Adobe digs deeper into marketing field with Neolane purchase

Further boosting its presence in the field of product marketing, Adobe is acquiring campaign management software provider Neolane for approximately US$600 million in cash.

Based in Paris, privately held Neolane specialises in orchestrating marketing campaigns across multiple channels including Web, email, social media sites, mobile, call centre outreach, direct mail and point-of-sale locations. Its flagship product is called Conversational Marketing Platform.

Neolane, founded in 2001, reports having about 400 corporate customers, including many that also use Adobe products. The customers cover a wide range of industries and include Ikea, EMI Music, Barnes & Noble, DHL International, Wells Fargo Center and others. The company reported $58 million in revenue for 2012.

It's Neolane's cross-channel campaign management capabilities that caught the attention of Adobe, said Brad Rencher, an Adobe senior vice-president and general manager of Adobe's digital marketing business, in a statement. These capabilities extend Adobe's own Marketing Cloud portfolio of products and services, joining the existing Analytics, Target, Social, Experience Manager and Media Optimizer lines.

The acquisition is the latest in a series of company purchases Adobe has made in the field of marketing software and services. In 2009, Adobe purchased marketing analytics software provider Omniture for US$1.8 billion. In 2010, the company purchased customer interaction specialist Day Software for $240 million.

In this field, Adobe also purchased Demdex and Auditude in 2011 and Efficient Frontier in 2012.

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Neolane has about 300 employees and has offices in the US and the Asia-Pacific region as well as in Europe. Its North American headquarters is in Newton, Massachusetts.

The deal is expected to close in July, pending completion of the usual closing conditions.