BY PAUL GILLIN

THE SOFTWARE market is an ecosystem driven by co-de-pendence. Makers of development tools live or die by the success of partners that build the applications customers want. That’s why toolmakers are so eager to promote third-party innovation.

Serena Software has been building tools for software change management for more than 25 years. It recently diversified into the emerging market for enterprise mashups and applied an innovative set of Web 2.0 features to promote its partners and to co-manage leads through the sales funnel.

A lot of people know mashups as those cool Web pages that combine, say, a Google map with the location of coffee houses in San Francisco. But mashups have serious business uses, too.

Serena Business Mashups let users combine information from disparate enterprise applications to automate common processes. For example, a human relations mashup may pull data from a PeopleSoft employee database and combine it with sales information stored in SAP to pay a bonus for overachievers in sales.

Serena supports third-party de-

velopers in their sales and marketing efforts because each partner sale pulls through a sale of Serena’s platform. The company gives partners an assortment of Web 2.0 tools to enrich the sales process and applies back-end lead management and customer relationship management software to gain insight into prospects’ interests.

The company’s new Mashup Exchange is similar in concept to eBay stores. In eBay’s case, sellers can build virtual online storefronts that showcase their full line of products. Mashup Exchange does the same thing, but partners can choose from a much richer assortment of tools to build their individual storefronts, which are called MicroMarkets.

Within each MicroMarket, partners can select from a menu of features to present to prospects, such as discussion forums, videos, frequently asked questions and customer rating systems. They can also make it easy for customers to share discoveries with peers. Finally, partners can tap into a variety of project management tools to manage their back-end processes. MicroMarkets are free to Serena business partners.

The goal is to individualize the experience for the customer and the

partner. “We wanted enormous flexibility so the platform could be a thousand different things to a thousand different people,” said Naisan Geula, Serena VP-alliances, partners and channels.

The Serena Mashup Exchange is powered by software from HiveLive, a developer of online community platforms. The lead management system is backed by software from MarketBright and CRM vendor Salesforce.com.

MarketBright watches customer behavior and creates weighted lead profiles based on that activity. For example, a customer who lingers in a MicroMarket, watches a video, reads some product literature and downloads a demo program is identified as a promising lead. That information is delivered to the seller and passed into the Salesforce.com system, where both Serena and its partners can follow up. Partners generate affiliate fees for sales of the Serena tool set.

Although only active for about a month, the Serena Mashup Exchange has generated promising results. Some 50 developers joined, with several closing sales the first week. More than 1,000 customers registered. Another 50 mashups will

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Serena has also added some Web 2.0 fun to the process. Mashup TV is a series of humorous video vignettes that showcase the power of the integration platform. Viewers are invited to register for more information and to download free trials.

The exchange has had unexpect-

ed internal benefits, too. HiveLive is so flexible that Serena has wound down its use of other point collaboration products. “Every internal organization within Serena is now using HiveLive,” Geula said. “People can adapt data to the experience they want instead of wrapping themselves around the data.”

 

Web 2.0 publishing +

analytics = superior

lead management

BY PAUL GILLIN

IN THE BAD OLD DAYS of lead management, marketers created prospect lists of often-questionable quality and threw them over the wall to a sales force that had become cynical about lead quality and performance. Salespeople complained that marketers didn’t adequately qualify leads. Marketers shot back that salespeople didn’t follow up on the leads they were given. The whole thing was very dysfunctional.

Today, there is no excuse for this kind of disconnect. Every company now has the capacity to be a publisher and, thanks to Web analytics, every prospect’s route through a site can now be tracked back to the point of entry. When combined with lead tracking, marketers can create detailed profiles of customer behavior that lead to better-targeted, more effective campaigns over time.

Here are five secrets of online lead management in a

Web 2.0 world:

1) It’s all about quality content. In today’s search-driven world, prospects care more about relevance than they do about sources. Marketers need to think like publishers. That means giving prospects a portfolio of content tuned to their needs. Start by ditching the pitch. Customers want information that helps them make decisions. Eliminate buzzwords like “industry-leading” and “revolutionary” from your vocabulary. Nobody searches for those terms. Come up with content that has demonstrated value for the customers you seek.

This isn’t hard to figure out. Look at the most-down-loaded white papers on commercial aggregation sites to see what’s already delivering response. Check the most-e-mailed stories on relevant publishers’ sites for ideas. Use the Google “link:” command to filter Web content that generates lots of inbound traffic.

2) Use a variety of formats. Different people consume information in different ways. Give them a choice. If you’re posting a white paper, repurpose it as a webcast or podcast. If you’ve just written a how-to guide, produce it also as an online video. Link between all the content vehicles you choose to make it easy for customers and search engines to find you.

3) Spread that content around. Today, you have lots of opportunities for prospects to find the information you publish. These include company and employee blogs, customer communities, independent bloggers and affiliate sites. Use them all to promote your content, improve search performance and identify your most-promising lead sources.

4) Mine Web analytics for intelligence. You shouldn’t have to coax prospects to fill out long registration forms in order to learn more about them. Their online behavior can tell you plenty. Web analytics tools deliver information about referring pages, visitor paths through your site, repeat visits and more. Use this information to create a profile of each prospect you catch in your filter.

5) Create a feedback loop. All of the information you collect about prospects’ online behavior should be logged into your lead tracking/customer relationship management system. This not only helps sales reps craft a more informed pitch but also gives you a database of results for use in creating future campaigns. This last point can’t be overemphasized. Historical performance is your best indicator of future results. Look for referring URLs that deliver the most traffic to your key lead generators. Where the referrers are your pages, tune them for search performance and create a campaign to link to them internally.

For good traffic sources that are outside your control, extend the feedback loop to those site operators. Blogs and community discussion forums that perform well should get extra attention and marketing dollars. Your search marketing campaign should key on the pages that do the best job of funneling leads.

PAUL GILLIN is a consultant who specializes in community journalism and social media. His Web site is www.gillin.com.