Demanding Views

By Peter Gracey, Co-Founder, President and COO, AG Salesworks

Outbounding (verb). to communicate personally and proactively with a sales prospect via email or phone with the goal of determining their level of interest in your product or service.

By David M. Raab, Principal, Raab Associates

When Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff told analysts late last month that “We need to buy more marketing companies,” ears perked up across the marketing automation industry and eyes turned to Marketo. But that’s nothing new: many observers have long expected a Salesforce-Marketo deal. The thing that changed is that Salesforce now actually sounds interested.

By Jon Miller, VP of Marketing Content and Strategy, Marketo

 Marketing automation is hardly a new concept. According to the Google Ngram Viewer and Google Insights, the term was first used in 1980, gaining traction in the late 1990s and peaking around 2004. The term reached a low point in 2007 before it began to rise again. Today, it’s back up near the 2004 peak. Why the seismic shifts?