Allow me to introduce myself: I’m a CRM Magazine editorial assistant by day and a fiction writer by night. Most of my work experience has been done in or around the publishing industry. I spent four years at Pen American Center working with authors, agents and editors. I spent 1.5 years at Publishers Weekly where I served as an Editorial Assistant.

I’ve been with CRM Magazine for exactly two weeks and, while I’m completely exhausted and overwhelmed, I can already tell that I’m going to enjoy being around all the analysts, journalists, and tech-junkies. I’ve spent most of my two weeks learning all the jargon: leads, microblogging, contact center infrastructure, interaction platforms, etc. (When did my tweets and status updates become microblogs? I’m still confused.) And I feel as if I’m starting to catch my stride.

My beat is going to be marketing so that’s what most of my posts will focus on. I’m sure I’ll venture off topic occassionally. I hope to be reading your comments for a very long time.  Lets get to business…

Last week MaaS Impact, pioneers in Marketing-as-a-Service, announced the availability of Lead Impact and Sales Insight on AppExchange from Salesforce.com. According to the press release, the applications facilitate Demand Generation Automation, which will allow companies to better “create email nurturing campaigns triggered by lead score and behavioral demographics.”

The press release quotes MaaS Impact client, John Schaeffer of Interactive Data, LLC as saying,” “MaaS Impact allows us to see what prospects are hot and how our marketing is engaging leads in real-time.  For us, that translates into more revenue with fewer in-house employees.”

What I’ve learned thus far about how marketing and CRM mesh is that companies want to engage with their customers and leads in real time. They want to know what consumers are telling each other and they want to know how to improve a relationship that might be floundering. The faster they can engage leads and customers the higher the likelihood of meeting their needs.

So for any company looking for a way to improve their ability to guide leads from finding the product to being interested in the product to actually buying the product, Lead Impact and Sales Insight might be what you’re looking for. I’m interested to hear what your thoughts on the product might be.