SAVO Group unveiled Sales Process Pro, a new application designed to improve sales efficiency and productivity, at its 2014 Sales Enablement Summit.
The platform encompasses a wide variety of activities — from training reinforcement, automated proposal creation and insight-driven data to further sales conversations.
Act-On Software has secured $42 million in funding, bringing the company’s total venture capital financing to $74 million since it was founded in 2008. This round of funding, led by Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV), will be used to grow the business on a number of fronts, including sales, product development and brand recognition.
"The new capital will be used to increase our sales capacity and our marketing efforts, as well as to expand our product team,” said Act-On CEO Raghu Raghavan in an interview with Demand Gen Report. “We will continue to grow our international presence, first in the UK and European Union, and then in Australia and New Zealand later this year."
Marketo’s new calendar and personalization tools were among the topics that generated buzz at the 2014 Marketing Nation Summit. In addition, a lot of the discussion centered on content, predictive analytics and the role of marketers as innovators in their organizations.
“The foundation of our customer engagement platform relies on these five things: Understand the customer, orchestrate the engagement, personalize the engagement, manage and optimize,” said Phil Fernandez, President and CEO of Marketo, during the keynote address where he introduced these new tools. "The idea of one-to-one marketing has been around so long that it has become synonymous with the unachievable — the holy grail of marketing, with our customer engagement platform and our continued innovation, it is not only possible, but it is here. And, marketers need it more than ever today as they compete for customers' time and attention."
By Jeff Pedowitz and Kevin Joyce, The Pedowitz Group
In the latter part of the 19th century John Wanamaker, the father of modern advertising, is reputed to have said “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.” Imagine you could demonstrate and manage the impact of marketing on revenue? Imagine you knew which half of your budget was well spent?
For a B2B company with sales cycles of more than six months this may still not be easy. Notice we are not talking about a labor of Sisyphus, pursuing marketing ROI on a single marketing initiative.
The Infusionsoft Small Business Sales and Marketing Scorecard analyzes a business’s current sales and marketing processes and provides customized recommendations to improve effectiveness and boost sales.
Invoca, a provider of cloud-based inbound call marketing technology, announced Invoca Signal, its new voice and call analytics platform designed to analyze inbound calls and automate the next steps with customers. In addition, the company announced it has added Salesforce as an investor in its Series C round of funding.
Invoca Signal includes scoring techniques with metrics and conversion data specific to the marketer's unique sales and marketing processes.
Buyers are looking for answers everywhere — on social media, in conversations with their peers and plugging key words into a search engine.
“Integrated marketing means your brand is the best answer when and where your buyers need it,” Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Online Marketing, told an audience at the recent 2014 Marketo Marketing Nation Summit.
CA Technologies’ marketing department was generating a steady flow of leads through a variety campaigns, so volume wasn’t a top concern. However, the management software and solutions firm wanted to get better at identifying which of those leads would most likely convert to sales.
To accomplish that goal, Beki Scarbrough, Senior Director of Demand Generation, told an audience at the recent 2014 Marketing Nation Summit that her team decided to look beyond the standard sales funnel. “It is important to recognize that there are leads, names and contacts completely outside of the funnel. That’s where you need to go.”
When B2B marketers watch content from B2C heavyweights like Oreo and Red Bull go viral, it can make them yearn to do the same. While they may not have the same reach, there are some things that B2B marketers can borrow from B2C content marketers and traditional publishing and even go beyond that model.
“In reality, content is a struggle for most of us,” Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer for MarketingProfs, told an early-morning audience at the recent 2014 Marketing Nation Summit. “Let’s take what we know works in traditional publishing and give it a makeover. We need content that conveys empathy and experiences that go beyond articles and blog posts.”
NetProspex, a cloud-based B2B marketing data management services provider, announced $13 million in series C funding, led by Spring Lake Equity Partners. The capital infusion will go towards continued product innovation and sales and marketing expansion to meet growing market demand, according to Michael Bird, who was recently promoted to CEO from president.
