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Company: Bulldog Solutions, Inc., Austin, TX
Company Description: Bulldog Solutions is an online marketing agency that changes the way BtoB companies define demand generation strategy, engage prospects and convert leads to customers. We power demand generation and demand management programs for many of the best business brands in the world.
Nomination Category: New Product & Service Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Marketing Solution – New

Nomination Title: Third-Party Data Integration Enables Faster, More Effective Lead Follow-up

    Tell the story about this nominated product or service (up to 500 words). Describe its function, features, benefits, and sales to date. You may include hyperlinks to product photos and data sheets. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:

Business-to-business Sales and Marketing organizations often look to third-
party channels such as publishers and trade organizations to reach their
targeted audience. Through these relationships, they’re able to target
specific prospect profiles, take advantage of validation conveyed by the
publisher, trade group or partner, and drive higher conversion rates from
inquiry to opportunity to closed deal.

But the benefits of these relationships decrease when too much work is
required to standardize mismatched data coming from multiple third-party
sources. This data frequently arrives in sporadic Excel spreadsheets and
doesn’t match data from other sources. The process of standardizing the data
manually takes time and can introduce errors. For the Sales team, already
pressed for time, the nonstandardized data is not helpful for prospect
hunting, because it can’t be lead scored consistently with other activities
and there is a lag between the time the data is received and the time it’s
made available in a CRM system.

Function: In early 2010, Bulldog Solutions began offering a proprietary media
integration technology to address this issue. This Third-Party Data
Integration service meets the challenges of buying or sharing leads from
multiple third parties and quickly standardizing all of the data so it can be
acted upon quickly by both Marketing and Sales. It automates the data upload
to vastly reduce the time commitment and potential for errors associated with
standardizing data manually.
Features: Standardizes lead formats from multiple external sources—
publications, trade shows
•     Real-time integration with data from publishers; automated file
uploading from FTP sites for more efficient planning and reduced manual
commitment
•     Definition of standard set of registration questions, mapping to lead
scoring requirements when applicable to speed follow up by Marketing and Sales
•     Mapping occurs just once; previous mappings reused (adjusted if needed)
•     Testing of data mapping prior to launch
Benefits: As a result, Sales and Marketing see the following benefits:
•     Increase ROI from third-party promotional activity by improving the
speed and efficacy of promotions to drive higher conversions
•     Improve timeliness of activity driven by third-party promotions
(follow-up, routing, lead nurturing) from weeks to hours
•     Enhance ability to lead score accurately and quickly see benefits of
lead scoring
•     Reduce delays and errors caused by manual, repeated, complex data
mapping and normalization from multiple sources
•     Automate and streamline previously time-consuming manual processes via
scheduled file uploading from FTP sites

This service is not a stand-alone product, but rather a part of the Bulldog
Solutions Demand Integration Center™ on which the company’s integrated
solutions are based.
Results: Third-Party Data Integration has been used by Bulldog’s own marketing
department to create more efficient demand-generation programs. As an example,
Bulldog was able to begin leveraging a $10,000 list purchase through a partner
within a day using Third-Party Data Integration. Without it, the mapping
required of that program would have taken more than a week. The technology is
part of every demand-generation program that includes significant third-party
data, including those created for Motorola, NetIQ, VeriSign, Intel Health and
Isilon. 

    List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, product reviews, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:

This service is not a stand-alone product, but rather a part of the Bulldog
Solutions Demand Integration Center™ on which the company’s integrated
solutions are based.
The issue of nonstandardized data driving demand generation programs is
highlighted in the following articles:
The Contact Washing Machine
http://digitalbodylanguage.blogspot.com/2008/12/contact-washing-machine.html

What’s in a Name: Job Titles and Normalizing Data
http://eloqua.blogspot.com/2008/12/whats-in-name-job-titles-and.html

    Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the team that developed this nominated product or service:

Bulldog Solutions VP of Technology Chris Parisi serves as the company’s most
senior IT executive, with over 10 years in various IT roles spanning software
architecture, development, integration and management. Chris oversees the
traditional IT/MIS functions, product development initiatives, custom
marketing solutions and marketing automation implementations. He has extensive
experience in CRM and marketing automation systems.