But the lowest price for Genoo with CRM integration is $599 per month, and I consider CRM integration a required feature in a B2B marketing automation product. This approach extends beyond most marketing automation products to incorporate full Web content management and marketing services. It has three product levels and gives users within each level the choice to pay either for emails (with unlimited leads in the database) or by database size (with unlimited emails). She tells me nearly all of her clients are larger than that. per month per user. MORE >>

Summary: HubSpot has continued to grow its customer base and expand its product. It is now working on more robust outbound email, support for mobile Web pages, and APIs foroutside developers to create add-on applications. Of course, this competition was always implicit – few small businesses would have purchased HubSpot plus one of those products. The company has also set up new programs to help recruit and train marketing experts who can resell the product and/or use it to support their own clients. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they changed their minds. MORE >>

As software and Internet companies boost revenues with cloud marketing , they’re effectively triggering a land rush of new and innovative applications that would not have been economically viable any other way. Entirely new companies are springing up to grab their share of entirely new markets by building their core products on top of cloud marketers’ platforms. The advantages of building a product on top of another company’s cloud marketing platform can be quite compelling. Simon Stanlake. CTO, HootSuite. In the end, it’s the user who comes out on top.”. Ryan Holmes. MORE >>

Look for APIs to coordinate with other systems and a database that supports custom objects. vendor needs resources to enhance its product and adapt to unexpected developments. software evaluation marketing automation vendor selectionMarketers can do a better job of picking their marketing automation vendors if they roll up their sleeves and work at it. wrote yesterday about building a requirements document to define the features you'll look for. But you also need a vendor who will support your long-term success. Here are some ways to identify a “future-safe” vendor. MORE >>

New-ish marketing automation vendor NurtureHQ showed me its product recently. Definitely take a look if you’re in that market for that sort of product. But there’s my problem: “that sort of product” is widely available already. But is it so much easier than the other products I just listed? This led NurtureHQ to believe that an even easier system could find a broader market than current products. What they found “too hard” wasn’t the software, but the planning and content creation needed for serious marketing automation. That’s not a software problem. MORE >>