Appboy, a marketing automation platform for mobile apps, announced new multivariate testing capabilities designed to help marketers test variations of headlines, copy and content on multiple messaging channels, including email, in-app messaging and push notifications.

The company is positioning the tool as a way for marketers to identify and automate the messaging mix that will have the highest impact on metrics such as conversion rate, click-through rate and revenue generated, according to Bill Magnuson, co-founder and CTO of Appboy.

Salesforce unveiled Salesforce1 Sales Reach, which brings together Salesforce1 Sales Cloud, Pardot and Communities into a new solution that is designed to help sales teams deploy personalized, one-on-one campaigns to accelerate the buying journey.

"In this new connected era, sales reps must be empowered to cultivate long-term, meaningful relationships with customers in order to be successful — transactional touch points won't drive impactful results," said Linda Crawford, EVP and GM of Sales Cloud at Salesforce. "With Salesforce1 Sales Reach, sales reps can engage with the customer at just the right moment with instant marketing and selling to build better relationships with customers at scale and ultimately accelerate sales."

Marketo  announced that Q2 2014 revenues reached $36 million, a 60% growth over the same period the previous year.

"Across the board, we delivered a strong quarter as customers adopted our customer engagement platform and purchased new applications such as our Real Time Personalization product, which we released early in the quarter," said Phil Fernandez, Chairman and CEO of Marketo. “Marketers are choosing our innovative solutions to build individual and personal long-term relationships with their customers.”

Oracle announced it is combining its BlueKai Audience Data Marketplace and other Oracle data services to create the Oracle Data Cloud, a platform designed to provide marketers with access to anonymous user-level data through a data-as-a-service (DaaS) model. With more than one billion profiles globally, Oracle Data Cloud gives organizations the ability to prospect at scale and deliver relevant ads and content across online, mobile, search, social and video.

“Oracle’s launch of the Data Cloud is going to turn the idea of Big Data into a big deal for marketing,” said David Lewis, CEO and Founder of DemandGen International, in an interview with Demand Gen Report. “Oracle DaaS will turn aspirations into applications.”

LinkedIn has entered a definitive agreement to acquire Bizo, a business audience marketing platform provider. The deal is valued at $175 million, with 10% being paid in company stock and the remainder in cash, and is expected to close in Q3 2014.

“This gives LinkedIn another way to serve its customers, who want ways to reach B2B buyers,” said David M. Raab, Principal, Raab Associates in an interview with Demand Gen Report. “The move should also allow much better targeting by Bizo, based on LinkedIn data. And it makes it easier to do targeting on LinkedIn’s own pages.”

InsideView announced the launch of InsideView Data Diagnostic, a tool designed to provide database health and profile assessments for CRM and marketing databases. The free, self-service application analyzes data and generates a quality assessment as well as provides industry, firmographic and geographic segmentation.

In less than five minutes users can gain an understanding of the condition of their database. Data Diagnostic emphasizes the importance of data hygiene in order to optimize sales and marketing productivity.

The concept of a traditional buying funnel has been around since 1898, but reality is that today’s buying process is more circular. 

“The typical funnel model is a very linear and volume-driven process, but in reality, the buying journey today is much more complex,” LeadMD’s Justin Gray told the audience of his Lead LifeCycle Series webinar, titled: Benchmarking The Buyer’s Journey. The series runs through July 25 and sessions are available on demand.