Marketing automation firm Marketo is seeking to "redefine" marketing automation with the announcement of its first acquisition, Crowd Factory, a social campaign management platform that was one of the four finallists in last year's CRM Idol competition.
Crowd Factory is a B2C social marketing tool that allows monitoring and campaigns optimisation with combined analytics from Facebook, ecommerce, websites and other social channels. The firm counts Microsoft, HBO, MTV Networks, Universal, MolsonCoors and GolfChannel amongst its customers.
Last year, Crowd Factory was one of the last four in the CRM Idol Americas competition.
Marketo intends that the acquisition will "break social marketing from its usual silo", making it an integrated and integral part of every online marketing initiative. With social marketing a mandate for every company – large and small, business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) – the combined solution is designed to enable marketers to amplify and measure social-enabled campaigns to deliver more customers and gain an immediate competitive edge.
Phil Fernandez, president and CEO of Marketo, said: “Social marketing campaigns and marketing automation have been like the proverbial two ships passing in the night, with most social marketing tools sitting in silos disconnected from mainstream marketing processes. Today we have changed that game/
"By combining Crowd Factory with Marketo, marketing professionals can finally use integrated social campaigns to boost the reach and impact of every marketing initiative they undertake – at every step in the customer lifecycle. Since releasing our first products four years ago, Marketo’s innovation has repeatedly reset the standard for marketing solutions, and we’re thrilled to do it again with this revolutionary development in social marketing automation.”
Sanjay Dholakia, CEO of Crowd Factory, has added: “Crowd Factory pioneered the idea of Social ROI by empowering marketers to push viral campaigns throughout the social web, and then track that valuable social activity back to individual influencers and conversions. This fits perfectly into the vision of marketing automation that Marketo has led: that all marketing activity matters and can be measured against the bottom line. We are excited to join the Marketo team and help companies of any size in any market segment generate more campaigns, more leads and, ultimately, more customers.”
