June’s Magic Quadrant from Gartner evaluated CRM Lead Management. As you would expect, it evaluated CRM vendors Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Oracle/Siebel and SAP among others, with Salesforce pipping the crowd in this sector.

But, recognising that effective lead management needs more depth than a CRM vendor alone can deliver, the four marketing automation vendors covered—Marketo, Eloqua, Apprimo and Neolane—rated higher on the traditional Gartner scale under the rubrics of Vision and Ability to Execute.

Eloqua and Marketo, in our opinion, richly deserve their ‘Leader’ status in this benchmark research, and earn our congratulations to their innovation and commercial teams.

What was unfortunate about this research, however, was the notable absence of smaller players such as Silverpop, Pardot and Manticore. Gartner publishes Magic Quadrants largely for the benefit of enterprise customers (who make up the bulk of clients), and so have not included vendors with less than $20 million in revenue.

With this Magic Quadrant, and so many others, being available publicly on the internet, however—and seen by many buyers as the go-to research tool—it will no doubt be used by SMBs considering marketing automation also. We do not believe that more inclusive research  would have changed the ‘Leader’ quadrant; however, it would be more helpful for marketing teams to have a more inclusive benchmark from which to base their shortlist when evaluating the best-fit solution for their companies.

Given the implicit recognition that CRM vendors do not compete, perhaps Gartner should consider a shift in focus to a Marketing Automation Magic Quadrant next year and include more of this fast-growing, continuously evolving market.

Bluewolf helps organizations select, implement and manage the best-fit marketing automation technology.