Oracle To Buy Responsys Cloud-Based B2C Marketing Automation Platform

In an effort to dominate the cloud-based marketing technology market, Oracle announced today that it will acquire Responsys Inc., a provider of enterprise-scale cloud-based B2C marketing software.

Responsys helps brands manage and execute email, mobile, social, display and retargeting campaigns. MetLife, jetBlue, City Sports and Lenovo are among the company’s enterprise clients according to the website.

The deal creates what Oracle says will be the world’s largest marketing cloud by extending Oracle’s existing Customer Experience Cloud, which includes Commerce, Sales, Service, Social and the Oracle Marketing Cloud. Oracle’s solutions also include marketing automation solution Eloqua, which competes head-to-head with Salesforce, which acquired ExactTarget in June 2013, and Marketo,which went public in March of this year.

“Recognizing the unique needs of the CMO in B2B and B2C industries, the Oracle Marketing Cloud is now the only platform to unite enterprise-class leaders in these historically distinct marketing-automation fields,” said Mark Hurd, President, Oracle.  “Our strategy of combining the leaders across complementary technologies signifies Oracle’s overwhelming commitment to winning and serving the CMO better than any other software company in the world.”

Oracle’s board voted unanimously to acquire Responsys for $27.00 per share in cash or roughly $1.5 billion. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2014.

About The Author

Ginny Marvin

As Third Door Media's paid media reporter, Ginny Marvin writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting for Search Engine Land and Marketing Land. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She provides search marketing and demand generation advice for ecommerce companies and can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.