If you’re wondering how many companies actually commit those sins, the sad answer is: a lot. I presented my Seven Deadly Sins of Marketing Automation Software Selection during last week’s Webinar with Neolane. To replay the Webinar, click here.) Here are some statistics. About half of buyers consider only one system , I’m told by various vendors. Some may have known exactly what they needed in advance, but the great majority are just buying the first system that seems to do what they need. And it’s a safe bet they haven’t done a very detailed requirements analysis either. MORE >>

Since then, the number of independent B2C marketing automation vendors has actually dwindled** as major and not-so-major products were purchased by larger companies to bundle into integrated suites or just use internally. Selligent isn''t brand new – the company was founded in 2000 and its marketing automation system dates back about six years – but the company says it was built from the ground up to manage real time interactions. Still, I’m excited as an entomologist with a new beetle to see another vendor in the space. deep dive left me seriously impressed. market. MORE >>

Social media monitoring: watching social media for mentions of the company or other topics and responding when appropriate. Social media is arguably overhyped as a marketing trend: it gets well under 10% of marketing budgets (different surveys have figures from 3% to 8%) and results are questionable (it was rated the least effective content marketing tactic in a recent MarketingProfs study ). But social is clearly growing fast and has great potential. So marketing automation vendors are understandably eager to support it in their systems. Results are summarized in the table below. MORE >>

Micro” vendors sell largely to businesses under $5 million in revenue; “core” vendors sell to B2B companies with $5 to $500 million in revenue, and “enterprise” vendors sell mostly to companies over $500 million revenue. As you might expect, products for larger companies have more features available. feature important to a large enterprise can make a system less suitable for a small company where the feature won’t be used but still adds cost and complexity. But that’s more important to industry insiders than the marketers who actually use these systems. MORE >>

It applies game-based motivational methods to company advocates. The company plans additional API connections with Jive, ZenDesk , and other systems. He describes Influitive in a larger context of “social nurturing” by peers of a company’s prospects and “convergence of demand generation with customer marketing” since customers now provide the bulk of public information about a company. Marketers recognize the potential reach of social media, but are rightly frightened that they can’t control the message. See my December 8 post for details.) MORE >>