It has been many months since Salesforce.com acquired leading email service provider turned cloud innovator ExactTarget, but the integration of the two clouds is already becoming a reality.
Marketing departments, the primary users of the email service and the initial adopters of the multiple marketing automation service and analysis engine, are already giving the union a thumbs up. Many of these have been using Salesforce and its cloud, while also managing a separate use of ExactTarget. Salesforce.com has never been the source of a true mass email service, limiting users to 1000 a day from its platform. But true integration of these two services should bring much needed new capabilities to Salesforce.
Although Salesforce is often the domain of sales with marketing support, increasingly the groups are becoming more integrated with each other, as lead generation, nurturing and sales cultivation of opportunities becomes increasingly a synergistic effort.
Scott Dorsey, CEO of Salesforce.com company ExactTarget and Salesforce Marketing Cloud, announced the debut of the ExactTarget Marketing Cloud, a marketing platform that combines ExactTarget’s email, mobile, web, marketing automation, data and analysis, and content capabilities with Salesforce’s social media offerings: Buddy Media, Radian6, and Social.com. The announcement occurred during Dorsey’s keynote at ExactTarget’s Connections ’13 conference in Indianapolis, Indiana.
“As the world becomes more connected, marketers have an unprecedented opportunity to lead transformation in business by connecting their companies to their customers in entirely new ways,” said Dorsey.
Salesforce, in making its $2.5 billion purchase of ExactTarget, enlarged its social marketing solutions with the new acquisition’s marketing automation and campaign management tools. The roll-out of new email marketing capabilities strengthens one of marketers’ most dependable — and relatively controllable — tools. The use of predictive analysis, based on customer behavior and preferences, is based on technology that ExactTarget acquired when it bought iGoDigital in 2012.
With these new additions to Salesforce it becomes both more powerful and more complex than ever. It also opens up new possibilities for applications tailored specifically to your business needs. Engaging outsourced experts who are skilled in developing applications for use in the Salesforce cloud can provide you with new twists specifically designed to benefit your company’s use of the cloud giant’s service. Many offshore development teams have been working with Force.com and ExactTarget for years, providing you with a lower cost avenue to tailor these new services to your needs.
All and all, the addition of ExactTarget to the Salesforce.com set of assets shows clearly that they are marching full speed ahead to build the most complete set of CRM tools available in the cloud.
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