Dive Brief:
- Salesforce.com Inc. has reportedly agreed to pay approximately $700 million for data management platform Krux Digital, sources told the The Wall Street Journal and which was later confirmed by Krux in a press release.
- The deal for Krux significantly expands Salesforce’s infrastructure for collecting and analyzing data, helping it build expertise in leveraging artificial intelligence for marketers.
- The acquisition is the latest sign the Salesforce is taking a more competitive stance, with the company announcing a deal for e-commerce platform Demandware in June, launching its own AI platform called Einstein and weighing a deal for Twitter.
Dive Insight:
As Dreamforce, Salesforce’s annual event for its developers, kicks off today in San Francisco, the company is clearly looking to boost its core cloud software offerings for marketers by putting a bigger focus on AI and data analysis.
The company wants to position itself as a more complete marketing cloud services experience, with built-in data management capabilities. Previously, the data management needs for customers of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud were handled through third-party integrations, such as with Krux, according to AdExchanger. By acquiring Krux, Salesforce users will find it easier to do advanced segmentation and audience management, something more marketers are demanding to meet consumers’ high expectations for relevant digital experiences.
Krux is already focused on sophisticated AI-driven targeting through its work with numerous big-name marketers, media companies and agencies to capture, unify and use data.
The deal also boosts Salesforce’s AI offering Einstein, which was introduced last month to optimize for individual customers by learning from each new piece of data and interactions within the CRM platform.
Salesforce’s moves come at a time when competition is heating up in enterprise CRM as Microsoft pursues its acquisition of LinkedIn. Last week, Salesforce took steps to block that deal, likely an attempt to insure that the social network’s significant repository of data about users’ contacts is not blocked off. Microsoft denied the allegations, instead telling the Irish Independent they "want to make that data useful in lots of new ways.”
