Salesforce.com, a leader in online cloud software and customer relationship management software, confirmed a purchase of the marketing platform ExactTarget for the price of $2.5 Billion. This is a major purchase for SalesForce and is intended to help ensure they are able to help customers with sales, service and now marketing long into the future.
The press release from SalesForce touted the fact that ExactTarget’s leading digital marketing capabilities will complement the existing lineup of services provided by SalesForce. This will help make salesforce.com the one place companies can go for each of these important and very related services.
As marketing and technology continue to be more and more intertwined, having access to online sales, service and marketing tools is going to be more essential than ever in the future. SalesForce chairman and CEO Marc Benioff commented on this by saying, “The addition of ExactTarget makes SalesForce the starting place for every company and puts salesforce.com in the pole position to capture this opportunity.”
Scott Dorsey, the co-founder and CEO of ExactTarget published a blog post discussing this exciting news. He acknowledged the fact that ExactTarget has been focused on helping marketers since their founding and backed by the strength of salesforce.com they will be able to continue to do just that.
With the addition of ExactTarget, salesforce.com can now help all types of companies with their campaign management capabilities. Salesforce.com has leading social marketing techniques, combined with publishing from Buddy Media and advertising from social.com (both owned by salesforce) will allow them to dramatically expand their list of services.
This is the latest in a series of big changes in the marketing and technology world. Marketo had an IP and Oracle purchased Eloqua. This is a good sign that this industry continues to do well as the rest of the economy is focused on recovering from the recession.
Personally I’ve never used any of SalesForce’s services. Have any of you used them? What types of changes do you expect to see from the acquisition?
You can see the official press release from salesforce.com HERE .
