Marketo

has announced a new partnership with LinkedIn, connecting the professional network’s Lead Accelerator with the marketing automation provider’s Engagement Marketing Platform to create a cross-platform solution.

Announced at Marketo’s annual Summit held in San Francisco, the tool aims to bridge the gap between digital, social and offline channels to enable marketers to engage with customers at each touch point.

For example, if an unknown prospect downloads a whitepaper about your company’s services without leaving any contact information, they can be still be tracked and targeted with relevant ads when logged into LinkedIn.

Consequently, this new tool will reveal deeper insights into the customer buying cycle and allow marketers to forge long-term relationships with customers using display and social ads across desktop and mobile.

The new integrated solution will be trialled by General Electric (GE), Andy Markowitz, general manager for GE’s Performance Marketing Labs, commented: “We’re incredibly focused on delivering a superior customer experience at GE, and that means engaging with each of our customers and prospects in a meaningful way to forge relationships.

“Marketo and LinkedIn are coming together with their best-in-class marketing and digital nurturing platforms, so we can have personalised conversations with our customers at scale and deliver the best solutions for their business.”

Meanwhile, Phil Fernandez, CEO at Marketo, explained: “Until now, marketers were forced to manage their programmes separately on different channels.

“This challenge made it nearly impossible to engage customers and prospects with relevant, useful content that builds trust and long-term relationships. Marketo’s integration with LinkedIn removes that barrier and makes it possible for marketers to nurture customers in a personalised and consistent way across channels.”