Amid talk of a possible sale, Marketo announces upcoming next-gen platform that is built for the Internet of Things era

Las Vegas got the Marketo crowd this week, as more than 5,000 attendees ventured to the company’s Marketing Nation Summit in that glittering town.

While the conference was underway, the Bloomberg News Service reported that the company is working with Morgan Stanley to explore “strategic alternatives,” which could include a sale. Speculation immediately surfaced SAP, Microsoft, and Adobe as potential suitors.

At the conference, CEO Phil Fernandez said that his company is making its largest technology investment so far, boosting its platform with a next-generation architecture called Project Orion.

Its exact contours are still fairly amorphous, although the company said it wanted to put “every customer interaction in the context of what came before and what comes next so that companies can listen, learn and respond to each customer in a personalized, relevant and contextual way everywhere they are.”

CMO Sanjay Dholakia noted that, as the Internet of Things begins to take hold, “the old paradigm of channels goes out the window,” since there will be countless channels reporting from countless transmitting devices — including refrigerators, cars, coffee pots and industrial equipment.

In that context, Marketo seemed to indicate, the new platform will focus more on highly personalized content for each step of a customer’s journey and less on the means of communication or the device. This approach might also help the company in its effort to move beyond its core market of B2B and more into B2C.

On the B2B side, the San Mateo, California-based company said its account-based marketing will be more tightly integrated with sales tools into one suite, for release this summer.

An email channel will also be added to its Predictive Content application, enabling predictive content recommendations. Previously, predictive analytics was used primarily for website content. A new Email Insights feature will offer email performance analysis, which the company said can surface otherwise hidden trends.

And, as expected at any platform conference, there were also a variety of announcements about Marketo integration.

Event marketing firm Attend can now offer faster event setups and sales follow-ups tied in with Marketo, revenue predictor FunnelWise is providing revenue paths based on Marketo data, and Cloudwords is connecting for multi-language campaigns,

Predictive marketer EverString announced an extension of its partnership with Marketo Ad Bridge, enabling the segmentation of leads and accounts via its data. NewsCred is integrating for content marketing, Radius for predictive marketing and Vibes for the addition of mobile channels to automated campaigns.

The MX Group’s JourneyMax is now available for automated strategy, content and campaign management for Marketo users, and Leadspace’s Lead-to-Account Matching can now employ predictive analytics for account-based efforts in the platform.

About The Author

Barry Levine

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.