Introduction

 

In many organizations (including my own), the website is “owned” by Marketing. There are many teams that contribute, but it’s Marketing that “drives the bus” (or, at least steers it). Marketing formulates the information architecture, defines the branding elements and imagery and works across the organization to populate content pages.

In addition to the website, marketers are responsible for demand generation, email communications, social media and more. While the fundamentals of Marketing have not changed, the solutions used by marketers sure have. Today’s modern marketers have a wealth of powerful tools at their disposal. And the cloud is how most of these tools are delivered.

Let’s consider why marketers look to cloud based services.

We’re already using the cloud.

 

Image source: Scott Brinker, Chief Marketing Technologist Blog.

In the image above, you’ll notice that almost all of these services are delivered via the cloud. Let’s look at a typical marketer’s morning: she’ll download creative assets from Dropbox, create a campaign in Salesforce, updated lead scoring rules in Marketo, then check on social media mentions in HootSuite. Notice a pattern there? It’s this: cloud, cloud, cloud and cloud.

We wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’s hard to imagine marketing tools delivered any other way. When I worked in IT, I did my share of software installations. As a marketer, I’ve installed a preferred browser (go, Firefox!), but I’ve never installed a marketing system. Why is that? Because the marketing tools I use are delivered as a service (i.e. via the cloud). This means I can sign up, obtain my credentials, receive preliminary training and get up and running within a few hours (or less). As marketers, we expect our tools to be this simple and easy.

We love the convenience.

We love the fact that cloud-based marketing tools can be accessed from anywhere. We’re not tied to an application that resides on our workstation. We can go on vacation and trigger a marketing automation campaign from the hotel’s business center. We can fire up the tool via the browser on our smartphone. In some cases, we’ll fire up a specialized mobile app. As long as we have browser and Internet, we can access our marketing tools. And more often than not, those requirements are met with the device we carry in our pocket.

We love to be self-sufficient.

We’ll bring in our Information Technology (IT) team for complex or custom installations of our marketing tools. In larger organizations, IT will need to vet or certify the Marketing team’s use of the tool. Once IT has completed their steps, however, we marketers love to be self-sufficient. And that means that upgrades and backups can be the same sort of routine maintenance as cleaning up our CRM’s lead database or updating our marketing automation system’s lead scoring rules.

DNN and The Cloud

 

Historically, DNN provided software that was installed “on premise,” which means that our customers needed to provide their own servers, infrastructure or bandwidth (or, find a vendor who provided those services). Recently, we launched Evoq™ in the Cloud, which enables customers to run their websites and social community sites via our fully managed cloud offering. No more server, infrastructure or bandwidth concerns.

Now, marketers can spin up a new website (and begin populating content) as quickly as they set up their social media monitoring dashboard. From there, they’ll receive automated backups (of the entire site) or run a new backup “on demand.”

In addition, we marketers can upgrade our DNN version via Evoq™ in the Cloud. We place the new software version on a staging server and validate it, then push it live, all from the same console we use to manage the product. Evoq™ in the Cloud also includes 24x7 support, as well as a 99.95% Service Level Agreement (SLA).

Evoq™ in the Cloud can be used to deliver our website via our Content Management System (CMS), Evoq Content™. In can also be used to deliver our social community solution, Evoq Social™.

Conclusion

Now, marketers can manage websites in a manner similar to our CRM, marketing automation and social media monitoring systems. We can make website or social community updates from wherever we are. We can manage the site and the community without involving other groups.

As a marketer, self-sufficiency has never been so good.

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