News

Marketing automation vendors across the board reported an increase in revenue, customers and year-over-year growth in Q1. Players focused on serving the enterprise-level market reached new milestones, while vendors catering to the SMB market reported record quarters as well. While some industry insiders attributed the growth to the need for more sophisticated marketing programs, vendors pointed out that other verticals, including healthcare and financial services, are adopting automation tools more rapidly.

ExactTarget, a provider of interactive marketing solutions, announced today it closed $30 million in venture financing to fund key acquisitions, enter new global markets, expand its operations across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific and further accelerate its technology. The round of financing was led by Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV) with participation from existing investors, including Battery Ventures, Scale Venture Partners and Greenspring Associates. The company also it continued record performance in the first quarter, increasing revenue 52% year over year.

“The continued commitment of our investors validates our strategy of aggressive growth and innovation to provide marketers with powerful, intuitive technology to connect with their customers in real time across email, mobile, social media and the web,” said Scott Dorsey, Chairman and CEO, ExactTarget. “ExactTarget is the fastest growing marketing software as a service company, and this new capital allows us to further accelerate our momentum and scale our operations to serve clients around the globe."

D&B, a provider of commercial information and business insight, has agreed with Microsoft to integrate D&B360, D&B's Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) solution, with Microsoft Dynamics CRM in both on-premise and on-demand environments. D&B360 will deliver data that has been optimized for enhanced accuracy and completeness — a competitive advantage that increases effectiveness at every stage in the sales, marketing and customer service lifecycle.

Focused on providing BtoB marketers with detailed customer and prospect data to enhance up and cross-selling, D&B360 is D&B's cloud-based, on-demand solution designed to provide data management, cleansing and enrichment capabilities, seamlessly integrating D&B data and other essential business information into CRM applications and other critical customer applications. D&B360 offers D&B's unparalleled business data, including the world's largest database of more than 195 million businesses, 53 million business contacts and Hoover's company research — along with relevant social media and news feeds.

Marketo recently announced that the company has surpassed the 1,000 customer mark, after adding 146 customers in the first quarter of 2011. After reaching that milestone in less than three years and serving customers across 24 countries worldwide, Marketo has now set its further international expansion.
The company announced the opening of its European headquarters in Dublin, Ireland and the appointment of Fergus Gloster to Managing Director of EMEA. Gloster was previously the Senior VP of Corporate Sales and a founding director of salesforce.com’s European operations.