IgnitionOne, a cloud-based digital marketing technology provider, announced that it has acquired Human Demand, a vendor of mobile advertising, audience and tracking solutions for marketers, , for an undisclosed fee. The acquisition is intended to further enhance IgnitionOne’s Digital Marketing Suite (DMS) with mobile display advertising and cross-device tracking capabilities.

IgnitionOne’s DMS is designed to provide users with a single location for buying, managing and optimizing digital media across search engines, display ads, social media and mobile devices. The suite also comes with data management, marketing automation and cross-channel attribution capabilities which aim to help users understand prospective and current customers.

Marketing automation has certainly increased lead volume, but the focus now is on boosting quality. Progressive companies such as SmartBear Software are boosting lead quality with applications that analyze data and digital behaviors to predict which leads will convert.

A recent webinar, hosted by Mintigo, discussed how traditional lead scoring is being used today, and how adding predictive capabilities to the lead scoring strategy will ultimately uncover the high-value leads with the best chances of converting.

With marketers being held accountable for meeting revenue goals, they need their technologies to keep up with the demand for greater visibility into the pipeline. Building strong links between marketing automation and CRM platforms offers many benefits, including improving lead quality, boosting the efficiency of the lead handoff process, and automating lead assignment.

Progressive companies are now moving beyond basic integration to take advantage of benefits such as real-time activity alerts, behavioral tracking and advanced lead nurturing that are possible when CRM and marketing automation systems converge.

The Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud announced three new features for its Journey Builder platform: Journey Maps, Journey Triggers and Journey Metrics. The new features are designed to help marketers manage and personalize customer engagement across multiple devices and channels.

Journey Maps uses a drag-and-drop interface is positioned to give marketers easier control over mapping customer journeys via email, social, mobile and online. The interface also measures performance, while providing a holistic view of how customers interact with the brand.

Ifbyphone, a voice-based marketing automation platform provider, announced its Summer 2014 Release, which includes technology to analyze keywords in phone conversations and integrations with a number of marketing automation platforms.

The keyword spotting technology is designed to monitor inbound sales and support calls and uses customizable criteria to score each conversation. Keyword spotting can be used to determine, among other things, if a call converted to sale and if the support agent followed approved scripts.

6Sense, a B2B predictive intelligence engine, announced the launch of ProductSense, a tool designed to enable companies to score a prospective buyer’s intent at the product level.

The new solution seeks to leverage external behavioral data — not found in the user’s CRM system — to find prospects that have the highest potential to convert. The tool can also provide users with further insights into an existing prospect’s buying intent. The data collected can also be leveraged to predict future demand for products, which can aid marketers when forming strategies for particular product lines.

LinkedIn’s new stand-alone version of its Sales Navigator can stream real-time updates on targeted accounts, a feature that could help B2B marketers boost their lead generation capabilities. The offering is designed to push data such as job changes, press announcements, blog posts and status updates relevant to key accounts and prospects.

This announcement follows LinkedIn’s recent acquisition of Bizo, with the goal of creating a B2B marketing platform.

LeadMD launched Navigate, an online educational platform designed to boost ROI by providing concise, task-based learning.

The platform will offer various forms of content covering topics such as marketing automation, sales alignment and content optimization. The platform intends to also offer instructional videos covering best practices for implementing Salesforce.com and Marketo.