In this episode of the Marketing Automation Moment podcast, hosts Hannah Wehrly and Mike Maynard dive into recent developments in marketing automation. They begin by discussing HubSpot’s acquisition of Cashflow, and how this move supports HubSpot’s strategy to serve small and medium-sized businesses through their Commerce Hub. The episode also covers takeaways from Acton’s holiday webinar, emphasizing key email deliverability practices like volume control and segmentation that apply year-round.
Listen to the podcast now via the links below:
- The Marketing Automation Moment on Apple Podcasts
- The Marketing Automation Moment on Spotify
- The Marketing Automation Moment on napierb2b.com
About Napier
Napier is a PR-lead, full service marketing agency that specialises in the B2B technology sector. We work closely with our clients to build campaigns, focusing on achieving results that have a significant positive impact on their businesses and which, above all, ensure maximum return on their investment.
About Mike Maynard
Mike is the Managing Director/CEO of Napier, a PR and marketing agency for B2B technology companies. A self-confessed geek who loves talking about technology, he believes that combining the measurement, accountability and innovation that he learnt as an engineer with a passion for communicating ensures Napier delivers great campaigns and tangible return on investment.
About Hannah Wehrly
Hannah is the Head of Business Development and Marketing at Napier and leads on pitching, proposal writing, lead nurturing, email marketing, social media and content creation. Hannah joined the Napier team back in 2017 as a Marketing Specialist after completing her degree in Marketing and Communications, and her role focuses on developing new relationships with potential clients.
Time Stamps
00:00:00 – Introduction
00:01:02 – HubSpot Acquires Cashflow: Implications for SMEs
00:03:49 – SEMrush Acquires Third Door Media: A New Era for Publications
00:07:39 – Acton’s Holiday Season Webinar Insights
00:12:41 – Tips for Effective Marketing Automation Demos
00:15:33 – Conclusion and Wrap-Up
Follow Mike and Hannah:
Mike Maynard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemaynard/
Hannah Wehrly on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannah-wehrly-b0706a107/
Napier website: https://www.napierb2b.com/
Napier LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/napier-partnership-limited/
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Want more? Check out Napier’s other podcast – Marketing B2B Technology: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/marketing-b2b-technology/id1485417724
Transcript: Navigating the Marketing Automation Landscape: HubSpot’s Cashflow Acquisition and SEMrush’s Strategic Moves
Hannah: Welcome to the Market Automation Moment podcast. I’m Hannah Kelly.
Mike: And I’m Mike Maynard. This is Napier’s podcast to tell you about the latest news from the world of marketing automation.
Hannah: Welcome to the Market Automation Moment podcast. I’m Hannah Wehrly.
Mike: And I’m Mike Maynard.
Hannah: Today we discuss what HubSpot’s acquisition of Cashflow means.
Mike: We talk about SEMrush’s acquisition of Third Door Media.
Hannah: We share insights from Acton’s holiday season webinar.
Mike: And we chat about the best approach to getting a demo of a marketing automation platform.
Hannah: Hi, Mike. Welcome back to another episode of Market Automation Moment. How are you doing?
Mike: I’m doing well. How are you, Hannah?
Hannah: I am good, thank you. I mean, it’s a very busy season for us at Napier as we gear up for the trade show season. I’m sure you’re feeling the busy season as well.
Mike: Yeah, I mean, there’s certainly a lot of work, although I think as people who love marketing automation, the sooner that all that free beer at trade shows can be replaced with more marketing automation campaigns, the better, right?
Hannah: Oh, absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. Let’s dive in because we’ve got some exciting things going on in the world of market automation to discuss today. To kick us off, I want to have a discussion and I think I’m going to be right in saying that you’re going to have some strong views on this one, Mike, but it’s the news about HubSpot actually acquiring a company called Cashflow. So Cashflow is basically a subscription billing management service where basically customers can handle their quotes, proposals, and actually sign off on these invoices within one system. I think it’s a really interesting move for HubSpot to actually acquire something like this. What do you think?
Mike: Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting what people have said in the media about it, because the general view is that Commerce Hub, the bit of HubSpot where you can actually do transactions, really isn’t very successful and isn’t getting the use it wants. So I think it makes sense that they bought Cashflow as an existing system for payments processing, rather than necessarily more the quoting side, to try and build up that Commerce Hub. I can see why they did it. It certainly makes sense. But, you know, HubSpot doubling down on their small and medium customers, it’s clearly not an enterprise payment system.
Hannah: Oh, absolutely. And I think HubSpot’s message is perhaps a little bit confused. And we’ve spoken about this in the past. But to me, this is absolutely a move to we’re here to support small, medium businesses, because this type of platform, this type of software isn’t actually going to work for enterprise companies.
Mike: Yeah, I agree. I mean, they do have some enterprise customers, but I think it’s really driven by those enterprise customers wanting to use a small piece of the software. And if you look at HubSpot’s strategy, realistically HubSpot’s goal is to build themselves as being this one-stop shop for SMEs. And I think that’s the way it’s going to go. And maybe that’s what we’re seeing in the market. You know, a couple of episodes ago, we talked about Salesforce and how Salesforce marketing cloud was being integrated into Salesforce. And I think I was quite controversial in saying that that’s a real threat to Marketo. But I think that the, you know, the real large enterprise and those are the two big players. And now we’re seeing other players focus around different segments of the market.
Hannah: Oh, absolutely. I think you’re spot on Mike and I think it’s interesting because this year it feels like everyone’s basically slotting into where they want to be so they’ve tried perhaps in the past to level up against those marketos but actually, could we say that HubSpot has failed and now they’re doubling back down on that small, medium businesses?
Mike: Oh, that’s a great point, Hannah. And I don’t know if I want to say HubSpot has failed or maybe they’ve been super successful at the SME end and they’re just focusing on where they’re strong. Could be either.
Hannah: Well, let’s leave it there, Mike. And why don’t you take us on to discuss some news you shared with me about third door media?
Mike: Yeah, so this is quite interesting for me because I’m actually a contributor to the Martek website. But what’s happened is Third Door Media, the own Martek, but also own publications such as Search Engine Land, has been acquired by SEMrush. Now, quite clearly, SEMrush and SEO and also a paid search tool, you know, presumably is primarily interested in Search Engine Land. You know, that’s one of the main publications, if not the main publications their customer reads. And now, it’s controlled by one of the vendors in the sector. So I think that’s going to be interesting to see how they manage that and how they use it. And obviously on one hand, you know, you can argue that they bought it so they can get data and access to people. And on the other hand, it could be so they, you know, just want to put their hand on the scales and tilt the news in the number one publication a little bit towards themselves. So be interesting to see what happens. What do you think?
Hannah: Oh, I find this so interesting, Mike, because to me, it seems that there is this shift that this media, you know, you mentioned Search Engine Land, you know, it’s a really successful publication, but are we seeing a shift perhaps to these publications now being owned by businesses rather than actually publishing houses? I’m really intrigued because I see perhaps a future where maybe there is a bit of content that’s more biased perhaps to these types of businesses. I think there’s some great research and some great insight that they can put into this media, but I’m intrigued to see how it goes because it’s definitely a different shift that, you know, we’ve seen in the past, but it’s not the norm, if you like.
Mike: Yeah, but it could be the norm going forward. I mean, we saw in one of our sectors in the electronics industry, Arrow, which is actually a channel partner, so distributor of electronic components, buy up a very large proportion of the electronics publications around the world. Now, I have to be honest, I’ve read a number of explanations at the time and also subsequently as to what Arrow’s strategy was. And I think it’s interesting that they all vary. And I think people have tried to rewrite history to justify what happened. But we now have an interesting situation where obviously with Arrow in particular, but I think also with SEMrush, there’s a massive benefit at the start. There’s data to access. And in Arrow’s case, arguably there was the ability to pressurize companies to actually work with them because Arrow controlled the most important media in the sector. But once you’ve done that. then the value of having that publication actually drops. And okay, there’s an ongoing benefit. It’s not like it goes to zero, but it’s that big boost and then a drop. And I think, and I’m sure Arrow would argue differently, but I think what we’ve seen to some extent is Arrow losing a little bit of interest in their publication division Aspen core, and it kind of having to stand on its own two feet now. And I just wonder whether that’s going to happen with third-door media. So SEMrush is going to be really into it. They’re going to put a lot of effort. They’re going to try and make best use of the data. They’re going to look for opportunities to promote themselves. You know, presumably they’ll not be paying the same rates to advertise on the site as their competitors, just to guess. But I wonder how long that excitement’s going to last. And it’s going to be interesting to see because publications are struggling. We all know publications are struggling, in the trade media particularly. So if we look at what’s happening, Maybe ownership by a vendor is the route forward for a lot of these publications, but we’ve got to have some models where it’s worked really well over a longer consistent period.
Hannah: Well, you know, I hate to say this, Mike, but I have to say I agree with you. So I think it’s going to be really interesting to see how this new norm works. And as you said, if it will be, you know, not the savior, but the way to give these publications the boost that they need.
Mike: Yeah. And I think also we’re going to see potentially some of the smaller publishers snapped up by marketing agencies. You know, who knows, perhaps we ought to start a publication around marketing automation.
Hannah: Oh, you never know what the future holds. Let’s move on, Mike, because I want to have a bit of a chat about Apton’s webinar. Now, Apton recently ran a webinar about how to stay on the nice list this holiday season. And you know me, I cannot resist a Christmas pun. So I saw it and I was like, we absolutely got to talk about it. But I actually did think it was interesting webinar, if a little bit dramatic. So the whole premise was around, you know, as we ramp up to this holiday season, you need to watch how many emails you are sending. Internet service providers are going to stop your emails going into inboxes. You need to make sure you’re delivering value. They make some great points that you should consider all year round because it’s not just the Christmas season, that holiday season where you ramp up emails. There’s different peaks and flows, you know, throughout the year of when you send your emails and when you need to worry about deliverability. What did you think of the webinar?
Mike: Yeah, I mean, I completely agree with you. And perhaps we should talk a little bit about the webinar. But I mean, the first thing to say is, you know, Internet service providers will be on high alert. I think air forces are on high alert. Internet service providers are not going to be freaking out that much more over Christmas than at any other time. So I agree with you, you know, from a marketing point of view, you’ve got to look at it and go actually hats off to act on. It was a great way of packaging up information and a great way of selling it. Realistically though, I think actually the smartest people will have attended the webinar. We’ll actually take this as being evergreen advice rather than being advice for, you know, just the holiday season.
Hannah: Oh, absolutely, Mike. And you know, there’s some really great tips within the webinar itself. They talk about things like volume and cadence. They talk about staying relevant. They talk about using this kind of period as a time for segmentation, which I really love. So, you know, do some A-B testing, find out what works for which type of target audience. But I agree, that’s evergreen content. That is what marketers should be doing on a day-to-day basis. But I think the way they’ve packaged it up to make people pay attention, absolutely give them a round of applause.
Mike: Yeah, I think we can all learn a little bit from Acton’s marketing team. One thing I find interesting is obviously consumer marketing peaks. So we see consumer email marketing peak. What do you think that impact is on B2B? Do you think as B2B marketers, we should actually wind back because of the amount of volume of consumer marketing people are receiving? Or should we just ignore it because we’re in a different sector?
Hannah: See, my gut feeling is to ignore it because we’re in a different sector and this is actually a, not an argument we have, but a debate we have each year, Mike, because we do things like our Christmas advent calendar. We have our monthly newsletters, we send weekly emails out and every time of year we have this conversation where we go, is this too many emails that we are sending to our clients, to our prospects, the people we want to be speaking to? But I’ve not had a problem yet. We’ve not seen deliverability go down. We’ve not seen response rate go down. So I think sometimes it’s dangerous to compare B2B to B2C. You know, we’ve had this chat before, but B2B operates in its own way and I don’t think we should do that based on a reflection of B2C. And actually I found that what works in B2B is we don’t need to draw back. I’m not saying send 500 emails per day to the same prospect. But I don’t think there is that same risk.
Mike: That’s really interesting. I think a really good couple of points there. I mean, you’re absolutely right. We actually run campaigns around the holiday season. So I think the message is maybe that Christmas or whatever festival you’re celebrating at the end of the year, it’s not just for consumer marketers. It’s also for B2B marketers, which is kind of a positive message. And I think you’re right as well that A lot of people now tend to split their personal and business emails. So I’m a little bit older than you. And when I came into the workplace, you know, actually we didn’t do it because when I first started work, I didn’t have a business email. I only had a personal email and then everything went to the business email when companies started doing it. But now I think they’re split. So I completely agree with you that as a B2B marketer, you can actually make use of the holiday season and it is a reason to go forward and you’re not going to get swamped because typically it’s people’s personal email accounts that are getting swamped.
Hannah: Absolutely. And, you know, I think there is always that opportunity in B2B as well. You know, we are labelled as perhaps being a bit conservative, being a bit boring. And so when you do do that campaign, that’s just a little bit outside of the box that perhaps uses a pun, you know, that does something different. Actually, it can be really successful in B2B because they’re not seeing it all the time in their inboxes.
Mike: Absolutely. And maybe some listeners want to, you know, join in the fun and try out the Napier advent calendar as well this year.
Hannah:
Absolutely. I mean, if you want to be on the Napier Advent Calendar list, just drop me an email at Hannah at napierbtv.com and I’ll make sure you’re on it.
Mike: Lots of exciting prizes to be won, I believe as well.
Hannah: There absolutely is. Well, Mike, I’m conscious of time, so let’s move on to our insightful tip of the week. And I wanted to have a bit of discussion because in the last few podcast episodes, we’ve really talked about how platforms like Salesforce are running webinars and writing blogs about how you can migrate from Marketo to Salesforce and vice versa. But when you are looking at that multi-automation platform, that is the right fit for you. What do you need to be asking in the type of demos that you have with these vendors? Now, I want to kick us off because I have a few thoughts on this and I think it really depends on your goal. So when you’re looking at these demos, when you’re looking at the market automation platform that you perhaps want to start working with, you need to look at what is actually the right platform for you. So you should know whether you are a large enterprise or whether you are a small medium business. I wouldn’t recommend doing a demo against HubSpot versus Marketo, for example. You know, we talked about HubSpot earlier being more for those small medium. On the other side, you perhaps want to have a look at Marketo versus Salesforce. And so I think when going into these demos, it’s really important to just understand what type of platform you’re looking for and what type of capabilities, and then that will absolutely help inform what your demo is going to look like.
Mike: Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. I mean, the interesting thing is, as the market matures, I think there’s fewer full featured market automation platforms available to people. You know, if you’re enterprise, there’s a really good chance you’re going to end up with Salesforce or Pardot, as it was called. or Marketo, and that makes sense. If you’re smaller, there’s a wider range of products being sold to SMEs, but still there’s a relatively small number of strong products. We mentioned some of them today. So, you know, we’ve talked about HubSpot, we’ve talked about Sharpspring, we’ve talked about Acton, and I guess Keep or Infusionsoft, it used to be called, would be another one. But realistically, there’s not a huge amount of products to choose from, unless you want to go to something smaller niche, but generally then what you’re doing is compromising capability, and maybe saving a bit on cost.
Hannah: I think that’s some great points, Mike. And I think one of the things to look at as well is, you know, integrations. Those small and niche ones don’t integrate with other platforms that you might need to make your kind of MarTech stack the most efficient it can be.
Mike: Absolutely. I mean, maybe that’s a discussion for another episode, but I think thinking how your market automation platform fits into your whole MarTech stack is becoming more and more important, particularly as what we’re seeing is more and more of these point products that people have in the stack to do, for example, something with social media posting or perhaps something with analyzing data is getting absorbed into the capabilities of the marketing automation platform. So maybe that’s something we should talk about next time.
Hannah: Oh, absolutely, Mai. I think, you know, I just want to end, you made such a valid point there is drill down into those speeches as well. So if you want that social media capability, if that’s really important to your business, then make sure you’re having demos with platforms that can provide that for you. Don’t waste your time on these niche ones, you know, or perhaps these huge large enterprises that will do more than you would ever want them to do.
Mike: Great point, Hannah. Completely agree.
Hannah: Well, thanks so much, Mike, for another great conversation.
Mike: Thanks a lot Hannah speak to you next time.
Hannah: Thanks for listening to the marketing automation moment podcast.
Mike: Don’t forget to subscribe in your favorite podcast application, and we’ll see you next time.
