There’s little doubt about the popularity of Pinterest, a social network that allows members to create digital scrapbooks by “pinning” of images of content and products discovered on the web to thematic boards. Given the surging popularity of Pinterest, the social network presents forward-thinking B2B marketers with an opportunity to extend the reach of their visually compelling content.

By Matthew McKenzie, Senior Editor, DemandGen Report

Here's an interesting nugget for B2B marketers trying to get a grip on when – or whether – to invest in mobile-ready content: Less than 10% of the web is mobile-friendly today.

These aren't the guys putting big bucks into iPad apps. They're the ones doing something – anything, really – to make their sites usable for visitors on mobile devices.

By Jeff Erramouspe, B2B Content Marketing Expert

Content Marketing is the new black, or so you would believe based on the plethora of conferences, seminars, webinars, magazines and books dedicated to the topic. While some may argue that content marketing is just a new name for something that marketers have done for years, I am in the opposite camp. I believe, at a minimum, that content marketing puts a new focus on the proper ways to allow marketers to effectively engage with their prospects through the sales process.

Televerde recently announced the launch of its Human Touch Cloud Connector for Eloqua, designed to help marketers  initiate conversations with customers and prospects “at any step in any program.” The new connector, which can be created as a step within Eloqua Program Builder, is designed to enable relevant and timely dialogue with customers and prospects.

HomeStar Broker Solutions Corp., a provider of Internet lead conversion solutions to the real estate industry, and LeadMaster, a provider of cloud computing solutions for CRM, sales lead management, marketing automation and sales force automation, announced an agreement to provide LeadMaster as the engine for the HomeStar Technology Platform.

Vancouver, Canada-based HomeStar Broker Solutions is a lead management company specializing in online conversions in real estate. The company’s clients include real estate companies looking for outsourced assistance in lead response, agent support and lead cultivation.

The company provides its clients with support to validate and respond to online property  inquiries, and to ensure immediate follow up. The company also offers back-end support to monitor agent activity and optimize lead conversion efforts.

Marketing automation software vendor Neolane recently announced new features for Neolane Interaction, the company's real-time offer management solution. The new features are designed to provide a better experience for anonymous users and to provide better alignment for cross-channel marketing campaigns.

Neolane Interaction combines a central offer catalog, business rules engine and database marketing list to identify individuals arriving via inbound marketing channels. It then selects, personalizes and renders appropriate offers for each user based on their behavior and known personal characteristics. It is available as either a stand-alone solution or as part of the company's campaign management software.

Business information provider D&B recently released Hoover's Optimizer, a new add-on module for its Hoover's Online service offering. The add-on is designed to address data-quality issues for small and medium-sized businesses that maintain customer and prospect databases.

According to a D&B press release, Hoover's Optimizer will draw upon D&B's database, which includes information on more than 205 million businesses worldwide. The add-on will allow users to integrate this data with their existing databases, and to eliminate problems with inaccurate or incomplete customer records.

By Troy Burk, Founder & CEO, Right On Interactive

Organizations are always looking for ways to decrease costs and increase sales. The key to achieving these goals is not blasting your database with “nurturing” emails, or your sales team making ‘X’ number of cold calls in a day; rather, it’s encouraging meaningful engagement with your prospects and customers. The problem is, while many companies go to great lengths to educate and engage their prospects, many more fail to recognize that their most valuable asset is right in front of them: the customer.

Pardot has joined a growing list of marketing automation software companies reporting solid growth numbers during the first quarter of 2012.

The company, which focuses on the SMB marketing automation software solutions, reported 114 new clients during the quarter. The growth follows what the company called a record-breaking fourth quarter of 2011, when it added 140 new SMB clients and added advanced campaign reporting and analysis capabilities to its product line.

By Matt McKenzie, Senior Editor

A new study from MarketingSherpa shows that B2B email marketing is often an exercise in contradictions. That's especially true for marketing organizations that increasingly demand hard ROI from their email campaigns – even though most of them aren't actually able to measure ROI.

MarketingSherpa surveyed more than 2,700 marketing organizations to compile its 2012 Email Marketing Benchmark Report. It found that 68% of the marketers polled say they do not have a method for quantifying their email marketing ROI.

"It's difficult to determine the financial contributions of an email marketing program to the C-suite unless you have a reliable method to quantify email's impact," wrote W. Jeffrey Rice, Senior Research Analyst for MarketingSherpa, in an article detailing the finding.