At Sparkroom, we’re committed to giving our customers access to the best technology available to manage and optimize their marketing efforts. We also believe in giving them choices, and that means partnering with the leading players in the market to provide complimentary solutions that integrate with our Enrollment Marketing Automation platform.

Today, we announced that TARGUSinfo’s On-Demand Lead Verification and Lead Scoring solutions are now available on the Sparkroom Enrollment Marketing Automation platform. This is good news for us, and great news for our customers. By adding TARGUSinfo to our list of partners, we’re giving our customers access to one of the most widely recognized leaders in verification and scoring – a win all around.

You can read the full announcement here to learn more.

Sparkroom was awarded the Best Lead Management in the education vertical by LeadsCouncil on Thursday, January 6th, 2011. See the press release from LeadsCouncil here. What a superb way to start 2011. We are thrilled to have our product recognized by our clients, prospects, partners and industry experts as the best solution for schools to automate, manage, and optimize all student inquiries from a single, integrated platform.

You can find the Sparkroom press release here.

Happy New Year!

It’s always good to close out the year on a high note, and as we approach the holidays, I’m excited to say that we’re adding another industry leader to the growing roster of school partners that have chosen Sparkroom.  The team at Grand Canyon University (http://www.gcu.edu) has selected the Sparkroom Enrollment Marketing Automation platform to help manage inquiries from prospective students, while increasing the level of transparency they have throughout the recruitment and enrollment process.

In an environment where transparency and regulatory compliance are crucial, more and more schools are turning to technology to improve and streamline processes.  As we approach 2011, I’m confident that we’ll see more schools follow the lead of GCU and others that are demanding real-time data on every student inquiry, increasing accountability across the board.

We are thrilled to be working with the entire GCU team. Happy holidays.

At the end of January, Sparkroom released the results of a survey by we sponsored that asked professionals in higher education marketing questions about where they are focusing their online marketing efforts, what’s working, and what isn’t. The survey offered some interesting benchmarks for schools in 2010 – I’ve pulled out a few of the more interesting numbers below. If you haven’t seen these results yet, as we approach the end of the first quarter, now might be the perfect time to see how you and your school compare.

Today, we are excited to announce that we have signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by CUnet, a leading provider of performance media and interactive marketing services for higher education marketers. It is a great opportunity that will bring Sparkroom’s industry leading enrollment marketing automation platform to the hundreds of schools that currently partner with CUnet.

What is going to change for Sparkroom? Our clients should know it starts with “business as usual” with the same great team, same great products, and same commitment to driving innovation in the marketplace. On top of that, we are going to be able to execute against our mission with a lot more resources behind us. Over the coming months, you will see us working closely with CUnet to deliver a broad array of interactive marketing products to the higher education marketplace.

Why does this acquisition make sense? Primarily because CUnet and Sparkroom share a common vision for how marketing will evolve for career colleges. We see increasing investments in interactive marketing together with increasing investments in technology to manage that spend more efficiently. Some schools will want cutting edge technology solutions and we deliver it. Some schools will want performance media and interactive media management solutions and we deliver it. Some will want an integrated suite of products and services delivered on a common platform and we will deliver that as well.

We expect the deal to close in February of this year and the entire Sparkroom team is excited to join the CUnet team. We are looking forward to increasing our investment in our software platform and dramatically scaling our customer base.

Today, ForProfitEdu.com launched their first survey of education marketers and lead providers. See the press release here as well as on our website. Sparkroom is excited to be sponsoring the survey and to be working with the whole team at ForProfitEdu. Take the survey now!

Look for results from the survey in early 2010.

A bunch of folks on the Sparkroom team spent the last few days traveling to see customers and to talk with some potential customers. The pattern that we have been recognizing recently is that every lender we meet is good at something different. The lenders who are doing the best in this tough market are the ones who recognize what they are good at and commit to being the best at what they do. They don’t try to do everything well.

I like sports metaphors because everybody understands them. There are companies in every industry who “follow the puck” and there are those who skate to where the puck is going to be. Following the puck in a commodity business that is going through a downturn is a recipe for mediocre results or worse. So our advice to our customers, and to our future customers, is to try to figure out what you are good at and make sure you are better at doing those one or two things than anybody else in your industry. Yes to best practices. Yes to innovation. And yes to measuring everything. But remember that you have to be great at something. Figuring out what that is drives business success.

Thanks to all the bright people we met with this week who inspired this post. Great conversations this week.

At the risk of tooting our own horn, two influential bloggers in the lead gen space have picked up on Sparkroom. Check it out.

LeadCritic thinks that “Sparkroom Brings Analytics to the forefront” and Paul Knag is ready to hear more from us.