Marketo, a major player in Revenue Performance Management solutions that significantly increase organizations' marketing and sales success, has received "AppExchange Best of 2010" award for marketing automation from Salesforce.com (News - Alert) customers.

The Marketing Automation category, one of 11 separate categories in the AppExchange Best of '10 Awards, recognizes applications that deliver drip campaigns, lead scoring and reporting.

With this award, Marketo (News - Alert) joined all the winners in receiving recognition for their ability to take customer success to new levels of satisfaction.

Built using the Force.com platform, Marketo is immediately available for test drive and deployment on the AppExchange, the world's most-popular marketplace for business apps, at www.salesforce.com/appexchange/.

Officials with Marketo said that marketing automation solutions provide powerful, easy-to-use functionality that marketing and sales executives need to drive explosive revenue growth across the revenue cycle, from the earliest stages of demand generation and lead management, to close deals and continued customer loyalty.

Company officials said that combined with real-time bi-directional integration to Salesforce CRM, Marketo users can -Automate and measure sophisticated lead nurturing campaigns and lead scoring activities; Create sales lead management programs that update fields, create tasks, assign owners, and convert leads directly in Salesforce and track sales follow-up and reassign or recycle leads automatically among other such things.

"We are honored to be chosen the 'best' from the people that count the most: sales and marketing professionals using Marketo and Salesforce to enhance their marketing performance and sales effectiveness to maximize revenue results," said Phil Fernandez, president and CEO of Marketo, in a statement.

"It's inspiring to see how our combined solutions are helping more and more companies to transform the way their marketing and sales functions work - and work together - to accelerate revenue growth and advance business success," said Fernandez.

"The AppExchange gives customers an easy way to find and deploy cloud computing apps that deliver real business results," said Kendall Collins, chief marketing officer at salesforce.com.

Collins said that Marketo's marketing automation solutions can help customers realize success by boosting B2B marketing results with advanced social media, video and web 2.0 tactics.

“We congratulate Marketo for being recognized by customers in the Marketing Automation category on the AppExchange in 2010," he said.

Recently, Marketo announced that it has appointed Paul Albright to chief revenue officer (CRO). As CRO, Albright will be responsible for driving the company’s overall revenue strategy, as well as all facets of how Marketo’s sales and marketing departments collectively accelerate global revenue growth and profitability.