Two industry leading platforms come together to allow companies to acquire customers, run more efficiently and thrive
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (June 5, 2007) – Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the market and technology leader in on-demand business services, and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG)today announced that they have formed a strategic global alliance to help millions of businesses leverage the Internet to achieve success. The newest product resulting from this alliance, Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords, is a robust offering that combines the power of Salesforce on-demand CRM applications with the Google AdWords™ platform to achieve integrated sales and marketing success. This joint solution provides businesses of all sizes with the same tools used by larger enterprises to successfully attract and retain customers.
"The Web has quickly become the most powerful tool small and medium sized businesses can use to compete and win in today’s economy," said Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer at Google. "Combining the power and simplicity of Salesforce with Google AdWords helps businesses find and keep customers to ultimately drive their continued success."
"The alliance of Google and salesforce.com brings together the world’s leading platforms to empower small and medium size businesses to accelerate and thrive," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of salesforce.com. "The Internet has completely changed the landscape for small and medium businesses and the alliance between Google and salesforce.com enables companies of all sizes to acquire new customers and streamline their business to experience unfettered success."
"Now there is a single online destination for businesses of all sizes to attract and acquire new customers, while closely tracking the return on their valuable marketing dollars," said Sheryl Sandberg, Vice President, global online sales and operations at Google. "This alliance is about introducing new audiences to the benefits of online advertising, marketing and sales through the integration of two world-class solutions to help small and medium businesses succeed in today’s global marketplace."
Salesforce.com and Google Strategic Alliance
Both salesforce.com and Google have revolutionized how customers and businesses utilize the Internet. Salesforce has altered the business software landscape by delivering an award-winning CRM application as a subscription-based service over the Web, completely eliminating the need for software, hardware or IT support. At the same time, Google has transformed the advertising industry with Google AdWords, enabling marketers to spend less money and still reach a larger percentage of their key audience by associating ads with specific keyword searches.
Now, salesforce.com and Google have formed a strategic global alliance to mutually use their product, packaging, and promotional resources to enable companies of all sizes to realize unprecedented levels of success. As part of the alliance, salesforce.com will be the first on-demand company to resell the Google AdWords platform, acting as an official distribution channel for the Google AdWords product. The alliance is across 43 countries and encompasses distribution, technology and co-marketing efforts.
Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords – The Engine for Business Growth
Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords provides an integrated and effective solution that gives companies of all sizes all the tools they need to acquire new customers and grow their business. By encapsulating every element of the customer lifecycle – advertising, creating leads, closing business and retaining customers – in one solution, Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords enables any company to jump start their business by creating an online marketing and sales presence.
Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords enables users to:
- Advertise Online – With Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords, companies can immediately connect to Google AdWords, and create an ad that is displayed with the relevant search results on Google.com or across the Google AdSense™ content network of partner websites. Users can create an ad in as quickly as five minutes and with as little as $5.
- Attract Prospects – When people search the Web for the products and services that your company sells, your ad appears with the relevant search results. When they click on your ad, visitors are taken to your website.
- Capture Leads – Once you have potential customers on your website, you can entice visitors to fill out a name capture form on your site with an offer for a Webinar or white paper. The information collected on the form flows directly into Salesforce as a new lead.
- Acquire Customers – As soon as a lead is added into Salesforce, it is distributed to the sales team. Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords enables businesses to effectively manage and share leads, track opportunities through the sales cycle and close deals faster. Sales teams can manage all customer interactions in Salesforce and turn qualified leads into new customers.
- Analyze Growth – Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords features dashboards that gives companies a bird’s eye view into lead generation, sales metrics, and company growth. Dashboards and reports are quick and easy to access with real-time information and allow companies to make decisions quickly and alter advertising strategies appropriately.
- Mash-up Other Business Applications – Through the power of Salesforce.com’s AppExchange directory, customers have the opportunity to mash-up any of 600 business applications including technologies for mapping and productivity.
In addition to these features, Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords also includes a custom designed user experience starting with an exclusive login page. Joint customers can go to the Google site at www.google.com/adwords/salesforce to login to their AdWords account and can access Salesforce directly at www.salesforce.com/google.
"By working with Google to create a brand new streamlined user experience, one-stop shop feature set, and a breakthrough price point, we’ve taken the great idea behind Salesforce for Google AdWords and now made it the perfect fit for any-sized company looking to jump start their business," said George Hu, Chief Marketing Officer, salesforce.com. "We believe this opens up largely untapped market opportunities around the globe for both companies."
"Our site traffic is up 55 percent since we started using the integrated salesforce.com and Google AdWords solution, and now I know where that traffic came from and what piqued their interest," said Erin Jacobs of TFC. "The joint solution allows companies like TFC to utilize the full power of the Internet by combining the best from Google and salesforce.com."
Salesforce.com and Google – Committed to Corporate Philanthropy
Another common thread that brought salesforce.com and Google together in their global alliance is their commitment to corporate philanthropy. In July of 2000, salesforce.com launched the Salesforce.com Foundation, which operates under the company’s innovative 1/1/1 Model – a commitment to deliver 1% Time, 1% Equity and 1% Product to nonprofit organizations and, most recently, to be "one" with the earth.
Since its launch, the Salesforce.com Foundation has donated their product to more than 2,000 nonprofits. Similarly, Google has also given free online advertising to selected nonprofits through its Google Grants program, supporting more than 2,500 nonprofit organizations in 16 countries to date. The Salesforce.com Foundation and Google are now teaming up to donate the new Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords to each other’s nonprofit grantees. These selected nonprofits will be able to gain access to the same integrated sales and marketing success that is available to the private sector at no cost. Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords will also be made available to additional nonprofits within the next quarter.
"Salesforce.com and Google provide simple business solutions that are useful for any organization," said Alex Holderness, chief operating officer for VolunteerMatch.org, a nonprofit dedicated to making it easy for nonprofits and volunteers to connect. "These tools have proven effective in our efforts to help volunteers match themselves to nonprofits, and we anticipate even greater success with Salesforce Group Edition."
Pricing and Availability
Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords is available today in a five user edition for a special, 30 day promotional price of $600 per year, including a $50 AdWords credit. The $50 AdWords promotional credit is available to new AdWords advertisers in the US, Canada, and Mexico only. The list price of the solution is $1,200 per year. AppExchange applications may require an additional fee. For more information, visit https://www.salesforce.com/google or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.
About Google Inc.
Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.
Salesforce Platform and the AppExchange
Salesforce Platform is the on-demand platform for the next generation of business applications. Salesforce Platform reinvents traditional customization and integration and enables a whole new generation of on-demand applications that go beyond client/server computing. The Salesforce Platform allows applications to be easily shared, exchanged and installed with a few simple clicks via salesforce.com’s AppExchange directory, enabling all the innovation that the Salesforce Platform unleashes to benefit the entire on-demand community.
More than 600 applications are now available on salesforce.com’s AppExchange, the world’s first on-demand application directory, found at www.salesforce.com/appexchange.
Apex Code is available today for developer preview, and is currently scheduled to be available in beta to salesforce.com customers later in 2007.
About salesforce.com
Salesforce.com is the market and technology leader in on-demand business services. The company’s Salesforce suite of on-demand CRM applications allows customers to manage and share all of their sales, support, marketing and partner information on-demand. The Salesforce Platform, the world’s first on-demand platform, enables customers, developers and partners to build powerful new on-demand applications that extend beyond CRM to deliver the benefits of multi-tenancy and The Business Web across the enterprise. The Salesforce Platform allows applications to be easily shared, exchanged and installed with a few simple clicks via salesforce.com’s AppExchange directory, available at www.salesforce.com/appexchange. Customers can also take advantage of Successforce, salesforce.com’s world-class training, support, consulting and best practices offerings.
As of April 30, 2007, salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 32,300 customers including ABN AMRO, America Online (AOL), Dow Jones Newswires, Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE, Sprint Nextel, Staples and SunTrust Banks. Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase salesforce.com applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "CRM". For more information please visit www.salesforce.com, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.
Media Contact:
Katy Dormer
salesforce.com
415-901-8595
kdormer@salesforce.com
Brandon McCormick
Google
650-253-0674
bmccormick@google.com
###
Salesforce.com is a registered trademark of salesforce.com, and AppExchange, The Business Web, IdeaExchange and Successforce are trademarks of salesforce.com, Inc., San Francisco, California. Google, Google AdWords, and AdWords are trademarks of Google Inc. Other names used may be trademarks of their respective owners.
0 comments:
Post a Comment