LinkedIn's Lead Accelerator integrates with Marketo

LinkedIn is integrating its Lead Accelerator with Marketo's Engagement Marketing platform. The companies said the partnership is designed to help marketers deliver more relevant messages and content across channels.

Looking at the big picture, the partnership is all about "multichannel lead nurturing," which refers to the ability to track lead prospects across digital, social and offline channels with relevant content.

Marketo credits the concept of lead nurturing as being key to a marketer's success, particularly in B2B. LinkedIn echoes the same sentiment, noting that it is critical for marketers to "engage the right professionals with the right content as they make their way through the purchase decision process."

To that end, key capabilities of the integration include:

• Nurturing known Marketo contacts with sequenced ads that align with a business's existing digital nurture strategies;
• Nurturing anonymous prospects based on their profile and onsite behaviors to generate leads;
• Optimizing ad creative and nurture stream design through platform-supported A/B testing;
• Measuring program impact at every stage of the buy process through built-in reporting within LinkedIn Lead Accelerator and Marketo Marketing Automation.

So far, appliance manufacturing giant GE is piloting the joint platform. LinkedIn offered a theoretical explainer on how the platform would be of use within GE's ops:

A prospect visits GE Lighting's commercial "hospitality" web page, but closes her browser and leaves for a meeting so GE doesn't realize an important prospect visited their site. Over the next two weeks, she will be nurtured with a series of messages across LinkedIn social ads, display ads, and other channels with messages relevant to her. After seeing a message leading to content that she is interested in, she fills out a form. Now her email address and other information lives within GE's Marketo system, and she will begin to receive email, display and social ads that relate to her demographics, website behavior, and engagement with GE's content -- ultimately delivering her a more personalized and relevant experience.

The San Mateo, Calif.-based company also recently linked its engagement platform with Google AdWords and Google Analytics products in an effort to make marketing campaigns more measurable.

As for the LinkedIn partnership, the news was unveiled amid Marketo's annual Marketing Nation Summit in San Francisco, where Marketo announced on the same day that it plans to streamline its digital marketing portfolio into a single platform.