Marketing Automation tools are so powerful they can help you efficiently overload your sales team, spam your market, publish lots of content no one will read, and then get accurate analytics on how your marketing investment has been wasted.  If you think this might be happening don’t feel alone.

B2B strategy and execution is just starting to catch up to the potential of the software.  The mix of skills and expertise needed to create success crosses different marketing disciplines from content, to web development, to campaign planning, to email marketing, to analytics and more.

This post reviews the different available service options, what to look for, and how to identify what you really need. Read more »

Here is a quick recap of some of the most popular, smart, and entertaining tweets from the Pardot Elevate 2010 Marketing Automation User Conference Sept 28-29 in Atlanta.

Click here to get to get free access all the presentations from this terrific conference.

RT @Pardot: We’re excited to have over 100 @pardot clients visit us in Atlanta next week! http://prd.to/a8EVEw #pardot2010
twitter.com/AdamBlitzer

Check out presentations online: http://bit.ly/c4GM19 More to come… plus videos! #Pardot2010
twitter.com/nolin

Learned more at #pardot2010 in 2 days about using @pardot in 3 years. … #pardot2010
twitter.com/chrisuscha

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At their first-ever (and very successful!) user conference in Atlanta last week, Pardot presented their short-term roadmap for their marketing automation tool. (if you’d like to check out other presentations given at the 2-day event, they are posted online.)

A few of the new upcoming additions have me especially excited:

1. Tags. If you’re working with small numbers of forms, landing pages, and content assets in your marketing automation tool you like to see them on one screen. But as your inventory of items grows longer, you need to be able to organize them. Folders are one option, but they restrict you to a mutually exclusive approach to organizing things (one item can only exist in one folder). So instead of folders, Pardot will soon allow the user to tag items with one or multiple tags. That means we will be able to organize (and sort, and find, and *hopefully* report on) items by topic, type, date, and any other relevant organizational attribute.

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We focus on using a best practice system of marketing tools, content, and programs to connect and convert more customers. Our approach? B2B marketing is a lot like like dating.

We tried out that analogy at Pardot’s Elevate 2010 user conference: a great marketing automation event with a very smart audience.  One attendee told us the dating metaphor applies to putting your content behind forms…”You don’t want to give it up too easy”.  Awesome, smart, and funny at the same time!

Listed below are 5 B2B dating rules from the presentation.  Click here to see the full presentation in our knowledge center. Read more »