Summary: HubSpot announced a $32 million investment yesterday by Sequoia Partners, Google and Salesforce.com. This could be a real game-changer in the small business marketing automation landscape. Salesforce.com and Google announced their long-anticipated entry into the marketing automation industry, in the baby-step form of investments in HubSpot. Even the most ambitious vision articulated by the vendors – radically more integrated, analytically-driven marketing management – won’t really change their sector of the marketing automation industry. MORE >>

After my in-depth article on integration between CRM and Marketing Automation , I’d like to write about something a little lighter: Social Media. Social, CRM & Marketing Automation. This is a broad definition of CRM, which applies to Sales Force Automation (SFA), customer support and other applications that impact the customer relationship. Slowly but steadily the various vendors are offering social features: Salesforce.com is piloting Chatter , a Facebook-like collaboration tool, and lists several  Social Media partners in the AppExchange. Social CRM. MORE >>

It combines this with standard B2B marketing automation features to provide better-qualified leads to sales people. The B2B marketing automation industry has reached the stage where product features are similar and companies compete primarily on business and marketing savvy. The company’s product touches the standard marketing automation bases: outbound email, landing pages and forms, lead nurturing, scoring and integration with Salesforce.com. Tags: behavior identification web analytics demand generation marketing automation lead management MORE >>

Summary: Vendors who target small businesses include provide functions beyond traditional marketing automation. But larger firms need to be efficient too: so expect all marketing automation systems to eventually expand in similar ways. couple have noted that my questions only cover standard marketing automation functions (email, landing pages, nurture campaigns, lead scoring, CRM integration and reporting), while their products offer additional functions. But the case may be different for marketing automation vendors. MORE >>

7 Must-Follow Marketing Automation Blogs September 13th, 2010 by Roy Russo For the benefit of our readers, we have assembled a list of our most-read blogs that provide marketing automation best practice advice, tips, tricks, and industry news. Follow LeadSloth on Twitter for the most up-to-date events announced in the marketing automation space: @leadsloth Customer Experience Matrix : Managed by David Raab, this blog’s focus is mostly centered around industry news within marketing automation and complementary spaces like web analytics, email marketing, and SEO. MORE >>