Steve Woods and Paul Teshima, two of the co-founders of Eloqua, announced the launch of Nudge Software, a new company that will specialize in social selling tools.
The product — coming soon according to Wood’s Twitter account — will help sales professionals build high-quality relationships through small "nudges" on social media.
While buyer personas are unique to each company, they all focus on the role each buyer has in making purchasing decisions. And as the role of the B2B buyer broadens, buyer personas are become more detailed and complex. The proliferation of mobile access and evolving content consumption patterns are also driving changes in persona development.
Today’s B2B buyer personas extend beyond attributes such as job title, industry and company size, and can be tailored to an individual buyer all the way up to a large enterprise. Modern buyer personas are designed to discover how, when and why buyers come to their decisions. Grouping buyers based on beliefs, priorities, goals, preferred channels and previous purchases allows marketers to gain a more accurate read on how they can help solve a certain problem.
Net-Results, a Colorado-based marketing automation platform provider, has integrated its platform with Sugar 7, the latest version of SugarCRM.
The Net-Results SugarCRM Integration enables salespeople to view all of their contacts and leads in a single platform. It addition, it provides in-depth information on each lead’s activity history based of their interactions with a company web site, landing page, webinar and email campaigns.
By David M. Raab, Principal, Raab Associates
There have been two recent acquisition announcements in the B2B marketing automation space: LoopFuse by Salesfusion and LeadRocket/Genius by CallidusCloud, which owns LeadFormix. Both of the acquired vendors had bright prospects at one time but fell by the wayside. Interestingly, both pursued a “freemium” strategy of offering their system for free to users with small databases.
AdvocateHub from Influitive is focused on automating advocate and reference programs for B2B technology companies.
Act-On Software opened a new office in Reading, Berkshire, UK, to accommodate growth in the Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. The office, along with a small London office opened last year, will provide further support to customers and partners in the UK.
The Reading office was needed to service the company’s growing EMEA customer base, which more than doubled between 2012 and 2013. Over the next year, the company plans to hire local sales and support employees to aid customers and partners in the region with their online marketing and CRM needs.
TrackMaven, a provider of marketing analytics technology, recently raised $6.5 million in Series A funding. The capital will be used to expand the company’s product, sales and marketing teams and staff its new Washington, D.C. office, according to TrackMaven Founder and CEO Allen Gannett.
The new round was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and included existing investors Bowery Capital and Acceleprise Ventures.
Marketing automation platform provider eTrigue announced its expansion into the European market, naming Jeff Barnes and David Godden as co-directors of eTrigue Europe Limited. The subsidiary, based in London, will feature the vendor’s DemandCenter marketing automation system as its primary offering.
eTrigueDemandCenter is being launched with a Fast-Start Customer Program, offered as a complimentary service in the UK. The service is designed to provide customers with implementation and configuration consulting to ensure that new installations go smoothly.
CallidusCloud acquired LeadRocket, Inc., a social engagement and digital marketing platform provider. The acquisition will equip sales professionals with social media tools and enable access to marketing data from any device, according to officials for both companies.
"The new LeadRocket technology is unique in the way it delivers marketing capabilities to sales professionals," said Rory Cameron, SVP, Learning and Marketing Platforms, CallidusCloud. "With this acquisition, we are putting marketing automation in the pocket of every sales professional. Using LeadRocket, sales will be able to listen to and engage prospects on social media as well as initiate campaigns, all on a mobile device, anywhere, anytime."
Bizo reported $12.4 million in revenue in Q4, a record-setting quarter for the company. The B2B marketing automation vendor also posted $38.3 million in bookings in 2013, nearly a 75% increase over the previous year.
The launch of new subscription-based products such as Bizo for Marketing Automation drove much of Bizo’s success throughout 2013. The company also added 365 new customers, including Hyatt Hotels, DropBox and HootSuite.
