Another company was saving those replies straight into Salesforce.com. Some used customizations of Salesforce.com, others add-on products from their Marketing Automation vendors, one company was using a Business Intelligence tool, and yet others developed a custom solution. Almost 30 people showed up for the first two Marketing Automation Monday meetups in San Francisco and Palo Alto. The topics for these meetings was drip campaigns and lead nurturing. Lots of good ideas and best practices were exchanged, and I wanted to give you a quick summary in this blog post. MORE >>

Around the same time I got an email announcing Marketo’s Chatter for Sales Insight , integrating sales notifications in the Facebook-like interface of Salesforce.com Chatter. This week there was a discussion about Social Media and Marketing Automation in the LinkedIn Group of the Marketing Automation Association. Then I remembered that Pardot also recently announced new social features, called Pardot Social Insight. asked myself: Does Marketing Automation Get Social? How can Social Media be integrated with Marketing Automation? How useful is this? Social Media ROI. Collaboration. MORE >>

This morning we saw a demo of Salesforce.com Chatter , a collaboration tools integrated with Salesforce.com. Think Facebook built into Salesforce.com: it looks just like the Facebook timeline, but it is built around your sales processes. Salesforce.com Chatter Screenshot. chatter lead tracking sales and marketing alignment salesforce.com.Today I’m at the Sales 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. write about Marketing Automation, so why am I at a sales conference? I’m here because I believe Sales & Marketing should be on the same team. MORE >>

years ago Salesforce.com was tiny compared to Siebel. There has been quite a bit of change in B2B marketing over the past couple of years. Buyers have moved online, which has had a major impact on the buying process. Prospects now have instant access to much more information, so marketing’s involvement reaches much further down the sales cycle: they need to nurture prospects with relevant content until they are sales-ready. Sales people are still very important, but they can focus on facilitating the buying process rather than distributing information. Enter Silverpop. MORE >>

Sales Force Automation software (primarily Salesforce.com). Even though some vendors have been around for almost 10 years, Marketing Automation is still relatively new. According to Forrester, only  2-5% of B2B firms have invested in full-featured Marketing Automation. But that percentage is rapidly growing. Increasingly, B2B companies realize that Marketing Automation software requires skilled operators. But – if you decide to hire a Marketing Automation manager – what should you look for, and where do you find them? But that’s for web analysts. Email Marketing. MORE >>