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With two new acquisitions, ExactTarget is pushing beyond its original email marketing mission to become a one-stop online marketing and social media shop. The company has acquired Pardot for $95.5 million and iGoDigital for $21 million; it announced both deals last week. ExactTarget paid out $85.5 m...

Lithium Technologies acquired Social Dynamx this week and moved immediately to bring a combined product to market: Lithium Social Web is available now. The two companies offer complementary functionality, which made the acquisition a natural fit, said Rob Tarkoff, CEO of Lithium. "We build communiti...

As a technology journalist, I interact with public relations professionals regularly, to the point where some firms have asked me to speak internally about what journalists are looking for from the companies they cover. Usually, these are straightforward discussions -- journalists want access and th...

I went to Oracle OpenWorld as a guest of Oracle and came away with a variety of observations that I can share. Some of what I saw was under NDA and that will remain undisclosed, though I have to tell you that I did not see any labs or next-generation products beyond what my colleagues saw at the sho...

Showrooming enabled by the proliferation of smartphones has become the bane of brick-and-mortar retailers. Basically, consumers waltz into a local Best Buy or similar big box store, find the product they are thinking of buying and check it out. So far, so good, from the retailer's perspective -- onl...

Is your small business guilty as sin? Many small businesses are committing sales transgressions that hinder success and threaten to condemn them to eternal mediocrity in the market. The root of all these sins lies in a failure to adhere to the "commandment of commitment." To stay on the right path, ...

There are countless of CRM apps for small businesses, Bizness Apps CEO Andrew Gazdecki readily admits. But CRM apps aimed at companies that sell to small businesses? Not so much. Enter Bizness Apps, which has launched Bizness CRM, a Web-based app, as well as native iPhone app, that is aimed precisel...

One of the tricky parts of developing a social CRM strategy is that it requires left-brain and right-brain thinking. The left brain, where more logical and procedural thinking takes place, is comparable to how "traditional" CRM operates, organizing and distributing data based on predetermined proces...

I've been at OpenWorld for two days as I file this, but so far I have little CRM-oriented material. CRM really kicks in on Wednesday when the company focuses on CX -- or customer experience -- the moniker that Oracle has given to much of its CRM focus. CX is good for what Oracle is about and some of...

CRM is a mature software category with a decades-plus history of development and evolution. Still, one important problem remains unsolved: A lot of employees, especially sales staff, just can't be bothered with it. Corporate "solutions" have ranged from bribing to arm-twisting to appeals to corporat...

Moxie Software recently released two separate, albeit highly complementary, CRM self-service applications. One is a revamped version of its self-service application called "Knowledge Spaces." Enhancements allow users to "widgetize" pieces of the application and embed just those portions on a website...

About five years ago, CRM analyst and author Paul Greenberg set out to develop a definition for social CRM, or CRM 2.0, as some called it at the time. It was this: "Social CRM is a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, workflow, processes and social characteristics, ...

More companies than ever are seeking to understand project accounting costs as they realize that knowledge of this data impacts their bottom line and exposes areas where costs can be cut and profits can be made. By understanding project accounting costs, companies can discover financial problems wit...

It's over, Dreamforce that is, and I have gotten some needed sleep on the flight back to Boston. As I contemplate Dreamforce 2012 and its meaning, I have three observations. First, it was what I expected it to be. If you refer back to my post just before the show opened my expectations were more tha...

Discover Bank is refunding approximately $200 million to more than 3.5 million customers under a joint enforcement action by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. Discover will also pay a $14 million civil money penalty, with half going to the U.S. Treasury ...