Pardot is tightly focused on small and mid-size clients, reflecting their disciplined sales approach. 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 includes nearly 200 data points on 21 products, thumbnail sketches of each vendor’s strengths and weaknesses, and three industry quadrants showing leaders in different market segments. So we’ll exclude them from further analysis. MORE >>

But B2C marketers don’t have to deal with marketing-sales alignment, can usually measure results directly, and are often already running the same types of campaigns they expect to run with marketing automation. 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. 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. But many B2C products leave them out. MORE >>

Marketing automation vendors have little incentive to correct the error, since mentioning integration would only slow the sales cycle. I'm using CRM as a catch-all term for sales automation, order processing, customer service, loyalty, call centers, and partner management.) You might think that Empathy Logic isn’t needed because a marketing automation system is supposed to build that integrated database. But B2B marketing automation products are largely limited to data they generate internally or import from CRM. So, yes, there’s a need for a company like Empathy Logic. MORE >>

Adding the platform and services marketplace both enable further growth with minimal investment, and (perhaps more important) make it easier to recruit allies in the sales process. Back on September 20, I posted various tips from the Inbound Marketing Summit and HubSpot User Group. Naturally, the conference also included public and private discussions of HubSpot itself, but I thought those were best shared in a separate post. Here goes. The conference yielded a clear picture of HubSpot’s business strategy for the coming year. To be clear, this isn't about building a simpler interface. MORE >>

It includes figures for B2B Sales, B2B Service, Industrial/Manufacturing, and IT. One of the things I’m enjoying about my new role as head of analytics at Left Brain DGA is being closer to hands-on marketing than I was as a consultant. This leads to different questions than I used to get, including the ever-popular “what’s a reasonable response rate for our emails?” That one came up last week and led me to review my files on industry benchmarks. Without giving away any deep secrets, I thought I’d share the results. found five relevant studies dating back to 2009. Here is the U.S. Signup.to MORE >>