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 ). So marketing automation vendors are understandably eager to support it in their systems. The features fell into four broad categories: • Basic posting and sharing: the most common features and the simplest level of social media marketing. Results are summarized in the table below. MORE >>

Today I’m a panelist at the Silverpop Client Summit and we’re talking about Social CRM, Inbound Marketing and Marketing Automation, moderated by Adam Needles. That’s a wide variety of topics, but I believe there is a clear relationship between them: Both CRM and Marketing Automation are changing because of Social Media and Inbound Marketing. Social CRM. CRM is very broad, it’s not just about sales, but about pretty much anything that involves communicating with your customers. MORE >>

by Jesse Noyes | Tweet this Today’s post is adapted from the Grande Guide to Social CRM , written by the well-known social CRM thinker, Paul Greenberg. There’s a lot of talk about social CRM these days, but precious little action. This is at least partly, if not wholly, due to a misunderstanding of what social CRM is. First, social CRM can’t be implemented within an organization simply by adding a particular tool or technology. Here are a few to help wrap your head around social CRM. Want more advice on social CRM? MORE >>

This week there was a discussion about Social Media and Marketing Automation in the LinkedIn Group of the Marketing Automation Association. asked myself: Does Marketing Automation Get Social? How can Social Media be integrated with Marketing Automation? started researching this, and I found five ways to add Social Media features to Marketing Automation: Share to Social. Many vendors make it easy to add “share to Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/etc.&# And that’s exactly where Marketing Automation can help. MORE >>

Almost 30 people showed up for the first two Marketing Automation Monday meetups in San Francisco and Palo Alto. Some companies were actively capturing more information on prospects (e.g. Another company was pulling revenue information from their billing system into the CRM system. recurring theme is that you need to really understand the prospect. Several people mentioned they were feeding product usage information to their Marketing Automation system to tailor the drip campaigns. Another company wanted to automate this. ROI Calculations. MORE >>