Demand Gen Report

Lead management has been a hot discussion in marketing circles during the early part of 2011. However, while the attention to the handling and care of leads is a welcome priority, there is still a lot of confusion as to a real definition and guidelines for lead management.

DemandGen Report had the opportunity to catch up with Carlos Hidalgo, CEO of The Annuitas Group, to talk more about how the company is applying its own Lead Management Framework^SM successfully with clients across a number of different verticals. The Grand Rapids, MI-based consultancy recently expanded its staff by more than 50% and increased its client roster by 50%.

Teradata has finalized its acquisition of Aprimo, a leading provider of cloud-based integrated marketing software. Executives promise the marriage of the two companies will enable corporations to optimize marketing performance with more detailed, comprehensive insights from a universe exploding with big data.

“There are two core values that Teradata and Aprimo share: one is a commitment to customer loyalty and success,” said Lisa Arthur, CMO of Aprimo. “We’re extremely customer driven. Teradata happens to be extremely customer-centric as well, so we have a bond at the DNA level of ‘customer first’ and customer centricity. That, coupled with another one of our core values around the integrity and respect of individuals, is about winning in the market the right way…I can’t think of a better marriage for Aprimo than with Teradata. That bond puts real value behind this union.”

By Cari Baldwin, Co-Founder & Partner, BlueBird Strategies

Marketing departments today are under pressure to justify the effectiveness of their spending and demonstrate that their programs contribute to revenue growth. Estimates of campaign results and the relation of marketing-generated leads to actual sales won’t satisfy executives who want proof of returns on their large investments in marketing.

Analytics can help marketers with these challenges. Applied to information gathered from related relevant systems, analytics reveal patterns and enable organizations to measure their performance continually, comparing past to present and forecasting the future. They are the key to constructing metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) that guide improvement in individuals and groups, and show them where to deploy resources for the best ROI.

Coming off a strong Q4 2010, Pardot today announced that its marketing automation suite has been certified Platform Ready for integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.

The certification denotes that Microsoft recognizes a product as tested, approved and compatible with their offerings. Pardot debuted its Microsoft Dynamics CRM integration at the 2010 Microsoft Convergence event in Atlanta. The Pardot team will return to Microsoft Convergence this May to showcase the new and improved Dynamics CRM integration.