes to Be the First Marketo Idol

Scott Ciccone, Director of Marketing at Sierra Atlantic, won the Marketo Idol Showcase award in a spirited competition with a dozen Marketo customers at the first-ever Marketo User Summit held September 21-22 in San Mateo. Each customer was given five minutes to tell their story and impress the Marketo judges and User Summit audience that they were worthy of being named the first “Marketo Idol”.

Ciccone shared how Sierra Atlantic is using Marketo to transform the way its marketing and sales teams work together to achieve measurable ROI – including a 70% increase in new customers, a reduction in cold calling from 95% to 25%, a 50% improvement in web site ranking, and a significant increase in revenue – in a Marketo Idol story titled “From Zero to Hero in 90 Days.”

Sierra Atlantic’s results were achieved from June to September 2009 using a combination of Marketo Lead Management, an on-demand solution that helps Marketers acquire, nurture and qualify more high quality sales leads with less effort, and Marketo Sales Insight, a 100% native Force.com application that helps Sales understand, prioritize and interact with the hottest leads and opportunities to close more business faster.

“Every day we hear stories from Marketo customers that not only demonstrate the power of Marketo but also inspire us to continue to push the boundaries of the solutions we deliver to marketing and sales teams worldwide,” said Phil Fernandez, president and CEO at Marketo. “The Marketo Idol Showcase is a fun forum for us to recognize the creativity and ingenuity of our customers and to highlight tangible examples of the kind of success that marketing and sales teams can achieve by using Marketo.”

“The competition was formidable, and I am honored to be named the first Marketo Idol,” said Scott Ciccone, Director of Marketing at Sierra Atlantic. “I view Marketo as the most strategic investment I’ve made during my tenure at Sierra Atlantic, and we appreciate the impact it has made on our marketing and sales productivity, bottom line revenue growth and ROI results.”

Other B2B marketing professionals who were recognized as 2009 Marketo Idol winners after sharing their Marketo-inspired success stories include:

* Celia Brown, Marketing Manager at Boomi: “Overcoming the Blank Canvas Stare in Less than 30 Days”
* Barbara Burlington, Marketing Manager at Acteva: “Using Marketo to Turn Web Analytics into Revenue”
* John Rode, Online Marketing Manager at PivotLink: “Fantastic Funnel Feeding Frenzy”
* Alex Pelletier, Chief Consultant at Alexandre Pelletier Inc.: “Website Frequency: Scoring Beyond Basic Behaviors”

Marketo User Summit Success

The Marketo Idol Showcase was the final session of the 1-1/2 day Marketo User Summit 09, which provided more than 200 Marketo customers, partners and guests with the opportunity to network and share best practices, learn from presentations by 25 Marketo customers, and get hands-on training and advice.

During his keynote address, Fernandez went out of his way to acknowledge the pioneering customers who “placed their trust in us from our early days of business. Thank you for believing in us and for helping Marketo start our journey that recently let us earn our 250th customer. I give you my commitment to repay your trust in everything we do as we grow and continue to innovate in this exciting time for marketing and sales professionals.”

Sponsored by Enquiro, Jigsaw, The Pedowitz Group, ReachForce and Tippit as well as salesforce.com, the offline social networking event was offered to Marketo customers at no charge as a gesture of thanks and in a concerted effort “to remove all barriers that impede marketing and sales collaboration and to ignite explosive revenue growth,” according to the company’s leader and co-founder.

Source: Marketo

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