LoopFuse recently reported that Identified, Inc, a search engine designed to enable organizations to use Facebook to organize and rank prospective employees, has doubled its revenue since implementing the OneView marketing automation platform in July 2011.

"LoopFuse has been a game-changer for our inside sales organization,” said Jen Picard, Product Marketing Director, Identified. "It has helped us identify sales-ready leads and nurture those that aren't yet ready to buy, effectively helping us double sales revenues month-over-month since October."

The company is utilizing LoopFuse OneView to accurately score leads based on buying interest and to execute automated email follow up campaigns.

Pardot today announced new product features as part of its Winter 2012 release, including an enhanced visual editor and form builder, designed to enable marketers to streamline the creation of lead management campaigns.

"Many marketers today don't have an expert-level knowledge of web design, so we're always trying to make Pardot as user-friendly as possible for our clients," said Adam Blitzer, COO at Pardot. "That is where the wizards and pre-fabricated templates come in handy. We want to empower our users to create rockstar email templates and forms that will drive conversions, all in a few clicks. The new email and form editors are extremely flexible and, most importantly, make it easy to create marketing materials. It's important for marketers to be able to quickly produce very custom assets so that each audience segment or campaign can be targeted appropriately."

The Marketing Operations Cross Company Alliance (MOCCA) today will host nearly 50 marketing operations executives at Autodesk in San Francisco, for its third annual Executive Forum, an invitation-only event that bring together marketing operations VPs and directors for market trend discussions.

MOCCA, which presently has more than 950 members representing about 350 companies, is comprised of two chapters across the East and West coasts.

By Jenny Vance, President, LeadJen

Companies spend a lot of time generating and nurturing new leads when they may be overlooking a major source of ready-to-act buyers: social media.

Channels such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook are buzzing with conversations in which prospects are indicating a need for products or services. By listening to the conversations and responding in a timely way, companies can significantly boost their leads.

The proliferation of digital channels and demands for buyer-centric messaging has created a paradigm shift for marketers. LoopLogic, is a new media sharing platform designed to enable marketers to mix, share, and analyze real-time results of video and other content. The LoopLogic platform cam be integrated with existing sales, marketing, helpdesk and other business systems by mapping viewers with existing or new customer data. The solution is designed to provide B2B marketers with better insight into content marketing performance.

Left Brain DGA, a Silicon Valley-based demand generation agency, has acquired the marketing technology practice of Raab Associates for an undisclosed equity stake. As part of the acquisition, Raab Associate principal David Raab will take on the new title of VP Program Optimization at Left Brain DGA. In this role, Raab will assist in client relations and help maximize program effectiveness.

The acquisition of Raab Associates’ marketing technology practice is the latest step in an aggressive expansion of high profile market experts in the marketing automation space for Left Brain. Last year, Left Brain added three experienced executives to its leadership team from Rubicon Marketing Group, including former CEO April Brown, as well as Kevin Provost and David Ward.

By Paige O’Neill, VP Marketing, Aprimo

Happy customers are a B2B brand’s best salespeople. These brand advocates can be tremendously potent ambassadors for a sales force, especially now that social media platforms make it easier than ever for satisfied customers to spread positive feedback about a favorite product or service. The key techniques for creating business advocates – as in many areas of CRM – are careful listening and engaging messaging.

Specifically, devoting attention to three areas can empower company advocates to create valuable opportunities by positive word-of-mouth:

As privacy protection and compliance becomes an increasingly critical consideration for marketers, email suppression has become a cornerstone technique for high-volume email delivery. Additionally, it’s vital that marketers ensure the prevention of unwanted solicitations and senders, to avoid landing on blacklists and irreparably damaging their brands’ online reputation.

Rainmaker Systems yesterday announced the release of its cloud-based B2B e-Commerce solution, designed to help marketers drive increased online sales in a self-service fashion.

The Rainmaker B2B e-Commerce suite is focused on several key features to empower users with more control of their e-Commerce environment. These new features include the ability to change and update languages, payment types and currencies, in addition to advanced administration rights, such as the clients’ ability to launch a new store, and offer clients ease of store administration, simplified ongoing maintenance and better reporting to technology companies focused on maximizing revenue through their online B2B store.

Manticore Technology announced the release of Manticore Winter 2012, the latest version of its marketing automation platform.

After finishing its sixth year serving the marketing automation category, with more than 150 customers using its platform, President Jeff Erramouspe described 2011 as a “low key” year, as the company focused primarily on product development.

 “We decided to pull back a little bit on marketing and sales to give ourselves the ability to refresh the product and dramatically increase our engineering and support capacity,” he told DemandGen Report. “Now the plan is to increase our marketing and sales spend in 2012, and really go out with this new platform.”