Salesforce.com, WebSideStory Form Partnership

CRM software provider Salesforce.com and WebSideStory, the creators of HitBox, a product for online marketing analytics and optimization, have announced a technology partnership to help clients with their online marketing programs.

Under the agreement, users of Salesforce.com S3 -- a new tool to manage customer relationships without software -- and WebSideStory's HitBox Enterprise will be able to link their systems and tie an entire marketing campaign together, from the number of visitors that were reached by a particular initiative, to the revenue that was ultimately generated from that same campaign.

The partnership closes a different piece of the marketing loop for each company's clients. By using HitBox Enterprise, for example, Salesforce.com S3 clients will now be able to view all the pre-conversion metrics of an online campaign, including impressions, clickthroughs and conversion rates.

By linking to Salesforce.com S3, HitBox Enterprise clients will be able to view post-conversion information, such as how much actual revenue was generated from a particular campaign. The additional layer of insight on both sides will enable marketers to fine-tune their campaigns to realize the best return on investment possible.

"This type of analysis provides a link between lead generation and sales revenue that is crucial for improving CRM effectiveness," notes Robert Blumstein, director of research for CRM analytics and marketing applications at research firm IDC. "Marketers need a complete, unified view of their online campaigns to make the best decisions."

HitBox Enterprise is an outsourced analytics service that monitors online visitor and customer behavior, including measuring the real-time response to online marketing campaigns.

According to the company, Salesforce.com S3 allows the scalable, secure management of sales force automation, campaign management, customer service and support, as well as documents and files.