IBM will acquire email and marketing automation vendor Silverpop, the companies said Thursday. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed, but a story last month in the Atlanta Business Chronicle reported the value of a rumored acquisition at $270 million.+ i% a/ o. V! Z T* D
IBM, like Adobe and Oracle, has remained steady on the acquisitions front.# u1 s8 g4 J' E& ?; Y1 K
"They got massive marketing capabilities through Unica, analytics through Coremetrics and commerce through Sterling," commented Ray Wang, chairman and principal analyst at Constellation Research. "One of the huge trends is mass personalization at scale. You want to be able to get in there and say what content is relevant and deliver that content regardless of what channel [the consumer] is in."+ D6 l% [2 Y: t6 D0 I
Silverpop enables this. While IBM has "an army of assets" in play for marketing, Wang said Silverpop brings the ability to effectively keep identities in context regardless of how an individual engages with a brand. 2 u+ Q( Y4 N$ F
"The benefit of Silverpop is that it's not just limited to B2B or B2C," he added. "It's been effective for customers across all types of companies."5 t% W1 k: {% r0 y" N
From the companies:* \/ A) b7 v8 ?; O4 v) W/ O$ H9 P. S7 P
"IBM today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire0 ?' S7 |: f0 d, G( w" d0 `/ |8 Z
Silverpop, a privately held company based in Atlanta, GA. Silverpop's : I1 s- u, y, Z1 |" z
cloud-based technology makes it easier for marketers to engage individual + G C2 b: l$ @7 P6 i
customers with highly personalized offers and promotions in a scalable/ `5 _% `+ }! y
environment. This acquisition will both complement and extend IBM's leading9 Q5 o( b6 w8 O7 \% v
portfolio of enterprise marketing capabilities.. u9 z6 l& p2 h7 D
While Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) understand the importance of0 r! F7 Z# U! {/ D" Z5 Q9 i5 ?1 b
personalization, many struggle to achieve it at scale beyond a basic level: N8 V% V& x" [7 j4 O0 `+ k
of customization. Silverpop uniquely solves this challenge by creating2 \# G" k, S9 v' Z/ S4 A
dynamic customer profiles gleaned from fragmented data streams inside and: D6 Z6 n; a: i% t" Q: R6 d, W
outside the organization - such as social, web, email and mobile activity.- S4 }# E% v$ l! n
By generating these insights in real time, Silverpop empowers marketers to) {; [; S8 {4 S6 @6 M! m/ q. y4 u" O
deliver unique, highly personalized engagements for each individual& o8 ]" x1 v& \2 g! c/ X
customer in a manner that increases sales, profitability and enhances 9 \$ n- B7 y9 p
IBM, some argue, was one of the early enterprise entrants into the whole marketing tech stack game./ }0 B6 @/ C' ~' @
"They were very early to hop on the notion of the CMO outspending IT," said Russ Glass, cofounder and CEO of B2B marketing and ads platform Bizo. " They were very early in the acquisition cycles of Unica, Coremetrics, Sterling Commerce, so you can argue they had a leg up on everybody four or five years ago." + R0 Y/ \' e* }
Where IBM may have had to retool their strategy was on the services side. IBM "may have underestimated that marketers had no interest [in using] global services in a very high-price, high-margin way to deliver some of this customization, which is where I think Silverpop comes in," he added. "It's much more of a next-generation product for IBM."& n( t* U: @! Y, G8 Y
More to come.
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