July 15, 2013
By Maria Minsker, contributing writer

Salesforce.com Finalizes ExactTarget Acquisition

Salesforce.com has announced that it has completed its acquisition of ExactTarget, a cloud marketing platform used by more than 6,000 companies.

The acquisition will allow companies to transform how they connect with their customers across sales, service, and marketing. By combining ExactTarget's digital marketing capabilities with Salesforce.com's sales, service, and social marketing solutions, Salesforce.com seeks to "create a world-class marketing platform across email, social, mobile, and the Web," according to a company statement.

The combination of ExactTarget and Salesforce.com will increase the value proposition for customers of both companies. Salesforce.com customers will be able to extend their investments in sales, service, and social marketing with access to the industry's most comprehensive marketing automation solution, while ExactTarget users will gain access to new social marketing capabilities and be able to leverage Salesforce.com's sales, service, and platform solutions to improve their end-to-end customer experience.

"By bringing together ExactTarget's industry-leading marketing automation and campaign management capabilities with Salesforce.com's leading social marketing solutions—listening with Radian 6, publishing with Buddy Media, and advertising with Social.com—we will deliver the marketing platform of choice for CMOs," ExactTarget CEO Scott Dorsey, says. "Together, we will enable companies to transform how they connect with their customers across sales, service, and marketing."

"The CMO is expected to spend more on technology than the CIO by 2017," Salesforce.com chairman and CEO Marc Benioff said in a statement. "The addition of ExactTarget makes Salesforce the starting place for every company and puts Salesforce.com in the pole position to capture this opportunity."