Salesforce.com, WebSideStory Partner to Provide Analytics

Following on the heels of its S3 branding announcement, Salesforce.com and WebSideStory announced this morning that the two ASPs are partnering to provide clients with more detailed marketing capabilities. According to the companies, under the agreement clients of Salesforce.com S3 and WebSideStory's HitBox Enterprise will be able to link their systems and tie an entire marketing campaign together, including the number of visitors that were reached by a particular initiative and the revenue that was ultimately generated from that same campaign. The partnership is complementary, the companies say, as it 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 preconversion metrics of an online campaign, including impressions, click-throughs, and conversion rates. By linking to Salesforce.com S3, HitBox Enterprise clients will be able to view postconversion 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. "What this exactly means is that we have all Web metrics on our side, and it's the first time you can map that information by what closes, how much revenue came from a campaign, etc.," says Rand Schulman, CMO at WebSideStory. "It really gives that 360-degree view of the customer that we've always sought from a marketing perspective." Salesforce.com prides itself on the fact that upgrades are instantaneous and require no action on the part of their customers. Cary Fulbright, senior vice president of worldwide marketing at Salesforce.com, says that this integration will be quite smooth given its complexity. "It will not be completely seamless, because there are so many things to connect in the back end, but compared to integrating SAP AG with Siebel Systems, it is seamless," he says. Schulman says WebSideStory supports Salesforce.com's sforce integration platform and its data will tie in seamlessly with all Salesforce.com user screens. "We're both ASPs, so no one will have to install anything," he adds. Robert Blumstein, director of research for CRM analytics and marketing applications at IDC, said in a statement released by the companies that this is an evolutionary step in hosted marketing solutions. "This type of analysis provides a link between lead generation and sales revenue that is crucial for improving CRM effectiveness. Marketers need a complete, unified view of their online campaigns to make the best decisions," he said. Schulman and Fulbright note that exact pricing is still to be determined, but says that Salesforce.com customers will most likely receive an introductory discount if they choose to take advantage of the HitBox service, and vice versa. Fulbright says current users of both solutions will see not incremental costs for using the combined solution.