An Interview with Ryan Vong of Digital Pi

Today I interviewed Ryan Vong, CEO of newly created marketing automation agency, Digital Pi. I’ve known Ryan for a couple of years now thanks to our work with the Marketo Community. With his varied work and new partners, I am sure his firm will help any marketer succeed with their chosen platform.

How did you get started in marketing automation?

I remember sitting in the original Marketo office ready to interview with some of the folks there in the early part of 2009 nervous that I was going to mispronounce the company name.

After several rounds I just asked if I could see the product and within the first few minutes I was hooked. I used to run the interactive team at a brand agency. During that time, most of our clients were just starting out with interactive advertising and campaigns and it quickly became apparent that while we excelled in building top of the funnel campaigns most of the leads were sifted through and the rest lived in a database never to be remembered because they were no longer net new leads. In some of my presentations, I would have sales people just yell out “all these web metrics look great, but is there anyone on there I can call?” As someone who requires clarity, the tools in place at the time were just not cutting it and opening the Marketo demo somehow put all the pieces together. I’ve been hooked ever since.

Why did you decide to start your agency?

During the past year I worked with marketers at dozens of companies helping them get their marketing automation configured and running optimally. Along the way I discovered that there’s a pressing need for a new kind of digital marketing consultancy. There’s a big need out there for an agency that really understands the technology down to the weeds – and just as important knows how to help businesses articulate and translate their marketing strategy into data and applications that do what they want them to: generate revenue.

Tell me about your approach to client engagements.

We start by asking questions and listening carefully to the client. We want to understand their perspective on the situation and what they want to accomplish. The situations provide context, and they can be quite different.

For example, if a company just lost their Marketo expert, they probably are most concerned with maintaining continuity first, and then exploring how to optimize, improve, or expand their deployment.

Another example is when a company has setup their marketing automation, and time passes while the business change or grows, prompting them to take a fresh look at their deployment. Their needs are quite different.

Every customer engagement has this in common: we have to be really good at asking questions, listening, and figuring out what the problem is and how best to solve it. This approach is good for us too, in that it helps us determine if the company is a good fit for Digital Pi. Our clients are really smart, busy marketing professionals. We aim to make them heroes by helping them do great things.

What’s your favorite platform?

For me, Marketo is the platform I’ve spent the most time in so I guess you’d have to call that my favorite. Others on our team are proficient in other marketing automation platforms as well. As we grow, I expect to build a team that can handle any of the major platforms. As the tools keep getting better and consolidation continues, the platform you choose won’t matter as much as how you use it.

What’s been your favorite engagement so far?

They really are all different. What makes an engagement fun are the people you’re working with. I’ve had the good fortune of working with great people at every engagement so far. If I had to pick a favorite, it would be more for the challenge and scale it presented: the CA Technologies global roll-out. Great people with a great vision for where they want to take marketing automation on a grand scale.

How many people do you have on your team?

We are a specialized group of five dedicated experts focused today on marketing automation. We’ll continue to expand to meet the growing demand, but I want to be vigilant in bringing in the right people at every step of the way. Our success will rely on the individual consultant’s ability to deliver the goods and wow customers.

Why should people choose you?

Digital Pi is where the rubber meets the road for marketing automation.

We roll up our sleeves and do the hard work of making marketing automation do what you want it to do. We are very, very good at what we do. We’re in the trenches alongside our clients analyzing their needs, forming a vision, and executing the vision in the form of marketing automation. We are marketers who have worked at startups, enterprises and everything in between. The Digital Pi team knows what it means to be a marketer in the real world where there’s never enough time, pressures come from all sides, and everyone has different idea for what marketing should be doing. Getting marketing automation right in a lab is one thing, doing it in the real world where marketing lives in a business is an entirely different animal. Our knowledge of the context of marketing makes us really good at focusing on the right problems and solving them efficiently. Oh, and one more thing. We’re fun to work with 🙂

Which areas do you specialize in?

Making marketing automation do what you want it to do is number one. Marketo is our primary platform today, and we support SilverPop and Pardot with more platforms coming as we ramp up. We view marketing automation platforms as a natural point for integration with other business processes whether it’s your CRM, a data warehouse, e-commerce or your own SaaS. More and more, we see marketing automation becoming an aggregator of distributed behavioral data and the mechanism to act on that data in real time. That’s a really complicated way of saying automate every behavior you can get your hands on. Think of the possibilities for triggering beyond fills out a form, or clicked on a link. The possibilities are endless.

Do you have a Package or Pricing Summary?

[I’m summarizing them here – Josh]

Digital Pi offers several marketing automation consulting and implementation services such as:

• Marketing Automation Check-up
• Marketing Automation Implementation
• Training
• Operations Management – outsourced ops
• Consulting

What kinds of firms would find you the most helpful?

Companies of any size considering marketing automation, or already deployed that need to optimize or re-visit how they’re using it today. We’ve served startups with less than a dozen employees, mid-sized companies and global software enterprises.

What do you do for fun?

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I geek out on marketing technology and seeing what I can make it do. But if I’m not doing that, I’m hanging with my family

What’s the best way for marketers to get in touch?

Email us at info [at ] digital-pi.net or visit our site.

I had a chance to catch up with marketing automation guru Sam Boush, President of LeadLizard.com. He has built his team from scratch, creating an impressive capability across several platforms. As an enterprise marketing automation consigliere, LeadLizard is well positioned to help firms make the most of their systems to deliver revenue.

Tell me about your approach to client engagements.

When we engage with a client, we first make sure we’re a fit for each other. There are a lot of things we look for in a client in the same way they look for specific things in us. We target enterprise accounts – with revenue in the hundreds of millions of dollars or more – because they have the internal resources to work well with us, and often have a really good understanding of the space already, which makes it easier for us to deliver high-quality demand generation solutions.

We also want our clients to have Eloqua, Salesforce.com, Marketo, Pardot, or Act-On. What we offer is a best-practices approach to using these tools, not just so our clients can get more out of their marketing automation or CRM platform, but also so they can get more out of their entire demand generation efforts. We specialize in these tools, which makes us unique.

What’s your favorite platform?

Well, any of the ones I just mentioned are great. It comes down to finding the right platform for the individual organization. Cost isn’t the only factor. If you’re a billion dollar organization – and we work with several – it’s usually Eloqua, though sometimes Marketo or Pardot. But that’s not to say one is the only choice for enterprise organizations. It comes down to their demand generation efforts, the other tools they’re integrating, the internal resources they can bring to bear, and a whole host of other factors.

What’s been your favorite engagement so far?

We’ve had so many extremely successful engagements. I love the advanced forms we’ve done for Box. Tibco really uses us heavily for their Tibbr team. Our work with Avid recently was nominated for an Eloqua Markie.

Our clients really love working with us and I know our team really enjoys our clients. We have maybe twenty active accounts right now – more I think. And there’s really not a single one that isn’t great in its own way.

I guess I’m really happy with WisdomTree, because they’re in the financial services space, which is a space we’re moving into rapidly. Most of our clients are in technology (software, hardware, IT, etc.) so having worked with WisdomTree for about a year – and really doing great things for them – has opened us up to doing a lot more work in finance.

How many people do you have on your team?

We’re up to 12, but hiring all the time. In fact, we’ve been interviewing for an Account Manager position this week, and as soon as that’s filled, we’ll interview for another open Demand Generation Architect position.

Which areas do you specialize in?

If it touches on a marketing automation or CRM platform, we probably do it. Just some of what we do: lead nurturing, lead scoring, advanced systems work, integrations, reporting, systems audits, system migrations, sales enablement, revenue performance management and managed services for Eloqua, Marketo, Pardot and Salesforce. We really do a lot – that’s certainly not a complete list. But really, we help marketing teams accomplish their goals using the demand generation tools they have.

What’s the best way for marketers to get in touch?

Send an email to info[at] leadlizard.com and I, or someone on my team, will get back to you right away.

Disclosure: I have an affiliate agreement with LeadLizard, but that has nothing to do with the links on this page 🙂

Thanks to everyone who sent in more ideas for marketing automation tools to review. Since that was a popular post, I thought I’d check out a few of the other services people suggested.

Infusionsoft

This tool came up several times in email questions. I’ve never used it, so I can’t say much about it’s real usefulness. First, I can’t watch a demo without filling out a form. That bothers me a lot – I should be able to view a basic demo without giving up my contact information. Next, let’s look at the feature set. Infusionsoft is a “complete” tool in that the Plus and Premier packages offer a basic CRM. There appears to be no SFDC integration, so if that’s an issue for you, this is not your solution. The service does offer email marketing, automation, lead scoring, and tracking. The higher value packages even offer shopping cart tools, which are not available on the major B2B solutions.

From the video demos, Infusionsoft seems to combine the oddness of Act-On and the Visio-like workflow tool of Eloqua. This could work well for people who like the complete visualization. Infusionsoft also appears to have an active user community and extensive library of pre-built workflows. Support options also include chat, phone, email, workshops, and in-person help. So Infusionsoft is a bit closer to the mainstream automation solutions.

As for pricing and value, this could be a good fit for a small business with 2-10 staff and  under 100,000 contacts. The sticking point for me is that there is a contact and an email limit for each pricing tier. The last thing I want to think about is how many emails do I have left this month, especially if I’m approaching 4-10 emails per month at 80,000 contacts. As one user put it, “Good for first year…Bad for scale.” This solution is best for a small business that is doing local outreach.

GreenRope:

I hadn’t heard of GreenRope until the other day. Clearly Marketo and Eloqua have made the Marketing Automation solutions market hot and many firms think they have a solution for each segment of the market. GreenRope definitely fits the Small Biz segment with even better plans than Infusionsoft.

I’m always impressed by new features that some firms make difficult. GreenRope includes SMS and an event calendar system with payment tools. Many other firms force you to do this yourself or to integrate Eventbrite or third-party tools. Of course, many enterprise firms would find this tool limiting, but small businesses will find it an easy tool.

Like Infusionsoft, GreenRope includes a basic CRM and the usual email marketing and customer support cases. GreenRope does appear to offer some level of workflow templates through their modules and does include email and page templates. Neat options include integrated P&L and company support forums. GreenRope’s support includes chat, email, and phone except for the most basic plan.

GreenRope’s pricing plan tiers take the full range of the small business, up to 50,000 contacts (with an option to increase at 1/2 a cent). For 12 months, the full plan costs $4788/yr vs Infusionsoft’s $4588, however in year 1, Infusionsoft asks for $1999 one time setup fee. The kicker is that GreenRope has unlimited email for each pricing tier. GreenRope will have a lower total cost of ownership than Infusionsoft.

GreenRope knows they are up against Infusionsoft and wrote a comparison which sounds like the salesperson’s objection handling sheet. Ombud also has a review, albeit incomplete. Since there is an easy Free Trial option, I’d probably test GreenRope out before hitting up Infusionsoft. [Updated free trial link at Greenrope’s request – 11/12/14]

Office Autopilot

Office Autopilot is another tool I hadn’t heard of before. Given their emphasis on direct mail tools and ecommerce, I’d say they grew out of an old direct mail house.

The feature set in Office Autopilot is similar to GreenRope. They offer payment processing and an event management tool, rather than open workflow rules. Of course, you can do your own workflow rules if you want. WordPress integration and direct mail postcards are tied into the system as well, which is perfect for many small business that primarily sell from their blog. If I weren’t such a fan of Genesis Theme or custom solutions, I’d test this out.

The support options for OA are limited to email, phone, and chat during certain hours. As for the interface, the videos were less clear than the other services.

Pricing is where Office Autopilot seems to fall short against GreenRope. They offer two tiers: Pro and Team. With a max of 100,000 contacts and 100,000 emails/mo, Office Autopilot will cost you $7164/yr. If you need more emails, it’s $99/mo. This makes Office Autopilot a poorly scalable solution if GreenRope is an option for you, so I could only recommend it to pro-bloggers who are still well under 100,000 contacts and who also need integrated direct mail and WordPress.

Bottom Line for Small Business Marketing Automation

If you are a very small business, I would suggest trying GreenRope. Their packages are straightforward and they offer full support, which is not available with Office Autopilot or even Mailchimp. I can’t recommend Infusionsoft or Office Autopilot because of their pricing and support tiers; I also see their interfaces lack something. GreenRope also doesn’t pull back features for their packages. If you need Salesforce intergration and automation and if your budget permits, Pardot is good alternative to HubSpot and Marketo Spark/Standard because the feature set is similar and the pricing is usually 50% less.

Image: Tax Credit