LoopFuse recently announced enhancements to the latest release of its marketing automation suite, including role-based security permissions and custom event tracking. The new functionality will be available to customers using both the paid and free versions of Loopfuse marketing automation software. Loopfuse customers can now assign roles to its users:  Administrator, Marketing or Sales.  Administrators have access to all aspects of the system while custom permissions can be assigned for marketing and sales roles providing read-only viewing or limiting access to specific functionality.

Additionally, Loopfuse can now track events beyond web site and email activity. The events are user defined and can include actions inside a software-as-a-service (SaaS) application or actions related to an e-Commerce shopping cart experience.  Available via the LoopFuse API, the addition of custom event tracking via a web service is designed to add additional flexibility to how customers can integrate their business processes based on their internal systems.

By Michael Shanker, CEO & Director, Extraprise

For many BtoB marketing organizations, implementing multi-channel marketing to optimize revenue at the right time in the customer life cycle is an imperative, but an elusive goal.

By Michael Shanker, CEO & Director, Extraprise

For many BtoB marketing organizations, implementing multi-channel marketing to optimize revenue at the right time in the customer life cycle is an imperative, but an elusive goal.

Microsoft sought a better way to engage with decision makers for core IT infrastructure, business productivity and application development, but was having trouble moving its enterprise sales group and channel partners from the traditional product/solution presentations.

To address this opportunity, Alinean developed a suite of Microsoft Infrastructure Optimization Assessment tools, which are used to diagnose customer’s most pressing issues, and help them advance along a four-step capability and maturity model. The suite consists of three assessment tools to engage at a strategic level with core IT infrastructure, business productivity and application lifecycle development decision makers.

The assessment tool automates the benchmark comparisons, scoring and intelligent recommendations, delivering a 20+-page assessment report. In a tough selling environment, the tool has helped Microsoft and its channel partners proactively engage customers, collaboratively set customer goals and strategies, help deliver tangible savings and incremental value to customers, while allocating discretionary budget to Microsoft proposed projects.

The assessment tool has been available since 2008 and consistently generates more than 600 analyses per month, driving more high level customer engagements, significant evolution of Microsoft’s relationship with clients from tactical to strategic, and generating substantial multi-million dollar incremental sales opportunities.

This article is part 2 in a two-part series focused on sales enablement strategies. Click here to read part 1. 

As BtoB organizations shift gears from cost cutting to revenue growth, industry research points to a greater need for efficient sales enablement solutions. The inability to get sales enablement optimized can cost organizations a significant amount of money. Moreover, buyers continue to dominate the selling process, as nearly 70% indicate that sales is not adding enough value to their engagements, according to Forrester Research.

This new world of selling — where the savvy buyer holds the cards — has made it critical for organizations to ensure that all prospect and customer conversations are centered on value, problem solving and knowledge sharing.

“Today many firms are transforming the way they sell to address the needs of a very savvy customer,” said Craig Nelson, VP Sales Enablement, iCentera, a Callidus Software Company. “Many times before the first sales call, the buyer knows your product, your company, your competition, pricing and possibly the social buzz about you and your market.”

ZoomInfo, a leading provider of business contact data, today announced a service designed to help BtoB email marketers improve deliverability, as well as avoid blacklisting and other problems associated with high bounce rates.

ZoomInfo Email Address Validator is designed to test every email address in a customer’s database (without sending actual messages) to confirm deliverability. The service returns the customer’s file with all invalid email addresses and spam traps tagged for easy removal or replacement, along with a detailed report. ZoomInfo’s data experts also can remove all invalid addressees, replace outdated information with correct data and help marketers find more buyers by adding new contacts and appending other missing data to existing records.

ZoomInfo, a leading provider of business contact data, today announced a service designed to help BtoB email marketers improve deliverability, as well as avoid blacklisting and other problems associated with high bounce rates.

ZoomInfo Email Address Validator is designed to test every email address in a customer’s database (without sending actual messages) to confirm deliverability. The service returns the customer’s file with all invalid email addresses and spam traps tagged for easy removal or replacement, along with a detailed report. ZoomInfo’s data experts also can remove all invalid addressees, replace outdated information with correct data and help marketers find more buyers by adding new contacts and appending other missing data to existing records.

Glance Networks, a provider instant screen sharing tools for sales and support professionals, recently announced a partnership with LivePerson to provide integrated screen sharing within LivePerson chat sessions.

LivePerson, a provider of real-time intelligent engagement solutions, offers chat sessions designed to foster greater prospect and customer dialogue. LivePerson's enterprise solution is designed to enable online businesses to assess thousands of visitors on their web site at any given time and provide personalized assistance to drive conversions, first contact resolution and ensure an optimal customer experience. 

Glance Networks, a provider instant screen sharing tools for sales and support professionals, recently announced a partnership with LivePerson to provide integrated screen sharing within LivePerson chat sessions.

LivePerson, a provider of real-time intelligent engagement solutions, offers chat sessions designed to foster greater prospect and customer dialogue. LivePerson's enterprise solution is designed to enable online businesses to assess thousands of visitors on their web site at any given time and provide personalized assistance to drive conversions, first contact resolution and ensure an optimal customer experience. 

BtoB corporate web sites are vastly underperforming in terms of lead generation, new research shows. A vast majority (80%) of BtoB organizations surveyed indicated that their web sites are not performing to maximum lead generation potential, according to the 2011 Demandbase National Marketing and Sales Study, released today.

While more than half (60%) of respondents reported that they know and understand their prospects well, marketers are still struggling to understand how prospect behavior correlates to lead generation.

Demandbase partnered with Focus Expert Network to conduct the study via online channels in May 2011. Based on the results of the survey, corporate web sites remain the primary hub to harness customer interest driven by online marketing activities.