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While it has only been a few weeks since CallidusCloud acquired LeadRocket, the company has ambitious plans to integrate the social engagement and sales front-end of the tool with its marketing automation platform.
Demand Gen Report recently caught up with Giles House, CMO of CallidusCloud, who said the company expects to unveil the integration at its CallidusCloud Connections 2014 users’ conference in Las Vegas May 12-14, 2014.
“We’re very fired up about the abilities of the LeadRocket product to bridge the gap between sales and marketing,” House said. “It opens up the sophistication of marketing automation to salespeople within their native client, be that email inbox or CRM, and it provides them with access to real-time engagement intelligence of their one-to-one communications.”
House noted that the group involved in the LeadRocket product, which was a project within Genius, is coming over to CallidusCloud. Sam Weber, who was CEO, is now VP and General Manager of LeadRocket at CallidusCloud. “It is a great group of people who worked on both solutions, and we are heads down adding new features and adding the integration layer. There are a lot of synergies with the teams and technology as the stack is the same. It is a great testament to the people and technology that we will be able to handle the integration so quickly.”
House explained that the integration of CallidusCloud’s marketing automation solution (formerly LeadFormix) and the LeadRocket product will provide individual sales people with the ability to listen to and engage prospects on social media, as well as initiate campaigns from anywhere, including their mobile device.
The interface will be able to take the best practices established in the marketing automation system and apply them to the sales process, House explained. “The sales team sends out emails to prospects continuously, and the good ones follow up. By integrating the systems, the follow-up process can be automated, boosting lead conversion rates.”
The integration will also help the flow of information back to the marketing automation system, House said, as LeadRocket has tools and tracking technologies to help gauge the effectiveness of campaigns. Analytics will help marketing and sales more accurately determine where a prospect is in the buying decision and provide further insights into a prospect’s level of interest, he added.
“It provides the CMO with more insights regarding the performance of assets being used by the sales team, which is important as marketing is being asked to deliver more qualified leads and is responsible for more of the pipeline,” House said. “Right now, most CMOs don’t have that visibility into the day to day progress of opportunities in the sales pipeline. When a sales person sends out an email, a tracking link can provide analytics, including whether the email was opened, what pages the recipient visited and how much time they spent there.
