Why LinkedIn and Salesforce Must Play Nice
Matt Sunbulli | November 4, 2014
Few companies carry grand missions like
HubSpot’s “to make the world more inbound,” and
even fewer have founders like Dharmesh Shah
and Brian Halligan who literally wrote the book
on their industry. Given Wall Street’s enthusiastic
bell ringing for Hubspot (20% jump post IPO),
you’re excused for thinking you may be hearing
the death knell for outbound.
Think again.
The storyline advocating inbound is quite real
and it’s grounded in math. The average cost
remains considerably higher for generating a lead
from an outbound channel compared to inbound
(according to some estimates as much as two to
three times more). The traditional understanding
is simple. Namely that inbound marketing is more
aligned with the behaviors of the savvy modern
consumer. In the case of the B2B buyer, do they
really respond to cold emails and calls any more?
The thinking is no, buyers are just too smart, and
with the advent of modern technologies (email
spam filters, caller id) they are now equipped to
skip or ignore your marketing messages easily.
Belying this story are the actual reasons that
make inbound marketing more cost effective
than outbound. SEO, SEM and social media (the
top three inbound tactics) all have in common
one incredibly powerful marketing attribute:
knowledge of the customer. With the intent
profiling capabilities of SEO/SEM and social
profiling capabilities of social media, generating
better rates of return on lead generation in
these channels is simply an inevitability when
compared to the “information vacuum” associated
with outbound tactics (cold calls), alluding the
common trope: “It’s the data, stupid!”
But this information vacuum is precisely what
is beginning to change in the aggressive hustle
of the outbound marketing game. Just as data
made inbound marketing… it’s turning the tide for
outbound, and the change is being led by LinkedIn
and social media.
A recent survey of 1,000 IT executives, at firms from
Fortune-ranked companies to small and mediumsized businesses offered these insights: 60% said
outbound calls or emails have directly led to an
IT vendor evaluation. 75% said they’d decided
to attend an event or take an appointment after
having received a call or email. What’s happening?
First, with the increased adoption of marketing
automation tools and processes (e.g. Marketo,
Eloqua, Pardot), sales operations is also shifting
towards both automation and specialization.
The result is affording reps more time to employ
tailored modes of selling, namely social ones.
Social networks like LinkedIn, Twitter and
Facebook now represent some of the most
commonly used methods of lead generation. In
the B2B domain, customizing sales emails and
even calls based on lead profile information
derived from social networks is quickly becoming
commonplace.
Social networks are used to mine valuable
information on leads and prospects that help in the
qualification process, and to target outbound sales
communications in ways that harken inbound.
For instance, a business article shared by a lead
in a tweet can indicate buying intent, major life
events like birthdays discovered from Facebook
www.chiefmarketer.com | November 2014
Why LinkedIn and Salesforce Must Play Nice
Matt Sunbulli | November 4, 2014
serve as opportunities to generate awareness and
to rekindle a cold lead, and promotions announced
on LinkedIn indicate new stakeholders in the
buying process. Sophisticated sales teams use
this data to refine and target their outbound sales
messages, and just as with inbound, the net result
is driving down the cost of acquiring those leads.
Nevertheless, there’s still significant innovation
needed within the outbound channel to reach
efficiencies of scale present within its counterpart,
inbound. On that end companies like HubSpot
have already created an entire industry bringing
tools to help make inbound more efficient. It’s
time for outbound to follow.
What’s holding it up?
Put broadly, it’s innovation that will create the
next generation of enabling technologies that will
automate outbound sales processes. Startups like
ToutApp, Yesware and Refresh.io are all beginning
to provide value in this regard. However beyond
innovation, there’s a chasm slowly emerging
between the two incumbents, LinkedIn and
Salesforce, which will have to be bridged. As it
turns out LinkedIn and CRMs don’t play nice with
each other. That must change. If outbound is ever
to gather up enough data on leads to reach a level
of automation, targeting and CPL (cost per lead)
that’s on par with inbound… That will change.
For most this isn’t a surprise. One provides most
of the lead profiling data that’s needed to scale
outbound B2B marketing, and the other controls
the CRM to house it. LinkedIn’s overtly strict API
guidelines has shuttered all too many a startup
seeking to use its data for “CRM” purposes, so
much so the pun LinkedOut was coined. The
current LinkedIn – Salesforce integrations lack
any ability to trigger email campaigns off that data
in scale, primarily because those integrations are
merely cosmetic (viewable by the salesperson in
the CRM but not actionable for campaigns).
When it comes to abiding by major social
platform’s terms of services, like LinkedIn’s, I have
a profound respect for the challenges faced by
these platforms and developers. My last company
(Social Amp, acquired by Merkle) was a Facebook
preferred marketing developer. Our software
powered onsite personalization leveraging the
tremendous depth of the Open Graph for big retail
brands. Our relative success in making our clients
happy was ultimately Facebook’s own success.
They provided open and transparent guidelines
for use of their API, and in turn we helped fill the
innovation gaps retailers needed that Facebook
was simply not able to fill.
Where Facebook thrived balancing on the one
hand users’ privacy concerns, and on the other
hand businesses’ desires for ease and automation,
I believe LinkedIn is unfortunately failing.
Here too, on the heels of the Dreamforce conference,
where nearly 25,000 developers attended (and
Bruno Mars performed no less) we’re reminded of
the community and platform economy that can
be unleashed when developers are partnered with
to fill the gaps that businesses desire to be filled.
LinkedIn should be taking notes.
www.chiefmarketer.com | November 2014
Why LinkedIn and Salesforce Must Play Nice
Matt Sunbulli | November 4, 2014
It may be that LinkedIn is planning for its own
CRM product in the not so near future. If that’s
the case, the need to bridge the aforementioned
chasm present between LinkedIn and traditional
CRMs will become arguably even more necessary,
and particularly for mature businesses. Until
then, outbound sales teams – for all their vaunted
aggressiveness – will find themselves in an
uneven playing field. The rise of automation
across marketing and inbound channels will put
pressure on their own, while their sales CRMs will
fail to provide the technology needed to automate
outbound prospecting in a cost effective way.
Outbound is here to stay, but until LinkedIn and
CRMs play nice, it will continue playing the
laggard to inbound.
Matt Sunbulli is vice president, digital and social
CRM for Merkle Inc.
www.chiefmarketer.com | November 2014