An integrated marketing software suite is the big picture goal of leading marketing automation vendor Marketo.

Last week, in San Francisco, company founder Phil Fernandez told the 2800 delegates at his customer conference, the Marketo Summit, that an integrated marketing platform was the long-term objective.

Fernandez cited Marketo’s alliance with marketing budgeting company Allocadia as evidence of the company’s commitment.

Together with other possible partners, such as the content management specialist Kapost, there were plenty of evidence that the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle could come together for Marketo.

Whilst the sign posts are pointing in the right direction, more detail would have been welcome during the keynote, which was interesting but not compelling.

Together with Datarati’s Will Scully Power, I presented the Ansell case study to a good crowd of 320+ in one of the conference’s supporting sessions.

It’s no surprise, but we’re all facing similar challenges:

• Marketing and Sales alignment is an ongoing challenge for all of us
• Inside Sales is a critical success factor to ensure leads are filtered before any hand off to Sales.
• The accurate attribution of revenue to marketing is a process of continuous optimisation and refinement.
• Don’t use marketing jargon with the C Suite and Sales people. Communicate to them in the vernacular they use when discussing their priorities, e.g. revenue growth, not opens and clicks on links, for example.

It is interesting times in the still relatively new marketing automation space.

Before the conference, Marketo announced their plans to raise $US 75 million in an upcoming IPO. This has brought to the foreground the speculation about who may buy out Marketo. Late last year Oracle acquired Marketo competitor Eloqua.

Salesforce.com. Microsoft and SAP are all seen as potential acquirers of Marketo. If it happens, what would that mean for the integrated marketing suite vision?