Marketo Acquires Social Campaign Management Platform Crowd Factory
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- Published in DemandGen Reports
Marketo today announced its acquisition of Crowd Factory, Inc., a social campaign management platform. In the company’s first acquisition, Marketo aims to provide integrated social marketing functionality within marketing automation. The combined solution is designed to enable marketers to amplify and measure social-enabled campaigns.
The Crowd Factory platform helps marketers accelerate social and word-of-mouth marketing, grow marketing databases and attract new customers via social profiles. The platform allows marketers to add social applications and messages to every channel, including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn feeds, as well as landing pages, web sites, banner ads and emails. Crowd Factory automatically tracks the reach and impact of social sharing, and it provides feedback on social marketing ROI. The platform has been implemented by companies such as Molson Coors, Sony Music, Jive Software, Quickoffice and British Telecom.
News of the acquisition comes on the heels of continued momentum in Marketo's customer acquisitions and revenue. The company reported more than 130% year-over-year revenue growth and nearly doubled its customer base. Additionally, the company posted significant growth in the enterprise segment, which grew new billings more than 400% year-over-year. Marketo currently serves more than 1,800 enterprise and mid-market customers globally.
“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,” said Marketo President and CEO Phil Fernandez, in a company press release. “…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.”
Through the acquisition, Marketo will combineits existing marketing automation aand analytical reporting with Crowd Factory’s platform for rapidly creating and deploying social campaigns, such as customer referrals or sweepstakes.
“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,” said Sanjay Dholakia, CEO of Crowd Factory. “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.”
Marketo will continue to support and invest in all current products and customers of both companies. The company will also introduce a new, unified product family in the near future for social campaign management, according to a press release. The company will share an inside view of its strategy with customers at the Marketo User Summit, May 22-24 at the Hilton San Francisco Union Square.