B2B marketers know that it's important to stay focused on generating new leads and revenue. But more marketers today are also discovering new opportunities in marketing to existing customers.

A recent study, The Next Generation Of Customer Lifecycle Marketing, revealed just how important this trend has become. According to the study, two thirds of the marketers polled said that tracking the lifecycle of their current customers is now an important activity for their organizations.

ExactTarget unveiled its MobilePush application, a tool designed to integrate app-level messaging that leverages engagement data from across email, mobile, social and the web. The announcement was made during the Mobile Marketing Association Forum in San Francisco.

Alinean, a creator of value-based interactive sales and marketing tools, added 20 B2B customers in 2012, providing them with solutions to address economic-focused buyers. These new customers included Canon, Concur, Cox Communications, GE Healthcare, Lenovo, LogMeIn and Zebra Technologies.

Alinean has developed and delivered interactive white papers, benefits estimators and ROI/TCO analysis tools for marketing campaigns and sales initiatives.

Ogilvy Public Relations announced a global digital influence service called Digital Influence for B2B, which is designed to help B2B companies adapt to the changes that have occurred in how B2B buyers seek information and input when considering a purchase.

The new service for driving awareness and sales consideration is led by an integrated, global team of specialists in B2B communications, social media and sales.

Inside sources told Demand Gen Report that the acquisition of Eloqua by Oracle is now scheduled to close Feb. 8, and Oracle officials have approved a major redesign of the Eloqua-branded web site and plans for its Eloqua Experience 2013 user conference.

The go-ahead for the web site redesign and user conference are early indications that Oracle will support a continuation of Eloqua’s brand presence rather than rolling it into Oracle’s enterprise platform, sources told Demand Gen Report. Earlier this month, some industry observers and Eloqua users expressed concern that the Eloqua brand might be folded into the Oracle platform, as Oracle has done with other acquisitions.

Infusionsoft has acquired social media marketing software company GroSocial to meet the growing customer and market demand for a social media marketing software tool that helps small businesses generate qualified leads. Earlier this month, Infusionsoft announced $54 million in growth capital financing led by Goldman Sachs.

GroSocial will be integrated with Infusionsoft's CRM, marketing automation and e-Commerce tools so that small businesses can automatically move prospects through the entire customer lifecycle. An Infusionsoft widget in the GroSocial app will enable users to capture leads and trigger automatic follow-up.

 
Silverpop, a digital marketing technology provider, reported that in 2012 new business grew 40% and it signed 380 new customers, with one-third of those choosing the company’s marketing automation offerings.

Of the 380 customers added last year, more than 100 selected technology from Silverpop in Q4.  The recent additions include APS Payroll, CSX Transportation, MATRIXX Software, Evernote, University of London and U.S. Space and Rocket Center.

NetProspex, a provider of B2B data services, released its B2B Marketing Data Benchmark Report, which found inaccuracies or missing data in a sizeable number of the more than 100 million marketing records it examined.

“What we found is that there is room for improvement in all functional areas,” said Michael Bird, President of NetProspex. “Marketing data is like crude oil. It has to be refined to be useful.”

While there are some concerns floating around the blogosphere about how well Eloqua is matched with Oracle and how the acquisition will impact the marketing automation vendor and the marketplace overall, most users and partners seem to be taking a wait-and-see approach.

One of the main topics of discussion is the fate of Eloqua’s integration with salesforce automation tools from Salesforce.com. “I am worried about what this is going to mean to the SFDC integration down the road,” one user wrote on the Eloqua “Topliner” blog. “Oracle and Salesforce play together about as well as Facebook and Twitter.”