Salesforce is about to get tons of marketing data as it builds upon and improves its data analytics technology for salespeople.
The sales software giant said in a Monday regulatory filing that it would acquire marketing data and technology startup Krux for around $340 million in cash. The total value of the deal is worth $700 million, which includes both stock and cash, according to the filings and a Salesforce spokesperson.
After the deal closes, which is expected to be by the end of January 2017, Krux will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Salesforce (CRM).
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Krux’s calls its core technology product the Intelligent Marketing Hub, and promotes it as an all-in-one software service that collects, analyzes, and presents data to marketing professionals to help them better promote their organization. For example, Krux, via the company’s website, said the BBC uses its technology to better serve more relevant online advertisements to its digital readers. Krux’s customers include HBO, JetBlue Airways (JBLU), and Coins2Day’s parent company Time, Inc. (TIME) as customers.
In a blog post on the news, Krux CEO Tom Chavez wrote that Salesforce will integrate Krux’s technology into its own so-called customer relationship management software services. An existing partner of Salesforce, Krux has already been working with the cloud software giant on making sure its technology will integrate with existing systems, Chavez wrote.
Chavez said that Krux would give Salesforce marketing data in the form of “billions of new signals” that would presumably be used to improve Salesforce’s recently revealed Einstein artificial intelligence technology. Salesforce said it is embedding Einstein data crunching technology into various software services that will presumably make them more efficient at tasks like showing salespeople the right sales leads to follow up on.
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The news of the acquisition comes the same week of Salesforce’s annual customer conference in San Francisco. It also follows recent deal news in June when Salesforce said it would buy e-commerce company Demandware for roughly $2.8 billion, making it Salesforce’s biggest acquisition ever.
