Share this on Facebook. Having been in the business of Marketing Automation for the past five years or so, I’ve witnessed a rapid growth in adoption. It’s clear that we are beginning to emerge from a state of early adopters to general market interest and need. Last week I had the opportunity to co-host a webinar with Jen Doyle , who’s the analyst responsible for the research and development of the 2011 MarketingSherpa B2B Marketing Benchmark Report. Cutting to the point, these practices are: 1.    Know your marketing mix. 2.    Close the loop with sound marketing analytics. Tweet This! MORE >>

Share this on Facebook. If you want to make your life easier, yes. There are a number of reasons a content strategy is critical, but I’ll start with the simple fact that businesses are now being expected by their consumers to engage through content. Content Touches Everything. Magazines have always been good at creating content, re-purposing content, and planning ahead, but for B2B marketers this hasn’t always been the case. Kristina Halvorson in her book “ Content Strategy for the Web says “ Content strategy will help you deliver content that inspires trust. Drives action. MORE >>

Share this on Facebook. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to co-present on a webinar with Amanda Batista, from DemandGen Report and Chris Parisi, from Bulldog Solutions, on the State of Marketing Automation in 2011. This was based on a report that Amanda had recently compiled for DemandGen Report. This event was great for me, because it forced me to reflect back on where the industry was just a few years ago and how aggressively it’s matured. In the past two years, adoption has increased by 4x among B2B companies. This is where the consumer wins. 4)    Data is the lynchpin to success. MORE >>

Share this on Facebook. Wrapping up my series on email marketing I wanted to leave you with my list of individuals who are defining the space with leading edge thinking and practices. While not exhaustive, here are five folks that I look to as leaders: Mark Brownlow ( @MarkatEMR ). Mark Brownlow publishes the Email Marketing Reports , a great collection of email marketing best practices. On his site you’ll find an intro to email marketing, an email marketing blog, and many articles ranging from mobile email marketing to email deliverability. Simms Jenkins ( @SimmsJenkins ). MORE >>

Share this on Facebook. With all the social hype it seems appropriate to put a twist on the old Mark Twain quote “The news of email’s death have been greatly exaggerated.&#. At a recent Gartner briefing Nikos Drakos gave a presentation on social software for the enterprise. The leading social software he was cited was email. If underscoring was needed, MarketingProfs in its February 2010 piece echos Nikos point in its headline “Email is Integral to Social Communications”. The question Jeff addresses in his whitepaper is if email is alive (and growing with 1.9 Take a look. MORE >>