Just got done reading Jessica Groopman’s excellent survey of Marketing Automation  (MA) buyers by Focus ( download here ).  After 10 years as an automation user and vendor, I’m both encouraged and depressed by the results.  The most striking improvement the survey shows is that 69% of respondents said that MA had met or exceeded their expectations. MORE >>

Salesforce.com by itself is already a pretty good CRM system, but it gets even better with almost 1,000 applications that are available through the AppExchange. With that many applications, it also gets more challenging to find the best applications. Therefore I’ve made a list of the 10 best marketing apps for salesforce.com. DupeBlocker. MORE >>

While  CRM systems are not built for marketers , Marketing Automation systems are and you can use the same contacts. But it’s not just a one-time import of your contacts. The two systems should stay in sync at all times, so that updates from the CRM system flow into the Marketing Automation system and vice versa. Field Mapping. Deduplication. MORE >>

Last week I gave my 5 tips for bootstrapping sales and marketing for small businesses. Now here are my top tools to execute on those tips. Tip #1:  Get your first customers “manually&#. You likely won’t need a full-blown (i.e. “expensive&# ) customer relationship management (CRM) system to get started. As for media preference (i.e. MORE >>

Recently, I gave an  introduction to Demand Generation Metrics an article that described a general approach to compiling demand generation metrics. Now, I will present the top 10 metrics for marketers who are responsible for lead generation and lead nurturing. Demand Generation Metrics. Marketing’s Sales Value. Raw Leads. Appointments. MORE >>