Salesforce.com has completed acquisition of the cloud marketing platform ExactTarget for about $2.3bn, making it the leading CRM platform.
The integration of ExactTarget will combine ExactTarget’s digital marketing capabilities with salesforce.com’s sales, service and social marketing offering to create a leading marketing platform across email, social, mobile and the web.
Salesforce.com chairman and CEO Marc Benioff said that the CMO is expected to spend more on technology than the CIO by 2017.
"The addition of ExactTarget makes Salesforce the starting place for every company and puts salesforce.com in the pole position to capture this opportunity," Benioff said.
Gartner forecasts that one-third of the consumer technology companies would go digital by 2015, while the CMOs are expected to outspend CIOs on information technology by 2017.
Following the move, Salesforce.com’s customers will be able to extend their investments in sales, service and social marketing with access to a new marketing automation application.
ExactTarget’s customer base will have access to new social marketing capabilities and will be able to use salesforce.com’s sales, service and platform applications to enhance their customer experience.
The integration will allow CMOs to choose from ExactTarget’s marketing automation and campaign management capabilities along with salesforce.com’s social marketing solutions including Radian6, BuddyMedia, and Social.com.
