December 3, 2010
By Juan Martinez, Editorial Assistant, CRM magazine

Manticore Follows Leads to Fill the Funnel

Like the mythological creature from which its company name is derived, Manticore Technology has tried to position itself — and its offerings — as multifaceted.

The manticore, according to Persian mythology, possesses a lion’s body and a human head. Manticore Technology, on the other hand, the marketing automation service provider, is a solution delivered via the software-as-a-service model that integrates with Oracle CRM On-Demand and Salesforce.com. The marketing platform also provides robust campaign metrics and a dedicated support model. Unlike the beast, which hasn’t done much since it was made famous in the fourth century BC, Manticore’s product has recently been upgraded to provide users with even more diverse capabilities.

"Marketing automation is all about implementing concrete business processes," says Jonathan Block, vice president and service director at consultancy SiriusDecisions. "To enable these processes, marketers need to find a platform that delivers the features they need today but that will also evolve with them in the future. With this latest release, Manticore has continued to find an effective balance of depth of functionality and usability for marketers."

According to a Manticore press release, Manticore Technology VII features more than 40 enhancements and features geared to managing the marketing funnel and accelerating the flow of qualified leads to sales. Among the many additions to the product are the following:

Drag-and-Drop Email & Landing Page Editors for building digital assets with minimal investment in time and effort;
Integration with Salesforce.com custom objects and opportunities for building more sophisticated lead management processes;
Advanced Lead Generation though improved Web site visitor ID capabilities; and
Enhanced Sales Alerting for more complex communication with sales for increased sales and marketing alignment.

The new capabilities provided by Manticore's release are essential to marketers, claims Aberdeen Group Senior Research Analyst Chris Houpis. According to Aberdeen research, companies that perform the best in top-line revenue growth and marketing contribution to the sales forecasted pipeline are 33 percent more likely to use automated systems for lead generation, nurturing, and sales activities.

"Solutions such as Manticore's—which provides the ability to integrate the marketing automation platform with Salesforce.com and allows marketer's to produce email and landing pages with drag-and-drop capabilities—are consistent with what our data shows these top-performers seek to address," Houpis says. "And, considering 56 percent of best-in-class marketing organizations (as defined by Aberdeen) indicated they expect to increase their email marketing spending in 2011, Manticore's new release may prove quite timely."

“We’re really shaking up the marketplace out there a bit,” says Christopher Doran, vice president of marketing at Manticore. “Marketers are always trying to balance cost with effectiveness to drive their message. With the drag and drop editors Manticore is giving them the power to get their campaigns out with minimal resources so that they can save money and increase ROI.”

The integration with Salesforce.com custom objects allows Manticore to detect custom objects added by end users within minutes. Manticore will then allow end users to begin to market to those criteria to give marketers a sophisticated segmentation and message delivery tool.

Manticore can also now detect which businesses are trolling end user Web sites to generate lists of warm leads daily. The businesses on this can be sent to inside sales teams for follow-up. The actions of these visitors, prior to landing on the end user home page, can also be traced.

“What we’re doing in the application is telling you the company name, location, and action,” Doran says, “and then through our social media integration you can look up in Facebook and Linkedin who you know within those companies so you can actually call them. Now you have a lead with a proven interest, you can find who you know at the company you so can proactively reach out and engage them in a dialogue about your offering.”

Manticore is easily integrated with Salesforce.com and Oracle CRM On-Demand, though Doran speculated that some interesting new CRM platform integrations might be available in the near future. He also hinted that Manticore will soon announce a new way to enable all marketers to administer and follow messages across multiple channels.

“People will continue to turn to us as a trusted provider,” Doran says. “We work very closely to ensure success with the application…This is about changing your business process. This isn’t just about turning on a software application and making your problems go away. Our vision is beyond just email landing pages. How can we enable all B2B marketers to track and manage their message delivery across multiple channels? We’re going to have some exciting announcements in the coming months on making that a reality.”