Who’s who in B2B Marketing Automation: The vendor landscape

The enterprise B2B marketing automation market is concentrated among a few cloud vendors, including Salesforce, Oracle and Adobe. In 2018, there were a number of acquisitions by Adobe and Salesforce in particular as they sought to consolidate their positions at the top of the market and broaden their offerings for B2B firms.

Adobe’s biggest deal of 2018 was its purchase of rival marketing automation platform Marketo in September for $4.75 billion; the firm also bought Magneto Commerce for $1.68 billion in May. Meanwhile, Salesforce acquired integration platform Mulesoft in May for $6.5 billion, analytics provider Datorama in July for $800 million, as well as interactive email outfit Rebel in October and CloudCraze in May for undisclosed sums (see chart below).

More recently, we’ve seen the acquisition of Mautic by open source cloud platform Acquia for an undisclosed sum in May of 2019, only to have the parent purchased by Vista Partners in September for $1B. Also in May, SugarCRM picked up Salesfusion and re-branded it Sugar Market, in a deal in which terms were not publicly disclosed.

Select Marketing Automation Financial Transactions

There was less deal-making activity among vendors serving the small and mid- sized business (SMB) market in 2018, although Infusionsoft, which targets small and rapidly growing firms, raised $20 million in Series E funding in October before undergoing a rebrand (to Keap) in January 2019 and launching a new CRM tool.

In January 2019, Cision sold iContact to j2Global for $49 million. Mailchimp bought graphic design startup Sawa in February for an undisclosed sum to enable users to more easily create on-brand campaign graphics.

There will likely be more acquisitions to come in 2020, as a number of smaller martech companies mature out of the venture-funded stage.

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About The Author

Pamela Parker

Pamela Parker is Research Director at Third Door Media's Content Studio, where she produces Martech Intelligence Reports and other in-depth content for digital marketers in conjunction with Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, MarTech Today and Digital Marketing Depot. Prior to taking on this role at TDM, she served as Content Manager, Senior Editor and Executive Features Editor. Parker is a well-respected authority on digital marketing, having reported and written on the subject since its beginning. She's a former managing editor of ClickZ and has also worked on the business side helping independent publishers monetize their sites at Federated Media Publishing. Parker earned a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University.