BURLINGTON, MA -- (Marketwire) -- 11/08/12 -- Awareness, Inc., provider of on-demand social marketing automation software, today announced the results of a 451 Group Spotlight Report on customer acquisition social tools, naming Awareness a leader in the space.

The report examines the budding 'social customer acquisition' market. Social marketing vendors are enhancing their product offerings beyond what is traditionally offered by social media management platforms. Specifically, 451 highlights Awareness' Social Profiling and Social Scoring capabilities that allows marketers to analyze and apply custom segmentation logic to their social databases to meet specific customer acquisition and conversion goals, and as a result increase social marketing ROI and sales. As companies collect demographic and social activity data, they can implement sophisticated triggers to identify intent to purchase, brand advocacy and signs of customer churn at a scale not available in social media management, social marketing automation or social CRM systems for the SMB sector.

"Social media has always held more potential than simply a broadcast marketing channel. Social customer acquisition has been a dream for marketers since the rise of social media," says Mike Lewis, vice president of marketing and sales for Awareness. "We are pleased that 451 recognizes and validates the importance of this fundamental shift in social marketing."

The 451 Research report, Has social customer acquisition emerged as a stand-alone market, reviews the acquisition activity in the social marketing space within the last 18 months, which amounts to over a billion dollars with several vendors emerging with models focusing on building strong prospect pipelines for both B2C and B2B business models, inside and across social channels. On the enterprise end of the spectrum, the report includes Adobe's $400M acquisition of Efficient Frontier, Oracle acquiring Vitrue and Involver, IBM - Tealeaf Technology, Google - Wildfire Interactive, and salesforce.com acquiring Buddy Media. Companies lagging behind in the SMB space include SugarCRM and Microsoft Dynamics CRM, with very large SMB customer base, noted to be lacking deep social marketing capabilities. SMB platforms such as Marketo and HubSpot are positioned as focused on demand generation as opposed to deep social marketing capabilities.

"The vast amount of social interactions occurring daily across social channels offers incredible opportunities for firms of all shapes and sizes to pull out not only relevant conversations, but highly targeted prospects and convert these into sales, or to use social behavior as a lead-scoring lever," offers Alan Pelz-Sharpe, Research Director at 451 Research. "We see Awareness as well-positioned in the new social customer acquisition segment, specifically in the critical small to mid-sized company space, which is currently underserved."

451 Research plotted social marketing vendors based on the robustness of their social acquisition features, coupled with a cost-to-benefit ratio of their software packages. Awareness leads the social customer acquisition pack, which includes HubSpot, Spredfast, HootSuitePro, Shoutlet, and Salesforce.com's Marketing Cloud.

About Awareness, Inc. (http://www.awarenessnetworks.com/)
With a unique combination of technology, experience and thoughtful support, Awareness enables smart marketers to efficiently and effectively generate ROI from 100% trackable social media interactions. It is the leading provider of OnDemand Social Marketing Automation Software designed specifically to address all key aspects of social media marketing -- from demand generation to customer acquisition and social customer engagement. The Awareness Social Marketing Hub, the company's flagship social marketing software, is the only solution available that ties Social Prospecting, Social Scoring and Social Profile Database into one solution resulting in a detailed social marketing ROI. Awareness works with some of the world's leading brands and marketing agencies including MLB, Comcast, Likeable Media, Raidious, American Cancer Society, Tiger Woods Foundation, The Carlsberg Group, Mindjumpers, Nuance, Demandware, Trend Micro, and Computer Associates. Backed by NorthBridge Venture Partners, Awareness is headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts.

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