Marketo touts engagement play with latest acquisition

Marketo has acquired US-based sales software vendor, ToutApp, as part of efforts to extend its platform out of marketing automation and into wider engagement management.

ToutApp, a San Francisco-based company, was established in 2011 and provides a sales engagement tool for managing sales campaigns, content management and analytics. The vendor claims to about 100,000 sales executives use its tools today across 400 enterprise customers including Citrix, CA Technologies, Siemens, Tableau and Revel.

In a statement, Marketo CEO, Steve Lucas, said the acquisition of ToutApp helped to round out his company’s engagement capabilities and better tie together marketing and sales functions. It’s also a step further forward in terms of facilitating account-based marketing (ABM) activities, as well as Marketo Sales Insights.

“Brands that win today engage customers in a meaningful way at every step of the journey and this requires coordinated execution across the entire enterprise, particularly within sales and marketing,” Lucas said.

ToutApp founder and CEO, Tawheed Kader (TK), along with the rest of the vendor’s 30 staff, will join Marketo as part of the deal. Financial terms were not disclosed.The brand is expected to remain standalone for now, with integration plans announced in due course, a spokesperson told CMO.

ToutApp has accrued US$21 million in capital raising rounds since its launch in 2011, including $15 million in 2015 in Series B funding led by Andreessen Horowitz. The company claimed 300 per cent growth in top-line revenues in 2016.

“ToutApp and Marketo share a similar vision for empowering sales and marketing teams for success in the engagement economy,” TK commented. “We’re excited to join Marketo and further our shared mission of delivering exceptional customer and prospect engagement.”

The acquisition news comes on the eve of Marketo’s annual Marketing Nation event in San Francisco, where Lucas is expected to unveil details of the vendor’s efforts to extend out of marketing automation and into a

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