Marketing

Although Zoho routinely updates its CRM application every few months or so, its latest release is far from routine, according to Zoho Evangelist Raju Vegesna, who described it as a step forward in collaborative productivity. "Essentially we added three new features, all of which focused on improving...

Everyone has a year-end synopsis these days, and it's fun to see what each person deems important. Sometimes you wonder if you lived through the same experiences, but it's a good thing to recall everything one more time and maybe reconsider how you'll remember each. Here's my synopsis -- which is no...

A year or so ago, digital marketers were head over heels, breathlessly in love with QR codes. Bearing a close resemblance to Rorschach inkblot tests, QR codes quickly became ubiquitous on labels, posters, signs, magazine ads, billboards -- pretty much any ad space a consumer might conceivably want t...

CoreMotives, a Silverpop company, has launched a new integration that ties revenue-tracking capabilities embedded in its CRM system to the Ticketmaster sales application. The upshot is that teams that use Ticketmaster to market tickets can also easily track which campaigns actually led to a sale. In...

When Double Cola wanted to encourage its customers to keep coming back for more of its vintage fizzy drink, it started a rewards program. Using tried-and-true loyalty methods, the company offered customers the opportunity to turn over the cola's caps, earn points, and get discounts and merchandise.

Microsoft next month will roll out a service update for Microsoft Dynamics CRM that will have a new user interface, integration with Yammer, Skype and Office 2013, and cross-browser support. In general, the theme of tight integration with other Microsoft technologies runs through the release, said S...

It's become clear that the true political star of the 2012 election was Big Data. There is much that marketers can learn from its meteoric rise. Trumping the old-school, gut-instinct days of electoral politics, today's campaigns employ data crunchers who mine the campaign's database for clues on wha...

Benbria has launched Blazeloop, a customer engagement platform that revolves around one pointed question aimed at the consumer: How did we do? The theory behind the Web-based app is that most customers do not take the trouble to complain about little things -- but it is those very little things that...

Demandbase is extending beyond its Web analytics and sales roots with a new platform that allows B2B advertisers to target and personalize display ads for specific companies. Demandbase Company-Targeted Advertising, which has been incorporated by Eloqua within its own marketing automation applicatio...

Nudge, a marketing application designed for the real estate space, has released an update that incorporates Instagram into its offerings. The integration expands the application's photo and visual bona fides, not surprisingly -- but also expands Nudge's potential audience, since its inclusion makes ...

I spent a day last week in Boston attending a conference called the "Inbound Marketing Summit" organized by my friend and former analyst Allen Bonde. Inbound marketing IMHO is taking off in some important dimensions. Inbound marketing is a cool idea that's been pushed by multiple companies recently....

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...

Last-click attribution assigns the entire value of a conversion to the last campaign the consumer clicked prior to converting. Naturally, last-click attribution favors campaigns that influence the lower-end of the funnel. In contrast, first-click attribution favors campaigns that influence earlier i...

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...

Is your small business guilty as sin? Many small businesses are committing sales transgressions that hinder success and threaten to condemn them to eternal mediocrity in the market. The root of all these sins lies in a failure to adhere to the "commandment of commitment." To stay on the right path, ...