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Benioff's Social Proof February 28, 2013 
Salesforce came to New York this week for its annual winter meeting with customers. The company had two goals: test new ideas, and gather customer input. The event was held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel for a relatively small group -- less than 1,000 -- rather than at the Jacob Javits Convention Center, which can accommodate the maintenance facilities for a squadron of F18s.
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Hackers: The Flies in Social Media Marketing Ointment February 25, 2013 
Did you hear? McDonald's has just acquired Burger King! Also, someone at the company apparently has a potty mouth. Another unusual and unexpected corporate trade also happened last week -- Cadillac acquired Jeep. These events, of course, didn't really happen. In both instances, hackers gained control of the brands' Twitter accounts and began sending out false and sometimes very offensive tweets.
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HootSuite for Twitter Gives Advertisers a Souped-Up Dashboard February 22, 2013 
HootSuite has incorporated paid advertising into its dashboard for the first time with the rollout of HootSuite Promoted Products integration for Twitter. It allows users to buy Promoted Tweets and manage their accounts on the HootSuite dashboard.
This is a significant step for HootSuite's users, said Greg Gunn, VP of business development.
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IntelliBuzz Helps Brands Keep an Eye on Social Media Mentions February 15, 2013 
Intelliverse has rolled out a new cloud-based tool that monitors social media for brand mentions and responds when appropriate. IntelliBuzz is simple enough that a company with minimal IT resources in-house -- that is, a computer and an Internet connection -- can manage this outreach just using the app.
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3 Bad Habits to Unlearn for SCRM Success February 14, 2013 
For the better part of six years, we pundits have been urging businesses to get social. Social CRM even has its own Gartner Magic Quadrant, and while the entries in that document are all over the map in terms of what they do, vendors serving aspects of SCRM are well established. Gartner itself said that sales of software for SCRM topped $1 billion in 2012.
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Big Data for Marketing February 13, 2013 
The marketing funnel is not exactly a new idea. Neither are sales or customer service, though all have morphed considerably from what they were more than a decade ago when CRM began. Sales and service evolved organically, making incremental changes as markets transformed and new technologies became available.
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The 2nd Screen's Super Bowl Coup February 12, 2013 
It has been a week since the Super Bowl, but its lessons for marketers are becoming increasingly clear. At the top of the list: The synergy between the mobile channel and the overall campaign is getting tighter. Another lesson gleaned from this year's big game, courtesy of the New Orleans' Superdome's short-lived blackout, is that old fashioned quick-witted thinking never goes out of style.
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The Key to Mobile Marketing: A Strong Opt-In List February 09, 2013 
Mobile messaging -- which includes SMS, MMS and rich media messaging -- has quickly become a staple in the world of marketing campaigns for many large brands. Mobile messaging, although still in its infancy, has drastically impacted the marketing landscape and is vital to any program. Mobile messaging creates a very personal link between a brand and its customers.
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Cross-Domain Semantics and the End of 'Solution Sales' February 08, 2013 
Do your customers think of you as one of them? Do they think you truly understand their business challenges, their opportunities and what keeps them up at night? These are questions you should very seriously consider, because in the extraordinarily demanding B2B sales climate of our post-recession world, it's the vendor who can answer "yes" who will win the business.
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5 Business Lessons to Learn From PR Flacks February 07, 2013 
As a journalist covering technology, you get bombarded with material from PR people trying to get you to write about their clients. Although there are some stellar PR people, the majority of pitches I get are not targeted at what I write about, addressed to the wrong person, or make claims that are demonstrably false or inaccurate.
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Bronto Remarketing Engine Slices and Dices Retail Customer Preferences January 24, 2013 
Bronto Software this week released a significant update to its Bronto Marketing Platform: a remarketing engine that helps retailers link online and in-store purchases in order to create targeted email messages that speak to the individual user. New features allow marketers to collect data such as purchase history and then use that information to segment customers and create email campaigns.
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Zoho Update Gooses Sales Productivity January 11, 2013 
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 the productivity and collaborative capabilities of the sales person," he said.
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What Happened in 2012 December 27, 2012 
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 more or less valid than anyone else's.
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The Lowdown on QR Codes December 18, 2012 
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 to scan with a smartphone to download more information about a product or service.
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Coremotives Connects the Marketing Dots December 14, 2012 
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.
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Building Loyalty When Customers Are a Moving Target December 10, 2012 
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.
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Microsoft Dynamics Aims to Pull All the Pieces Together December 07, 2012 
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 Seth Patton, senior director of Microsoft Dynamics CRM product marketing.
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The Big Data Marketing Gold Mine December 03, 2012 
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 what it takes to engage supporters and motivate them to donate, volunteer and vote.
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Blazeloop Collects Customer Feedback on the Spot November 30, 2012 
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 can drive them away.
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Study: Many Shades of Like in Brand-Consumer Engagement November 29, 2012 
A Like on Facebook goes a long way. Seventy percent of consumers who engage in social media make purchases from brands they are connected to, according to a new study released by SocialVibe. Connections form when a consumer clicks Like on Facebook, Follows a brand on Twitter or interacts with a brand's presence on other social networks including YouTube, Pinterest or Google+.
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