Oracle has bought email marketing firm Responsys for %1.5bn, as the software giant looks to ramp up competition with Salesforce in the digital customer relationship management sector.
The deal works out to a 38 percent premium over Responsys’ closing price on Thursday. The company went public in 2011 at $12 a share.
Responsys has been mentioned often as a likely acquisition target since Salesforce.com acquired ExactTarget in June for $2.5 billion.
That leaves Constant Contact, another email marketing company, available — its shares rose by more than four percent today in the wake of this deal. And while we’re at it, it’s worth mentioning that shares of Marketo, another cloud-based marketing company, are up by more than nine percent this morning.
Oracle said it will combine Responsys with another recent acquisition, Eloqua, which it bought a year ago today for $871 million. The result will be a marketing cloud product that serves both the business-to-business and business-to-consumer ends of the spectrum.
“Recognizing the unique needs of the CMO in B2B and B2C industries, the Oracle Marketing Cloud is now the only platform to unite enterprise-class leaders in these historically distinct marketing-automation fields,” said Mark Hurd, President, Oracle. “Our strategy of combining the leaders across complementary technologies signifies Oracle’s overwhelming commitment to winning and serving the CMO better than any other software company in the world.”
“Responsys has always been focused on helping marketers realize their largest opportunity – coordinating their marketing touch points across channels, across the customer lifecycle, and across industries, and as a part of Oracle, we will only accelerate our efforts,” said Dan Springer, CEO, Responsys. “Oracle not only shares our vision, but is the proven leader in bringing together best-in-class technologies and companies to realize the largest enterprise opportunities. We couldn’t be more excited about what this means for our customers and employees.”
“Oracle customers will benefit from continued R&D investment across the Responsys and Eloqua platforms, ensuring that CMOs in all industries are armed with a best-in-class solution,” said Thomas Kurian, Executive Vice President, Oracle Development. “When combined with the full Oracle Customer Experience Cloud, for the first time, companies will be empowered to orchestrate individualized experiences that extend from Marketing, to Commerce, to Sales, to Service, to Support.”