Will Salesforce.com’s acquisition of ExactTarget fuel interest in marketing automation, or does it mean that the marketing automation function is going to get gobbled up by CRMs, the way Oracle swallowed Eloqua? While it is still early in the game, most experts who spoke with Demand Gen Report said the ExactTarget deal was a positive move for the marketing automation space. However, independent vendors will have to address other marketing functions such as budgeting, content planning and financial applications to remain viable in the long term.

“It is a brilliant move for [Salesforce.com] that gives entry into B2C markets, addresses a critical functional weakness in their own system, and gives them Pardot marketing automation for free,” said David M. Raab, Principal, Raab Associates. “Marketing automation sits right between email and CRM, so once you control those two, then marketing automation pretty much comes along for the ride. But I don’t think SFDC will shut out competitors, so it’s not an immediate death sentence for independent marketing automation vendors.”

Kapost announced an editorial calendar app for Eloqua users, enabling them to view their email and campaign activities on monthly and quarterly calendars directly within the marketing automation platform.

The free Kapost Calendar App Beta, which will be available in late June to all Eloqua 10 users, offers two views: Content and Campaigns. Respectively, they show sent and scheduled Eloqua emails on a monthly, weekly and daily basis; and activated and scheduled Eloqua campaigns on a quarterly basis.

When B2B marketers send out a typical paid tweet, they have to direct leads to a landing page with a form for their name, company, email and any other pertinent bits of data they want to capture. As any marketer knows, when prospects have to go to another site and fill out a form it increases the likelihood that they will just abandon the task.

That is all about to change with Twitter’s new Lead Generation Cards, which are being called revolutionary by some industry observers and could have an impact on how other social media outlets address the needs of B2B marketers going forward.

Salesforce.com — long thought to be in the market to acquire a marketing automation vendor since Oracle bought Eloqua — announced plans to purchase ExactTarget for about $2.5 billion. The move comes as a bit of a surprise to industry observers, who noted that Marketo’s recent successful IPO positioned the company as an appealing acquisition target for Salesforce.com.

The transaction, which has been unanimously approved by the Boards of Directors of both companies, is expected to close late in Salesforce.com's fiscal second quarter, ending July 31. The acquisition is expected to increase total revenue by $120 to $125 million in fiscal year 2014.

VisiStat, a cloud-based digital analytics service for marketing and lead generation, announced the launch of two major product versions — VisiStat 10.0 and LeadCaster 4.0.— that feature advanced lead search, comprehensive lead scoring, live leads, and lead history.

In this new release, all lead capture information is presented on one screen, bringing all data together for simple review and fast action by the user, according to company officials.

Skyword, a content production platform provider, recently landed $6.7 million in growth financing led by Cox Media Group. The investment is said to help expand the team and help scale the company to meet increasing customer and partner needs, according to Skyword officials.

“We are in the midst of a perfect storm in the digital information era,” said Tom Gerace, Founder and CEO of Skyword. “Today’s converged media landscape and the evolving relationship between brands and consumers are driving marketers and publishers to rethink their tried-and-true strategies and invest in new technology solutions to better connect with customers. Cox Media Group continues to be a strategic partner in our growth as we push to reshape the industry.”

Act-On announced Act-On Inbound, which extends Act-On’s marketing automation platform to include advanced inbound marketing capabilities such as SEO enhancement and in-depth metrics. The company also announced a new mobile app for Android and iPhone users along with increased offerings of mobile-optimized templates, forms, and preview options within the interface.

Act-On Inbound allows customers to optimize their content, blog, and web site for search engines, manage keywords for both SEO and AdWords, and accurately measure the effectiveness of these campaigns.

Whether it is a playful infographic or a more serious thought leadership piece, the common threads of all of the winners of the Killer Content Awards is that they connect with their audiences in ways that are meaningful and measurable.

Any great campaign begins with clearly established objectives — help new sales leaders extend their tenure, reach mid-sized firms or explain the impact of Big Data on sales organizations. These assets were then aligned to those specific aspirations, which resulted in effective, targeted content.