IBM has signed a definitive agreement to acquire American marketing firm Silverpop.

With the acquisition, IBm expects to provide advanced marketing software to clients, allowing them to respond to individual customer’s behaviour across email, the web and mobiles.

IBM Industry Cloud Solutions GM Craig Hayman said the acquisition of Silverpop enhances the company’s ability to focus on the customer.

"Now, nearly any marketing, commerce or customer service professional from any business will have the ability to deliver the kinds of personalised customer experiences that make a measurable impact on the brand experience and the bottom line," Hayman added.

Silverpop’s clientele of 8,000 organisations, including Mazda, Stonyfield Farm and Advanced Micro Devices, will belong to IBM when the deals go through, probably in the second quarter of 2014.

Silverpop CEO Bill Nussey said: "Combined with the power of IBM’s portfolio and worldwide partner ecosystem, we can advance our mission to help organisations build customer relationships one at a time on an even grander scale."

Silverpop will be part of the IBM’s portfolio of over 100 Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings that allow marketers to use cloud-based tools to respond to changing customer demands.

The deal follows the recent acquisition of Responsys by Oracle for $1.5bn and ExactTarget by Salesforce.com in 2013 for $2.5bn. IBM and Silverpop did not disclose the terms of their deal.