In concrete terms, it involves blogging, search engine optimization of Websites, and social media messages. This involves strengthening its “middle of the funnel” tools for more powerful email, better segmentation and content selection, and enhancing lead profiles with data from social media. Indeed, CTO Dharmesh Shah said their goal is to “leapfrog” current marketing automation vendors by replacing their focus on email marketing with a focus on social media. But all other marketing automation vendors are also adding social media capabilities. Here goes. Well, sure. MORE >>

There’s apparently a resurgence of interest of direct mail generally and post cards in particular as a way to avoid ever-more-cluttered email inboxes and social media channels. My last post looked at data from our just-released B2B Marketing Automation Vendor Selection Tool (VEST) to understand general industry trends and identify the greatest areas of improvement. Today we’ll look at the VEST data to see what’s still hard to find. See the previous post for details on the calculations. It's still much harder to find than dynamic content although it is becoming more available. MORE >>

Here are some others, in rough order of industry familiarity: Alterian – extends beyond multi-channel campaign management to include Web content management, Web analytics, and social media monitoring. The world clearly has more B2B marketing automation vendors than it needs – my master list of demand generation products includes two dozen. By contrast, mid-tier consumer marketers often have a hard time finding good options. The major B2C marketing automation vendors -- IBM/Unica , Teradata/Aprimo , and SAS are more attuned to the enterprise market. Decision Software Inc. MORE >>

Social Media. The first wave of marketing automation features for social media is now several years old. These included making it easier to share emails and Web pages, tracking shares through embedded URLs, and monitoring social media conversations. It includes more sophisticated features for working within social media platforms, such as delivering forms and personalized ads within Facebook, using social sign-on to capture more data, and building more detailed profiles based on activities, consumption, connections and influence. The second wave is just starting. MORE >>

The February release will add features to capture social media activities and encourage social book-marking. These join a respectable set of social media features already in place, including sharing buttons, share tracking, and traffic reporting. I had an earful last week from Genoo president Kim Albee, who told me that I’ve misclassified her target customers as “micro businesses” (under $5 million revenue) for the past two years. She tells me nearly all of her clients are larger than that. ve revised my big list of demand generation vendors to reflect this. per month per user. MORE >>