Jeff Erramouspe, President of Manticore Technology  , and was recently quoted in a DemandGen Report article on the trends around the average selling price of marketing automation solutions and the possible impact for the future of the market.  A lot of this was driven by the Spark by Marketo announcement, and in order to continue to win business, we are required to respond to it.  Fortunately, we target customers who are between $20M - $150M in revenue.  Marketo, Act-On, and Pardot are all pretty aggressive on the pricing in the small business segment.  MORE >>

Act-On Software recently reported that 40% of marketers are dissatisfied with their campaign management program. It's applied by Marketo , Pardot , Act-On Software , Genius , Net-Results , and many others. But it seems to be creeping upstream: LeadLife , Treehouse Interactive , and Manticore Technology apply it to larger customers. It’s also likely that a dominant approach will emerge within each customer segment. The marketing automation industry continues to grow quickly, with many vendors announcing their client bases have more than doubled in 2011. MORE >>

But Eloqua , Silverpop and Marketo remain industry leaders. Note: after I posted this, it was pointed out to me that the bulk of traffic on several sites relates to customer log-ins rather than marketing prospects. don't know whether this particular nuance makes the Alexa rankings a less useful indicator of market presence, but it probably means the figures relate more to existing customers than prospects. The leaders among demand generation systems are still Eloqua , Silverpop and Marketo. Pardot and (perhaps) Genius.com look particularly strong. How about it guys? MORE >>

Lauren Carlson , of Software Advice , is one of the rising stars in the constellation of CRM, marketing automation and, now, Revenue Performance Management industries. found out about Software Advice through a friend and somehow convinced them to hire me. Software Advice works in multiple segments of enterprise software, but we have never seen such a large group of prolific, commercially generous thought leaders as we have in this industry. Customers exist in the social space. Now, they just need the right kind of software to help optimize their efforts. MORE >>

But at the end of the day, we all must stay focused on the fact that we do those things in order to not only generate leads but eventually convert leads to customers. Here are 5 steps for building a lead nurturing system that will help convert your list to qualified sales opportunities and customers. It might be helpful to think of a recent sale and which identifiable steps the customer took along the way. For example, the funnel for a software company might be: Download a free report. Software purchase. Lost customer. Inactive customer. MORE >>