Dive Brief: 

• Oracle has acquired digital marketing software company Responsys for $1.5 billion. 
• The move will help to expand the Oracle Marketing Cloud by adding Responsys' email, social, mobile, display and Web CRM technology. 
• The buy is in response to other big tech firms, particularly major competitor Salesforce, adding marketing-services divisions. 

Dive Insight: 

Salesforce may be Oracle's main competitor, but they're not the only big firms getting in the marketing-services game. Adobe and IBM have also made tech acquisitions to help build marketing-services divisions. Their buys, and the previous buys from Oracle, show a growing trend of large tech and software companies including marketing in their overall offerings, thus underscoring their understanding of how important marketing is to the sales cycle. We're likely to see more of these types of deals in the future.