In a move that will boost its presence in digital marketing, including mobile, CRM platform salesforce.com has agreed to acquire cloud marketing platform ExactTarget for $2.5 billion.

Marketers are increasingly looking for ways to leverage the convergence of mobile and social as users migrate their use of social media from desktop to their smartphones. By acquiring ExactTarget, salesforce.com will enhance its existing social services, including Radian6 and Buddy Media, with marketing automation and campaign management capabilities.

?This is a really an interesting acquisition for [the mobile] space,? said Rebecca Wettermann, vice president at Nucleus Research. ?A key part of Salesforce's ?customer company? strategy is about enabling customers to interact with you via their device of choice.

?Although Salesforce has made significant steps both organically and by acquisition - with Model Metrics - to deliver mobile apps, this acquisition gives Salesforce a more sophisticated framework for mobile marketing with support for SMS and short codes and the ability to track and manage mobile campaigns in multiple countries and languages,? she said.

?In addition to the functionality, Salesforce gains the benefit of a lot of the thought leadership ExactTarget has done in the mobile marketing space and its 24/7 services and support division. In the cloud CRM world where vendors have to continue to show value to justify a subscription, we've found customer service and support in emerging areas like social marketing is an important differentiator.?

Ms. Wettermann is not affiliated with salesforce.com or ExactTarget and commented based on her experience.

Salesforce.com was not able to comment in time to meet the deadline.  

Customer lifecycle
The deal points to the company?s aspirations of become a leading marketing platform across email, social, mobile and the Web, a goal it hopes to accomplish by combining ExactTarget?s digital marketing capabilities with its own sales, service and social marketing solutions.

The vision is to create a platform that enables companies to connect with their customers throughout every part of the customer lifecycle.

For ExactTarget, the deal could accelerate its growth with expanded customer and geographic reach as well as operating scale.

ExactTarget is used by more than 6,000 companies to manage their digital marketing, including Coca-Cola, Gap and Nike. The company provides mobile marketing solutions for email, SMS and all mobile push campaigns in one platform.

Where customers are
Salesforce.com is ponying up $2.5 billion to capture a bigger piece of the growing opportunity in digital marketing as consumers and businesses use of social networks, mobile devices and new technologies increases significantly.

Because of this jump in adoption, marketers increasingly want to be where their customers are, and they are shifting their budgets away from traditional marketing outlets to digital ones.

The deal will help salesforce.com enhance its existing social marketing solutions such as Radian6, which helps companies listen to what people are saying about them online and to engage in those conversations; Buddy Media, which helps companies publish shareable content, and Social.com, which helps advertisers manage social campaigns.

?Now, Salesforce.com users, through this acquisition, will be able to design, execute, and measure mobile campaigns,? said Surresh Vittal, chief product officer at Neolane, Newton, MA.

?Is this a benefit for them? Certainly,? he said. ?But it is not enough to provide an optimal consumer experience.

?This is not new technology to the market and today, it is not fully integrated into Salesforce.com. Another aspect to keep in mind is that mobile is just one part of the cross-channel consumer experience equation; brands need to also consider other digital channels, social and point-of-sale.?

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York