Insights from Eloqua's IPO Registration Statement

Summary: Eloqua's registration statement offers new and interesting details about its business. My analysis is below. Hopefully it's accurate -- I think that SEC rules prevent them from commenting if it's not.Eloqua last week filed for an initial public offering of its stock. The registration statements accompanying these filings are like a striptease: often more interesting for what they hide than what they reveal. Eloqua’s was no exception.Let’s...

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Affiliate Summit East: How to Stand Out in a Crowded Market

I spent several hours this morning at the Affiliate Summit East in New York. This is a corner of the direct marketing industry I haven't examined in depth although it overlaps with lead generation, online advertising, and performance measurement segments I know well. The exhibit hall was enticingly crammed with unfamiliar vendors, although I saw enough to identify a few general categories: offer aggregators who bring together products for affiliates to sell; network providers who assemble audiences for affiliates to sell to; and technology providers...

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Can CRM Add-Ons Replace Marketing Automation?

I’ve long believed that B2B marketing automation is just a passing phase: that, ultimately, B2B marketing automation systems will be absorbed into CRM systems instead of operating independently. It’s a view I discuss sparingly in public, since so many of my friends in the marketing automation industry have a vested interest to the contrary. But there are also a few vendors who have bet in favor of merged systems, so it wouldn’t be fair to ignore their view entirely.Vendors have made the bet by building marketing automation add-ons to a CRM system...

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CRM Evolution Conference: Social CRM Takes Center Stage

I caught an all-star panel on social CRM today at the CRMEvolution conference in New York. Up on the dais were Jim Berkowitz of CRM Mastery, Esteban Kolsky of ThinkJar, Brent Leary of CRM Essentials, Ray Wang of Constellation Group, and Denis Pombriant of Beagle Research Group. You won’t find a more distinguished set of gurus, and moderator Berkowitz asked appropriately incisive questions.Yet my final impression was that social CRM is a problem in search of a solution. Maybe it was because the speakers kept emphasizing the need to define strategy...

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Act-On Buys Marketbright Assets

Act-On Software announced last week that they had purchased the assets of Marketbright, a pioneering marketing automation vendor that has struggled in recent years. Marketbright’s problems have been obvious for months, so that they would vanish is not news. The interesting question is why Act-On made the purchase.I discussed this last Thursday with Act-On CEO Raghu Raghavan. Part of his answer was because they could: having raised $10 million in June, Act-On can now consider acquisitions of less-well-endowed competitors. Beyond that, Raghavan...

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