My Take: Salesforce Acquires ExactTarget, Continues Marketing Automation Industry Consolidation

I've been in meetings all day and just emerged to hear that Salesforce.com purchased ExactTarget.  Having a had a few moments to digest the news (and some lunch), here are some thoughts:

- Good move for Salesforce.  They have been lacking large-scale email capability, which all types of sales and marketing departments require.  So this fills a gap in their core product offerings.  They also get a toe-hold in B2C marketing and in marketing automation (via ExactTarget's Pardot technology).  I'd guess those were bonuses rather than primary drivers of the deal.  Frankly, of the two, entry into B2C marketing seems more important because it's such a large business and Salesforce.com needs to know where it will get its next several billion dollars in revenue.

- Price is reasonable by today's standards.  ExactTarget had $300 million revenue in 2012, so the $2.5 billion price is 8.3x trailing revenue.  Marketo's market cap is $800 million on $58 million 2012 revenue, or nearly 14x trailing revenue.  Oracle paid $800 million for Eloqua, which had around $100 million trailing revenue, another 8x ratio.  (Salesforce's press release projects a net revenue impact of $120-$125 million for 2014.  That includes just six months of revenue, but it's still a much lower annualized rate than the ExactTarget figures.  It seems the difference is largely due to adjustments in deferred and unbilled revenue.)

- Not so terrible for marketing automation in the short term.  Sure, Marketo's stock dropped 8% vs. yesterday's close, on a pretty quiet day in the market (S&P down 0.55%, Oracle down 0.67%).  And, yes, more companies will buy Pardot now that it's part of Salesforce than they would have otherwise.  But I doubt Salesforce will suddenly stop integrating with other marketing automation vendors.  Small, independent marketing automation firms already had a tough time selling against big competitors, so this only makes their lives marginally harder.  The smart ones (and that's most of them) already have a strategy in place to differentiate themselves from the big industry leaders.

- Tougher for marketing automation in the long term.  I've long argued that CRM and marketing automation should be part of the same system.  Like a broken clock, the time has come when I'm right.  Marketing automation sits between email and CRM, in the sense that it uses both heavily.  So Salesforce has effectively surrounded the marketing automation vendors with its purchase, even ignoring Pardot.  This means that Salesforce will be in the room with a solution when email and CRM users discuss expanding into marketing automation.  In many cases, clients will extend their Salesforce deployment without considering anyone else..

- Salesforce isn't done, or at least shouldn't be.  Email and CRM are two big customer-facing systems: you get absolutely no prize for knowing that your Web site is the third.  (Ok, social is in there someplace too, but it's still more smoke than fire.)  A truly complete customer-facing solution would encompass Web content management as well.  This is another idea I've long pushed, and its time will come too.  Indeed, I see many Web content management vendors already adding marketing automation-type features.  Salesforce itself might not move into this space quite yet, but it seems inevitable that they'll do it eventually.

- Adobe, where art thou?  Since I'm exercising all my favorite hobby horses, we might as well let this one out of the stable.  (Actually, someone else mentioned it to me earlier today, so at least I'm not alone in my obsessions.)  Of course, Adobe already has a strong presence in Web site management and it keeps making noises about having a "marketing cloud".  Um, excuse me guys, but you really need email and marketing automation for that.  Silverpop -- already a large Adobe partner -- is the obvious acquisition candidate to fill that gap.  Sadly, Adobe has shown no signs of moving in this direction -- but time moves on, whether or not my broken clock is ticking.  (I don't know what that last phrase means, either, but sooner or later Adobe will buy something.)

Addendum: I've now had time to listen to the analyst conference call from this morning (available at 800-585-8367 passcode 89103168).  It doesn't change my analysis above, but clarifies that Salesforce's main goal was finding a single system that would support sophisticated cross channel marketing campaigns, with particular stress on heavy automation and new devices such as mobile.  They do seem more interested in B2C than I would have thought.  

Another comment made twice was that it was a competitive acquisition.  As others have pointed out, this means there's at least one other big company looking to buy a similar integrated marketing system.  There aren't many of those available -- traditional B2B marketing automation vendors are too narrow to fit the bill.  I'll mention Silverpop again as an option, and maybe Responsys and other high-end email products.  B2C marketing automation vendors including Neolane, ClickSquared, and perhaps RedPoint could be candidates but may be too small to be of interest.