Marketo Acquires Insightera To Boost Personalization And Predictive Analytics Capabilities

Published: December 12, 2013

Marketo has announced an agreement to acquire Insightera, a real-time web site and mobile app personalization platform, a move that fueled further speculation that the marketing automation vendor will be acquired. Industry observers noted that the acquisition of Insightera will add a variety of personalization and predictive analytic tools to Marketo’s arsenal.

Insightera provides personalization for web site and mobile users and the ability to identify anonymous web site visitors. In addition, Insightera provides machine learning capabilities across all web site content and uses predictive analytics to make content recommendations.

“I think Marketo’s acquisition of Insightera is an important box to check for them,” said Justin Gray, CEO of LeadMD.  “Marketing on the whole has become driven by the notion of dynamic, hyper personalized conversations. I’ve spoken to many clients over the years who have specifically inquired about the feature set that Insightera enables, and I think its a smart play for Marketo to fold in this functionality.”

According to Jill Stanek, a Technology Analyst at SiriusDecisions, Marketo’s acquisition of Insightera continues to enhance the marketing automation vendor’s value proposition. “By 2015 we expect to see 71% of B2B organizations’ new inquiries coming via the corporate web site. With the addition of Insightera, Marketo will now have the potential to extend conversations to the corporate Web site. A large majority of marketing automation vendors do not have this capability today,” noted Stanek in a SiriusDecisions blog post on the topic.

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“With this acquisition, Marketo has innovated again in its vision of providing a vehicle for content customized to end users in the inquiry to close the buying process,” said Jon Russo, Founder and CEO of B2B Fusion Group. “With the industry consolidation of other players [including Oracle’s purchase of Eloqua and Salesforce’s acquisition of ExactTarget], this acquisition adds to the differentiation of the Marketo platform at a time where Marketo is independent. A logical question is to ask what happens next with companies like Demandbase that are penetrated in larger enterprise companies.”

David M. Raab, Principal, Raab Associates, does not expect the acquisition to have an impact on Marketo’s integration with third-party applications.

“[Simplicity] is pretty much the point of being a platform that connects to third-party apps,” said Raab in an interview with Demand Gen Report. “So unless Marketo moves back to being a closed suite — which I am sure it won’t — this deal has little impact on competitors.”

Building A Comprehensive Platform

Demandbase CEO Chris Golec said the acquisition highlights the need for a comprehensive marketing platform. “The bigger picture here is to provide a platform solution that enables the convergence of advertising with marketing technology — making B2B commerce scalable, programmatic and available to marketers who need to be active partners in driving revenue.

The acquisition of Insightera is a smart move for Marketo, Golec said, as it expands the company’s offerings into web site personalization. It’s critical for Marketo to grow beyond lead management and email marketing as it continues to fill in functionality to serve the needs of today’s marketer looking for better ways to engage with its customers.”

In a company press release, Phil Fernandez, President and CEO of Marketo, stated: By augmenting our industry-leading marketing automation with Insightera’s real-time personalization capabilities, we are delivering on our vision to unify disparate channels and create timely, individualized relationships. Marketo has repeatedly redefined the standard for a digital marketing platform, and we’re thrilled to raise the bar again with this exciting acquisition.”

Mickey Alon, CEO and Co-founder of Insightera, added: We’re thrilled to add our capabilities to the industry’s best digital marketing platform, and together help marketers to listen and respond at scale across channels and time. Marketo has a powerful vision for the future of marketing that no other company can match. We’re excited to join this team and focus on innovating for marketers everywhere.”

additional reporting by Kim Ann Zimmermann

 

 

 

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