Although the VEST is primarily intended to help people who are buying a marketing automation system, its database also provides a statistical portrait of the industry. I released the 2012 edition of our B2B Marketing Automation Vendor Selection Tool (VEST) report today, an event that deserves more hoopla that I’ve given it. The VEST provides by far the most detailed, objective information available on industry vendors. It’s also interactive: you can change the weights assigned to different items and watch the vendors zoom around the quadrant as a result. Myth busted. MORE >>

Others are still privately held but have stopped releasing precise figures for competitive reasons or to help manage expectations. I’ve just finished the latest update of our B2B Marketing Automation Vendor Selection Tool (VEST), available on the raabguide.com Web site. The VEST is our evaluation of industry vendors, aimed primarily at companies choosing a marketing automation system. The VEST contains a great deal of information that provides interesting (to me, at least) insights into industry trends. ll get to the 2013 estimate in a bit. We use two methods: Vendor revenues. MORE >>

As you might have guessed from my recent list of B2C marketing automation systems , I’ve recently been spending some time helping consumer marketers to select vendors. But the need for the database is obvious from the start and plenty of experts are available to help. This is more a return than a departure: although I’ve written mostly about B2B systems for the past few years, my earlier work was largely in consumer marketing. Like any traveler, I’ve returned home with some new perspectives. This accounts for most of the work and most of the cost. B2B systems are cheaper. MORE >>

million in tech spending by helping users share ideas on how to solve their problems more cheaply. Summary: some published examples of "hard" ROI from social media. As part of the preparation for next Tuesday’s Webinar with 1to1 Media and Neolane (register here ), I poked around for some concrete examples of ROI from social media. Here’s what I found. Socialnomics blog by Erik Qualman offers a dynamic video with 33 “salient examples and data points” about social media ROI. The company expected this to yield at least one sale which would cover the entire annual cost of the program. MORE >>

Summary: Pegasystems purchased Chordiant last week, adding a sophisticated cross-channel decision engine to its stable. It's been hard for independent decision engines to survive, even though it seems an independent product should make it easier for marketers to unify their customer treatments. Business process technology vendor Pegasystems announced on Monday that it was purchasing Chordiant , which offers a central decision engine for customer interactions. This type of simulation allows business managers, rather than technicians, to directly assess the impact of alternative business rules. MORE >>