News

Constant Contact, Inc. announced the acquisition of Bantam Live, a contact management and social CRM provider owned and operated by privately held Bantam Networks, LLC. Under the terms of the deal, which closed on February 15, 2011, Constant Contact acquired substantially all of the assets and assumed certain liabilities of Bantam Networks for a cash purchase price of $15 million, subject to certain post-closing adjustments.

New York-based Bantam Live will provide Constant Contact a social CRM platform built on a Ruby on Rails® platform. Bantam Live's social CRM technology is focused on offering a unified repository of data across all channels, including clicks, email opens, survey responses, event participation and social media interactions. It will play a crucial role in how data is captured, reported and analyzed for Constant Contact's more than 400,000 small business customers, helping them better track, measure and increase customer engagement, according to a company release.

Coming off a strong Q4 2010, Pardot today announced that its marketing automation suite has been certified Platform Ready for integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011.

The certification denotes that Microsoft recognizes a product as tested, approved and compatible with their offerings. Pardot debuted its Microsoft Dynamics CRM integration at the 2010 Microsoft Convergence event in Atlanta. The Pardot team will return to Microsoft Convergence this May to showcase the new and improved Dynamics CRM integration.

Teradata has finalized its acquisition of Aprimo, a leading provider of cloud-based integrated marketing software. Executives promise the marriage of the two companies will enable corporations to optimize marketing performance with more detailed, comprehensive insights from a universe exploding with big data.

“There are two core values that Teradata and Aprimo share: one is a commitment to customer loyalty and success,” said Lisa Arthur, CMO of Aprimo. “We’re extremely customer driven. Teradata happens to be extremely customer-centric as well, so we have a bond at the DNA level of ‘customer first’ and customer centricity. That, coupled with another one of our core values around the integrity and respect of individuals, is about winning in the market the right way…I can’t think of a better marriage for Aprimo than with Teradata. That bond puts real value behind this union.”

The marketing automation momentum continues. ReachForce recently announced the closing of $4.6 million in growth financing. MK Capital, which successfully financed marketing automation vendor Aprimo, and master data management leader, Initiate Systems, led the round with participation from current ReachForce investor, GSA Venture Partners. In conjunction with the financing, Mark Koulogeorge, Managing General Partner of MK Capital, will join the ReachForce Board of Directors.

ReachForce significantly expanded its customer base in 2010, adding over 100 new customers. The company also said its Information-as-a-Service solutions saw 100% annual growth. Major customer wins included Citrix Online, Juniper Networks and Research in Motion (RIM), as well as new channel partners including Televerde, The Pedowitz Group and Ziff Davis Enterprises.

In skyrocketing to more than 700 companies in its first two years in business, Marketo’s customer base has been made up primarily of small to mid-sized organizations. Based on the results of the recently wrapped quarter, Marketo is now making inroads with enterprise customers as well.

Marketo announced its Q4 results, during which the company increased its customer count to more than 850, signing 80 new customers in the month of December alone. In closing out 2010, Marketo reported it had doubled its customer count during the year and saw revenue growth of 315% year over year.

The company also saw its client roster expand within the enterprise sector, with nine new customers at corporations with revenue over $1 billion, the company’s first million dollar deal and its fourth deal at a Fortune 15 company.