News

Salesforce.com today announced a major new set of social analytics partnerships for its Marketing Cloud, bringing together 20 social analytics vendors to help companies “accelerate the shift from passive social listening to driving real business results, turning insights into action.”

The Salesforce Marketing Cloud, announced during the company's Dreamforce event in September, aggregates technology acquired through its purchases of Buddy Media and Radian6 with its core CRM platform. The new partnerships, according to the company, will give customers access to analytics tools for identifying sales leads, discovering advocates, detecting trends for any topic or keyword, uncovering social influence and analyzing content in 17 languages.

'Lean Startup' Expert Eric Ries Joins HubSpot Advisory Board

On Wednesday, marketing automation vendor HubSpot announced that Eric Ries has joined the company's advisory board. Ries is a key proponent of the "lean startup" methodology, which emphasizes iterative development, short product-release cycles and aggressive experimentation as part of the startup process.

Ries has also served as a venture advisor at Kleiner Perkins, is the author of The Lean Startup, and writes the Startup Lessons Learned blog.

Microsoft announced yesterday that it has acquired marketing automation firm MarketingPilot for an undisclosed sum. The news was announced in a blog post on Microsoft's Dynamics CRM community site and in a statement on the MarketingPilot web site.

"MarketingPilot has a comprehensive vision for Integrated Marketing solutions that aligns closely to our vision," said Bob Stutz, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, in the blog post. "In addition, they have a talented management team and an innovative product suite built on Microsoft technologies available both in the Cloud and On-premises. We are committed to taking care of MarketingPilot customers, and we welcome them to the Microsoft family. We will be communicating directly with individual customers over the coming days and weeks."

As noted in a recent Demand Gen Report article, B2B buyers are now using a wider range of sources than ever before to research their purchases. It's part of a trend that will have profound implications for sales and marketing professionals.

That's the key takeaway from a recent webinar –  An Exclusive Look Inside The Mind Of Today's B2B Buyer,” – that featured speakers from Demand Gen Report and Act-On Software. During the webinar, Andrew Gaffney, Editor of Demand Gen Report and Atri Chatterjee, CMO of Act-On Software, shared insights to the B2B buying process and the impact of the Web.

Demandbase, a provider of B2B marketing technology solutions, today announced a new online ad-targeting service designed for the business-to-business market.

The company's Demandbase Company-Targeted Advertising platform will allow B2B advertisers to deliver online ads tailored to specific companies or to groups of companies that match particular attributes. The platform also includes measurement and performance analysis tools.