Dive Brief:

• Over the last several years the marketing technology space has been consolidating, mostly through acquisitions by major tech firms such as Oracle, IBM, Salesforce.com and Adobe.
• The latest acquisition news features two independent companies – Sysomos and Expion.
• The two companies combine social data analytics and social campaign management.

Dive Insight:

The explosion in marketing technology companies, such as marketing automation SaaS companies, email automation software vendors and social media productivity tools, led to a series of consolidation over the past several years including Oracle acquiring a then-recently-IPOed Eloqua, Salesforce buying Exact Target for $2.5 billion, and IBM snagging Silverpop, among other mega-deals. 

Now that the dust has settled, it looks like the current round on consolidation will occur among the independent players. The most recent announcement that Sysomos is acquiring Expion. Sysomos is a social data analytics company and Expion specializes in managing social media campaigns, including handling creating and distributing content, making for a complementary blended company.

“This is about taking insights from data science, which we do well, and making them actionable, which is something that Expion is known for,” Sysomos Chief Executive Lindsay Sparks told the Wall Street Journal. “We think it’s difficult for large organizations to do things outside of their core.”