Lead Management & Marketing Automation

This is a list of  interesting Marketing Automation and Demand Generation blogs. It is in progress, so feel free to suggest additional blogs: please also give a short summary of the focus of the blog, and why you like it. See below for the runners up section.

• Adam Needles‘ Propelling Brands blog (@abneedles)
  Adam – the former VP Marketing of the 451 Group – is finishing up a graduate project on marketing technology and publishes deep insights about marketing automation
• Ardath Albee’s Marketing Interactions blog (@ardath421)
  Ardath is a talented independent marketing consultant who writes about using content to engage with prospective customers; she really gets Marketing & Sales collaboration
• B2B Marketing Zone
  This is more of a meta-blog, aggregating a large number of B2B blogs, including this blog. I’ve discovered several new and interesting blogs on the B2B Marketing Zone, so highly recommended.
• Brenda Gelston’ Marketing Momentum blog (@brendagelston)
  This blog provides a strategic perspective on the demand generation process.
• Brian Carroll’s B2B Lead Generation blog (@brianjcarroll)
  Brian is the author of the authoritative book “Lead generation for the complex sale” and has a wealth of interesting articles on his blog
• Craig Rosenberg’s Funnelholic blog (@funnelholic)
  Craig has lots of experience with sales operations and demand generation, and shares his and other people’s knowledge via his blog. Lately he has published 15+ thought leadership interviews that are extremely insightful
• David Meerman Scott’s Web Ink Now blog (@dmscott)
  David’s posts are about content-based marketing, which is an important ingredient of successful lead generation. He’s also a talented writer, so it’s always fun to read.
• David Raab’s Marketing Automation technology blog (@draab)
  He covers lots of Marketing Automation vendors, he offers insights into usability of demand generation systems and covers various other topics.
• DemandGen Report (@dg_report)
  This is an leading online magazine for Marketing Automaton, which features vendor information, news articles a job board and more.
• Gary Katz, Marketing Operations at Work (@MOPartnersCEO)
  Gary is one of the forces behind promoting marketing operations as a important specialty, and on his blog he writes about this.
• Jame Ervin’s @Work blog (@jameane)
  Jame is an experienced demand gen practitioner, who really understands metrics-based lead generation.
• Jeff Ogden’s Fearless Competitor blog (@Jeff_Ogden)
  Jeff specializes in helping companies find new customers, he wrote a great e-book about that, and blogs about Demand Generation, primarily from a Sales perspective
• Ken Molay, Webinar Blog (@klmonline)
  Demand generation is not complete without covering Webinars, one of the key lead generation programs. Ken’s blog full of useful webinar ideas.
• Laura Ramos‘ B2B Marketing posts (@lauraramos)
  Laura is the star analyst at Forrester covering B2B Marketing, and frequently has some very interesting perspectives, such as a discussion around obsolescence of B2B marketing
• Mac McIntosh’s Sales Lead Insights blog (@B2B_Sales_Leads)
  Mac is a leading sales and marketing consultant and award-winning columnist for BtoB magazine. Like no other he understands B2B lead generation
• Maria Pergolino’s Inbound Marketer blog (@InboundMarketer)
  Maria is a demand generation practitioner who covers a variety of topics, from selection criteria to weekly summaries of interesting demand generation tweets. Maria now primarily writes on the Marketo blog
• Mike Damphousse’s Smashmouth Marketing blog (@damphoux)
  Mike’s blog focuses on a broad range of b2b marketing issues.  Although he covers other topics, demand generation from an outbound perspective is his forte.  Always a clear message and non-commercial.
• Rebekah Donaldson’s “Red on Marketing” (@b2bcommunicate)
  Rebekah and her team write about demand generation, with lots of good articles on content marketing and social media.
• Scott Brinker’s Chief Marketing Technologist blog (@chiefmartec)
  Scott writes about the technical aspects of marketing, and about post-click marketing in particular.
• Upshot Institute
  This is a resource website with information on marketing automation vendors, podcasts, webinars and blogs.

Vendor blogs

• ActiveConversion B2B Marketing Blog
  This is my new discovery. Recently, they are writing more posts, and some good ones too! For example, I like Six Steps to Punching Above Your Weight.
• Eloqua Marketing Insights and Digital Body Language
  For Eloqua I’m following two blogs. I really like their CTO Steve Woods’ blog: Digital Body Language. The corporate blog is a little more corporate, but some good articles.
• Genius.com B2B Marketing for Faster Sales Blog
  Genius publishes some good best practices posts, combined with some company-related news.
• Hubspot Internet Marketing Blog
  Hubspot is probably both the most active and most popular blog of this list. It is about Internet marketing: very interesting posts about SEO, PPC and Social Media.
• Market2Lead Marketing Automation and Lead Management blog
  The Market2Lead blog got a boost when Kevin Joyce joined the company. He writes in-depth posts on Marketing Automation best practices.
• Marketbright blog
  On average every week Mike Pilcher publishes an interesting post. Lately he has published a couple of interesting though leadership posts, most recently with Ardath Albee (her blog was in last week’s Top-10 ).
• Marketo Modern B2B Marketing Blog
  Marketo publishes a steady stream of interesting articles, now including articles written by Maria Pergolino from the Inbound Marketer blog (also on the earlier Top-10 ).
• Net-Results blog
  This is one of the newer vendors in the Demand Generation market, focused on the SMB market.
• Pardot Corporate Blog and Adam Blitzer’s B2B Marketing ROI blog
  Pardot’s corporate blog has practical tips for email marketing, landing pages, search engine optimization and marketing automation. Marketing VP Adam Blitzer posts less frequently but goes more in-depth.
• Reachforce: The B2B Lead
  Reachforce publishes almost daily Lead Generation tips. They’re numbering them, and they are at #230 now!
• ReadyContacts Lead Data Management blog
  This blog focuses on B2B list building, not surprisingly, because that’s what ReadyContacts focuses on.
• Silverpop Engage B2B Blog
  Will Schnabel has published some really good pieces, such as “5 Tips to Improve Efficiencies Using Lead Management Solutions“. Recently Adam Needles joined the Silverpop team, so they now blogging even more actively.

Runners up

• Robert Lesser’s Acquiring Minds blog (@RobertLesser)
  Offers perspectives and research on how B2B marketers are best using old and new media to generate demand.
• Ask Justin Hitt blog (@hittjw)
  Justin writes about challenges faced by sales and marketing professionals in B2B technology services organizations
• Melissa Paulik’s “The Marketing Survivalist” blog (@MelissaPaulik)
  Melissa is a marketing coach and trainer who writes about business blogging, lead nurturing, and many more B2B marketing topics.
• Jason Kort’s Marketing Automation Now
  Jason blogs about CRM and Marketing Automation, including an occasional podcast.