Marketo has formed a new research centre which it claims will provide marketing and industry insights as a benchmark to digital marketing leaders.
The vendor has also launched a partner program to help digital agencies deliver its marketing technology platform and services to their own clients.
The Marketo Institute will tap into anonymised data from the vendor’s marketing technology deployments across more than 3000 customers globally, to offer trend-based information around key topics such as marketing ROI, customer engagement and lifecycle, and marketing operations. Data being utilised includes geography, industry, campaign and segment intelligence.
In a statement, Marketo said data collected will span more than 12 million digital marketing campaigns, 900 million people and 224 billion activities from 36 countries and 20 different industries. The company will also conduct research in partnership with agencies, consultancy groups and research firms, to offer further insights to marketers.
“The mission of the Marketo Institute is to educate marketers and empower leaders for the new era of engagement marketing,” said co-founder and executive director of the Marketo Institute, Jon Miller, in a statement.
The vendor has also set its sights on working with higher education institutions to help create curriculum based on its research and best practices insights.
“The marketing classes in today’s universities and business schools don’t teach the new techniques and strategies required for today’s marketing,” Miller commented. “And without the right guidance, marketers are forced to rely on guesswork, tribal knowledge and trial and error to figure out what works.
“Marketers are hungry for data-driven benchmarks and actionable insights they can use to drive their future plans and determine the success of their current efforts.”
Initial research planned includes looking into the number of marketing touches that should occur before a customer makes a first purchase, as well as the mix of channels and devices brands are using to interact with customers at different stages of the customer journey.
Marketo also noted the Institute will provide an online community and in-person networking for CMOs, although further details on how this will function were not detailed.
Interview: Marketo CEO Phil Fernandez on customer expectations and competition
In other news, Marketo is looking to ramp up third-party services and support for its marketing technology play and has established a global agency partner program. Under the program, participating digital agencies will work with the vendor on a joint digital marketing approach, have access to Marketo’s training and certification program and be able to tap into supporting services and
pre-sales insights.
The vendor said 150 digital agencies had signed up as initial recruits including Australian companies.
In a statement, Babcock and Jenkins vice-president of strategy and partnerships, Lauren Goldstein, said partnering with Marketo will allow the group to bring together marketing automation technology with its content strategy for clients.
“This will help us to reach customers when, where and how it’s meaningful to them,” she said.
Marketo’s efforts to have digital agencies resell its marketing technology platform comes just weeks after Salesforce announced a global reseller agreement with Omnicom Group to adopt its full ExactTarget Marketing Cloud technology.
Under that agreement, Omnicom will provide clients with an end-to-end customer engagement strategy that taps into their own customer data.
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