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Forty-seven percent of all social media users have used their networks to get customer service from a company, with usage as high as 59 percent among 18-24 year olds, according to a new study from NM Incite. Almost one in three social media users said they preferred to contact a company that way, an...

Increasingly, CRM vendors are incorporating geofunctionality into their offerings. It is a must-have marketing technique for brick-and-mortar retailers competing with e-commerce providers. While that use is indeed still a big driver, vendors are also beginning to view it as a technology that has mul...

It is not hard at all to find an example of a mobile B2C CRM app -- all one has to do is fire up the nearest smartphone. But B2B mobile CRM? That is a qualified yes -- assuming one is willing to limit one's thinking to salesforce automation as a B2B discipline. To be sure, there is a case to be made...

With two new acquisitions, ExactTarget is pushing beyond its original email marketing mission to become a one-stop online marketing and social media shop. The company has acquired Pardot for $95.5 million and iGoDigital for $21 million; it announced both deals last week. ExactTarget paid out $85.5 m...

Lithium Technologies acquired Social Dynamx this week and moved immediately to bring a combined product to market: Lithium Social Web is available now. The two companies offer complementary functionality, which made the acquisition a natural fit, said Rob Tarkoff, CEO of Lithium. "We build communiti...

Showrooming enabled by the proliferation of smartphones has become the bane of brick-and-mortar retailers. Basically, consumers waltz into a local Best Buy or similar big box store, find the product they are thinking of buying and check it out. So far, so good, from the retailer's perspective -- onl...

There are countless of CRM apps for small businesses, Bizness Apps CEO Andrew Gazdecki readily admits. But CRM apps aimed at companies that sell to small businesses? Not so much. Enter Bizness Apps, which has launched Bizness CRM, a Web-based app, as well as native iPhone app, that is aimed precisel...

CRM is a mature software category with a decades-plus history of development and evolution. Still, one important problem remains unsolved: A lot of employees, especially sales staff, just can't be bothered with it. Corporate "solutions" have ranged from bribing to arm-twisting to appeals to corporat...

Moxie Software recently released two separate, albeit highly complementary, CRM self-service applications. One is a revamped version of its self-service application called "Knowledge Spaces." Enhancements allow users to "widgetize" pieces of the application and embed just those portions on a website...

Discover Bank is refunding approximately $200 million to more than 3.5 million customers under a joint enforcement action by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. Discover will also pay a $14 million civil money penalty, with half going to the U.S. Treasury ...

Bizo, an online marketing provider that focuses specifically on the business segment, has introduced two new apps that refine its marketing reach. Bizo Company Targeting and Bizo CRM Retargeting are tightly integrated with Salesforce.com, although it is not necessary to be a Salesforce.com client to...

Without a doubt, mobile CRM has become a must-have deployment in the B2C world. Expect that trend to move into the B2B community for similar reasons: The devices are becoming ever more equipped to serve multiple needs, and their uses can soothe a lot of pain points. B2B, more so than B2C, is highly ...

Aprimo has released its second app for Salesforce.com's AppExchange, called "Aprimo Service to Sales." It is an inbound marketing app with real-time interactive features. The first Aprimo app destined for the AppExchange was released in 2010. The newer app, however, is written on a different code b...

With Salesforce.com's Dreamforce 2012 conference ready to kick off next week, there is little doubt the company has several new products ready to debut. Just in case, though, CEO Marc Benioff made sure the CRM world would be primed for the news. In a wide-ranging interview with TechCrunch founder M...

Want to extend your company's CRM presence in the mobile world easily and effortlessly? Vendors are lining up to help -- at least with the first part of that sentence. Sales, service and marketing are all categories in which vendors are actively rolling out products aimed at the mobile space. Whethe...

Sage North America has rolled out Sage Act 2013, a new iteration of its flagship application that has been enhanced with mobile, social and email marketing capabilities, as well as new smart task automation functionality. The focus is on contemporary trends of interest to SMBs, said Brandon Balsley,...

Increasingly, CRM vendors -- and their customers -- are recognizing the value of applying mobile technologies to the self-service piece of a CRM operations. In response, more and more vendors are rolling out new applications for companies that wish to target this emerging, but rapidly growing, deman...

Blackbaud has enhanced its CRM app for nonprofits with completely redesigned prospect and research capabilities. It is the company's second major release this year, said Tiffany Crumpton, senior marketing manager for CRM solutions. However, neither release -- the previous 2.93 or this newest iterati...

Buried in a recent J.D. Power and Associates 2012 U.S. Credit Card Satisfaction study -- which showed consumers' satisfaction with credit cards was at a six-year high -- was this very telling factoid: Only 7 percent of credit card customers use their mobile phones to complete transactions, up from 4...

Kana Software is pushing into the mid-market space with a new offering called "Kana Express." It is a multi-channel Web customer service application divided into four modules, all of which can be deployed separately or used as a whole suite. Scaled-down versions of more robust customer service appl...