News

Since the announcement of Oracle’s plans to acquire marketing automation vendor Eloqua, marketers have been eagerly following Oracle’s next steps and what industry thought leaders had to say about the move. While a story on the Eloqua restructuring topped our Top 10 list for the first half, The Salesforce-ExactTarget mega-deal and Marketo’s IPO also captured a great deal of attention.

Readers also prepared for the year ahead by catching up with marketing automation predictions from executives at leading companies such as LeadMD, SiriusDecisions, DemandGen International, ANNUITAS and Raab Associates in our 2013 Marketing Automation Forecast report.

Even with the growing adoption of marketing automation, CRM and web analytics tools, most marketers are still challenged to clearly demonstrate the ROI of their campaigns. In a move to fill that gap, Left Brain DGA, one of the leading demand gen consultancies, has introduced MiDash, a marketing intelligence platform aimed at using historical data, predictive analytics and performance alerts to supplement the information available from marketing automation systems.

Founded in 2009, Left Brain DGA has developed the Left Brain Model, a framework for measuring marketing’s contribution to a demand generation program and to provide a structure for the lead nurturing and scoring activities that support this process. Left Brain Model user Lenovo was the winner of Eloqua’s 2012 Demand Generation Center of Excellence Markie Award for its collaborative go-to-market strategy, commitment to persona-based content and focus on metrics to drive campaign decisions.

Marketo recently added sales process and personnel agency MarketStar and call marketing automation vendor RingRevenue to its LaunchPoint partner program.

MarketStar will also provide Marketo with skilled personnel who “understand the science of nurturing and who have the knowledge to invest in iterative improvements and adjustments over time,” said Vaughn Aust, VP of Digital Marketing Solutions at MarketStar, adding that these advisors will gauge performance by grading clients on categories such a customer engagement and sales expectations.

Adobe Systems Inc. agreed to acquire privately held Neolane, a provider of cross-channel campaign management technology, for approximately $600 million in cash. Industry observers say the acquisition helps to fill some gaps in Adobe’s Marketing Cloud but still leaves the company without a CRM platform.

The deal, which is expected to close in July, is the latest in a flurry of acquisitions of marketing automation firms, including Salesforce.com’s recent deal for ExactTarget and Oracle’s acquisition of Eloqua.