Pardot, one of the fastest growing marketing automation platforms, adds fuel to the fire, receives a line of credit from Silicon Valley Bank. The capital will give Pardot the power to grow it's team and expand to meet the over-the-top demand. The Atlanta-based company has already doubled in size in the past 12 months.

With these four business applications, all integrated, you can easily streamline your customer on-boarding process -- post sales. Leveraging a customer success monitoring solution like Totango, triggering emails and marketing automation with Marketo, customer training portals by KeyStone OnDemand, and social media engagement with HootSuite. These solutions tie it all together and will drive renewals to a whole new level.

The DS Team has tracked 7 companies that merged, received funding, or were acquired in the month of April 2012. The list includes companies from the following software verticals: Business Intelligence & Analytics, Education & Collaborative Learning Platforms, Content Management & Engagement, Telecom, Marketing Automation, and Customer Service.

Marketing online and via social media channels can bring great success online as well as offline. Brick and Mortars are finally leveraging what social can bring, but are they taking a hard look at online promotion and what marketing automation can bring to their businesses? This infographic by KISSmetrics goes deeper.

Marketo, the leader in Revenue Performance Management launched Spark, a new product designed for small businesses. A lighter version of their enterprise offering, Spark helps businesses manage lead nurturing and sales 2.0 processes across channels like e-mail, lead generation, and optimization of site visits.

In 2011 DreamSimplicity is visiting SaaS and Cloud App companies in a new video series that will explore the people and culture behind the brands that are powering the Cloud!