Enterprise cloud computing solutions provider, Salesforce.com (CRM), has introduced Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud platform, which enables marketers to target and provide relevant information to their customers through email, mobile, social network and the web. The new cloud platform is part of the Salesforce1 Customer Platform.
Leveraging ExactTarget's digital marketing apps and platform and Salesforce’s social marketing tools (Buddy Media, Radian6 and Social.com.), marketers can acquire customer data from various sources, connect with them and provide personalized and relevant product information.
Leading brands such as CareerBuilder, The Gap Inc. (GPS), Nike (NKE) and Unilever (UL) are using the latest platform from Salesforce to better reach their customers.
Notably, Salesforce completed the ExactTarget acquisition in Jul 2013 for $2.5 billion. The acquisition has enhanced Salesforce’s digital marketing capabilities across email, social networking and the web.
According to Gartner, the marketing segment within CRM grew 21% in 2012 and is expected to grow 21% through 2017. Thus, the ExactTarget acquisition will be beneficial for Salesforce in the long term. More so, as the acquisition has also positively impacted the company’s top line in the last reported quarter. Buoyed by robust contribution from ExactTarget, Salesforce reported 36.5% year-over-year revenue growth.
Additionally, the company has recently announced a strategic alliance with Hewlett-Packard to offer customer relationship management services on HP’s Converged Infrastructure. This new offering —Salesforce Superpod — is ideal for companies that have an extensive IT infrastructure, which requires a certain level of compliance and enterprise integration.
Therefore, the company’s diverse cloud offerings and the stronger spending projection by Gartner are positives, going forward. Salesforce’s strategic acquisitions and related synergies are expected to remain long-term positives.
While the company’s growth has not been too bad, its prospects have been rationalized somewhat by the renewed efforts of other tech giants, such as International Business Machines.
However, continued weakness in Europe, currency headwinds and increase in investments could pose challenges, going forward.
Salesforce has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
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