News

 
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.”

From more visual content marketing to the rise of the B2B brands, a panel of experts weighed in with their predictions for the future of marketing automation in 2013. The webinar, “2013 Demand Gen: What Does the Future Hold?” was sponsored by Demandbase.

While white papers still have their role as part of a marketing strategy, users are looking for content that can provide them with a snapshot of trends, said Maria Pergolino, VP of Marketing for Apttus. “Content marketing is going to become more sophisticated and visual,” she said, adding that social media sites such as Pinterest are becoming more mainstream and infographics are becoming more common. “You can’t just double the number of white papers and double your success.”

Vocus, a provider of cloud-based marketing software, announced new and enhanced features in its Marketing Suite, which now integrates email, social media, search and publicity.

The  iContact email platform, which Vocus acquired last year, is now fully integrated into the Vocus Marketing Suite. The Buying Signals module monitors social media to notify marketers when customers are ready to buy their product or service. The Business Streams feature provides marketers with a single management point to receive marketing opportunities such as sales leads, media interview requests and social media conversations.