Demand Generation Vendor Marketo Announces Lead Insight for Sales as 100% Force.com Native Application

Lead management customers will be able to align marketing and sales around a single revenue cycle directly within Salesforce CRM.

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) November 3, 2008 -- Salesforce.com Dreamforce Conference, Booth #728 - Lead management software (http://www.marketo.com/b2b-marketing-software/lead-management-software.php) company Marketo today announced it is developing the next version of its product for aligning marketing and sales, Marketo Lead Insight for Sales, as a 100% Force.com native application. Developing natively using Force.com enables Marketo to accelerate its pace for delivering innovative, revenue-driving functionality, shortening time to market and ensuring a seamless experience for joint Salesforce CRM - Marketo users.

Lead Insight for Sales allows marketing and sales teams to collaboratively identify and interact with the best sales leads. It lets sales reps interact with prospects via personalized email campaigns and sends instant notifications if a prospect opens the email or visits the website. Reps can close more deals faster by focusing on the highest-potential contacts, tracking lead behavior, and getting alerts about key prospect behaviors and buying signs. Since the new version will be 100% Force.com native, it means this success will be easier than ever since salespeople who already know how to use Salesforce CRM will have nothing new to learn.

"Companies can't afford for their marketing spend and selling time go to waste because the two departments aren't working together," said Erik Stenson, Vice President of Sales for Picateers. "Marketo makes it easy for our two teams to work in concert, and each department benefits from the hard work of the other. If you want to drive revenue, it's absolutely imperative to have all cylinders firing in unison. Marketo Lead Management combined with Marketo Lead Insight for Sales helps us do that."

Marketo is already among the fastest-growing marketing automation (http://www.marketo.com/b2b-marketing-resources/marketing-automation.php) vendors in the industry, with more than 100 joint customers with salesforce.com including companies such as LucidEra, Right90, ThomsonReuters, Trimble and Zuora. As evidenced by Marketo's five-star ratings on the Force.com AppExchange, this rapid growth is driven by Marketo's combination of powerful functionality, intuitive interface, and commitment to customer success. Development of this native application on Force.com builds on the company's momentum and its commitment to provide innovative, easy-to-use tools for marketing and sales teams that unite both departments around a common revenue pipeline.

"Marketo believes in a new model for unlocking top-line growth, which we call the Revenue Cycle (http://blog.marketo.com/blog/2008/07/the-revenue-cyc.html). This starts the day a prospect first hears about a company and continues through the sale and beyond, meaning it provides a complete picture across marketing and sales functions," said Phil Fernandez, President and CEO of Marketo. "Executing on this ambitious vision requires us to deliver innovative, enterprise-class functionality quickly - and developing natively on Force.com allows us to go from idea to application in the shortest possible time, ultimately making our customers more successful, faster."

"With the Force.com platform and the AppExchange we are helping our partners focus on delivering innovation instead of managing more infrastructure," said Clarence So, Chief Marketing Officer of salesforce.com. "Marketo is a prime example of the innovation we're enabling to accelerate success not only for our partners, but for our customers as well."

About the Force.com Platform and AppExchange:

Force.com is the only proven Platform as a Service for building and running business applications in the cloud. The Force.com platform powers the Salesforce CRM applications, more than 800 ISV partner applications like those from CODA and Fujitsu, and more than 85,000 custom applications used by salesforce.com's 47,700 customers such as Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE and Sprint Nextel.

Force.com is the fastest platform for building and deploying complex business applications. Unlike a stack of disparate client/server hardware and software products, Force.com unifies the development and deployment model from the database to the device, allowing developers to easily assemble applications with clicks, components and code, and then instantly deploy them on salesforce.com's trusted global infrastructure. Customers and partners are using Force.com to build all kinds of business applications from supply chain management to compliance tracking, brand management, accounts receivable, claims processing applications and much more.

Applications built on the Force.com platform can be easily distributed to the entire SaaS community through the Force.com AppExchange marketplace at http://www.salesforce.com/appexchange/.

About Marketo (http://www.marketo.com):

Marketo provides B2B marketing automation (http://www.marketo.com) software that translates marketing spending into revenue. Our award-winning lead management software (http://www.marketo.com/b2b-marketing-software/lead-management-software.php) features email marketing, lead nurturing, lead scoring, and closed-loop reporting capabilities to help marketing and sales teams work together to generate and qualify sales leads, shorten sales cycles, and demonstrate marketing accountability. Driven by a relentless focus on customer success and the most innovative user experience in business software today, Marketo is emerging as the fastest-growing lead management vendor in the world. Marketo's on-demand marketing products are easy to buy because they don't require complex implementation or upfront fees, easy to own because they don't require IT support, and easy to use without specialized technical skills or significant training. Pricing starts as low as $1,500 a month, and qualified customers who commit to running a production campaign can get started with a free trial that includes set-up, training, and integration.

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