My company, Software Advice, is a free online resource for software buyers. We literally spend over 10 hours a day talking to software buyers on the phone, helping them sort through the hundreds of systems on the market to identify a short list. After we help them decide on which systems to research, ...

Here is the reality marketers face today: reduced budgets, fewer resources and hardened C-level execs who are unlikely to invest in any new technology. However, marketing automation has proven itself to be a powerful tool for marketers. In fact, Focus Research said that marketing automation has seen ...

One of the first steps in purchasing a new software system is buyer education. When it comes to marketing software, there is some confusion between email marketing and marketing automation software. Many buyers see the two as synonymous, but in reality, the systems are very different, with a varied feature ...

When I first started in the enterprise software industry, marketing automation software was a relatively quiet niche. There were a handful of vendors controlling the majority of the market share, but enough buzz to where new products were starting to make a play for a piece of that market. Today, marketing ...

Many people, if given the chance to do something over again, would take it. It is almost certain that with more insight, you could have made a better, more informed decision. Using this as my premise, I decided to survey users of marketing automation software to find out what they would have changed ...

The numbers don’t lie: B2B organizations are reporting a 10 percent loss in yearly revenue due to lack of marketing and sales alignment. Why is this? Because these companies either don’t have marketing automation software, or they have it, but marketers are still behind. There is a clear ...

When you are looking to make a purchase – let’s say a new laptop – what do you do? Do you hop on the phone and call up Apple to get product specs and pricing information? In 1990, yes. In 2011, absolutely not. The buyer no longer relies on vendors entirely. They surf the Internet, going ...

I can’t help but take notice of the recent string of cloud failures we’ve been hearing about this year. Blogger went down for about 20 hours last month and Microsoft’s BPOS hosted bundle also reported a significant amount of downtime. Perhaps the most notable was when Amazon’s ...

More and more, marketers are hearing that content is king. And guess what? It’s true. Publishing unique and engaging content on your site will not only attract visitors to your site, but also set you apart from your competition. Some sites, however, like to borrow content from other sites, brand ...

Marketing automation software is still considered a relative newcomer in the enterprise software space. However, there are new entrants popping up regularly, leading to a lot of activity and buzz in the market. With the growth in this space, the topic of venture capital comes up fairly often. Some vendors ...