Adobe to Acquire Marketo

[Will_Harmon2]

As you may have heard, earlier today Adobe announced they have entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Marketo to widen their leadership in customer experience. Marketo CEO Steve Lucas published a blog that highlights both Marketo's and Adobe's joint vision to empower marketers to deliver exceptional end-to-end customer experiences:

"I am thrilled to announce that Marketo has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by Adobe. Adobe and Marketo both share an unwavering belief in the power of content and data to drive business results. Together we will deliver an unrivaled solution that will place customer experience and engagement at the heart of digital transformation. This announcement is a momentous occasion for Marketo, as it signals the next phase of our company’s growth."

For more information about the pending acquisition, please read Steve Lucas' full blog and Adobe's press release below.

Blog from Marketo CEO Steve Lucas: Adobe to Acquire Marketo to Place Customer Experience and Engagement at the Heart of Digital Transfo...
Adobe Press Release: Adobe Expands Customer Experience Leadership with Addition of Marketo | Adobe Blog

[David_Mason1]

Where are all the comments? This is big news!

Any speculation on the vision of a future Marketo as a result of the acquisition? I think this will result in a much better user experience (for users and end users) than being acquired by Salesforce several years ago. Adobe is THE NAME in CX and Marketo is the leader in MA. Can't wait to see what happens!

[Anonymous]

Adobe doesn't waste much time in figuring out integration points so we should expect more connections to Adobe Analytics and Experience Manager.  Not sure if it will impact how it works with Salesforce because that link is important, but of course Adobe doesn't have a real competing CRM tool.  Be interesting to see how they separate Marketo from Adobe Campaign (NeoLane).  Sales teams are going to get more aggressive.

[Grégoire_Miche2]

A good question will be how will Google react ? Marketo had announced the partnerneship with Google not only about the cloud hosting of the Marketo servers but also about the integration with Google Analytics and Advertizing solutions. What will this become, since Adobe competes with Google on some of these (Web analytics for a start).

Might impact web personalization too. AEM has a strong personalization engine that somewhat competes with Marketo's WP, excepted that Marketo WP works on any CMS, but also gets some limitations in enterprise environments (lack of workspaces for instance).

All in all, we know too few for the moment to know how good (or bad) that will be really good for Marketo customers. Time will tell.

-Greg

[Grégoire_Miche2]

Agreed on the connections. Not only with Analytics but also with the social tools and the DMP. Marketo customers would strongly benefit from a well integrated social publications / monitoring platform and from some regargeting capabilitiers outside of owned media.

[Anonymous]

Yes, surprised to see the announcement too! I'm sure there were rumors prior, but I've been out of the trades for a minute. Either way, congratulations to the Marketo organization and team!

[Jesper_Palmark]

Must admit I am not sure if this is good or bad news. Adope aquired Neolane back in 2013, another Marketing Automation company.

My experience is that it is not necessarily a good thing that a company has to support multiple platforms.
I know it from my time working with Oracle who has multiple CRM systems AND Marketing Automation systems.

[Julia_Brocato]

I was a little apprehensive about the news when I heard it too. M&A are always scary regardless of how great the acquiring company is. My marketability as an employee is due in large part to Marketo, so I hope they're here to stay for a while!