As the CMO of GE, Beth Comstock works with a lot of engineers and scientists responsible for the company’s jet engines and medical devices. The marketing department strives to be just as pioneering as the rest of the company, she told the audience at the 2014 Marketing Nation Summit.

“My take is that our marketing should be as innovative as our R&D,” Comstock said.

Marketers should spend most of their energy on practical advancements, she said. “Marketers need to understand where the world is going and focus on practical innovation. An idea doesn’t count if you can’t use it.”

Marketo handed out its annual Revvie Awards to highlight user achievements, including a 100% increase in web site conversions and $23 million in marketing-sourced revenue.

“I am inspired by our customers’ innovative use of technology to build marketing programs that create personal relationships,” said Phil Fernandez, president and chief executive officer of Marketo.  “The transformation of marketing is just starting and this year’s Revvie winners are great examples of that transformation.”

Marketo unveiled new features, including real-time personalization, calendaring and planning and search engine optimization, at the 2014 Marketing Nation Summit this week.

“The foundation of our customer engagement platform relies on these five things: Understand the customer, orchestrate the engagement, personalize the engagement, manage and optimize,” said Phil Fernandez, President and CEO of Marketo, during the keynote address. "The idea of one-to-one marketing has been around so long that it has become synonymous with the unachievable — the holy grail of marketing, with our customer engagement platform and our continued innovation, it is not only possible, but it is here. And, marketers need it more than ever today as they compete for customers' time and attention."

After several weeks of reports that a deal was in the works, IBM Corp. announced that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Silverpop. The terms of the acquisition, which is expected to close in Q2, have not been disclosed, but multiple sources peg the deal at roughly $270 million.

With the real-time personalization and marketing automation technology of Silverpop, the acquisition is expected to help IBM offer a more complete customer engagement solution that incorporates personalization capabilities. However, industry observers noted that it remains to be seen how some of Silverpop’s more advanced features, including its Universal Behaviors data-integration and behavioral marketing platform, will be integrated.

Mintigo, a customer data platform provider, announced that it has integrated with LinkedIn Ads. The integration allows B2B marketers to leverage LinkedIn in order to target specific individuals at high-valued prospective companies.

Mintigo gathers data from the web, marketing automation platforms and CRMs — like Marketo, Eloqua and Salesforce — which allows users to create a detailed customer profile to score prospects.

Social selling is the new way to work for many sales people. As they tap into social networks to interact with potential and current clients and extend their personal brand, B2B marketers are beginning to navigate this new selling approach and determine the best strategy to support the efforts.

“Is is really an opportunity for marketing to empower and enable the sales force to leverage content as their currency,” said Jill Rowley. Rowley recently started her own social selling consultancy, #SocialSelling, after heading up Oracle’s social selling initiative. “What social selling is doing is creating an army of mini marketers where everyone in the company is sharing and creating content.”

Bizo, a business audience marketing solutions provider, has expanded its Multi-Channel Nurturing solution to integrate with any marketing automation platform. The solution, which enables B2B marketers to nurture audiences through targeted display and social advertising, was introduced in October 2013 specifically for mutual Bizo and Oracle Eloqua users.

Multi-Channel Nurturing allows users to engage anonymous and known visitors with relevant ads across participating web sites, ad exchanges and Facebook. Users can also create multiple nurture paths that sequence targeted ad creative and content based on the business demographic profile and onsite behavior of web visitors.

LiveHive has launched Insights 2.0, a sales acceleration solution designed to provide sales professionals with detailed, real-time information on prospect engagement.

The update to LiveHive’s analytics platform is designed to provide inside sales professionals with the tools necessary to find warm leads and ultimately close deals faster. With the new release comes three new features: