Marketo Buys Insightera in First Acquisition Since IPO

Marketo has announced they’ve signed the agreement to acquire their first company since going public seven months ago.

The provider of cloud-based marketing software bought Insightera, a real-time personalization platform for websites and mobile applications, at a reported price of $20 million: $6 million in cash and $14 million in stock.

Insightera delivers customized content based on real-time consumer insights. It has offices in San Mateo, CA and Israel; the latter will become the foundation of a big data and predictive analytics innovation center. Marketo, on the other side of the business, provides behavioral data. The acquisition will enable Marketo to help marketers improve buyer engagement and increase conversion rates by offering consumers more relevant content.

Marketo not only speeds up its performance by acquiring this real-time marketing personalization software startup, but also by adding Gmail features. Cirrus Insight, an application for integrating Salesforce with Gmail and Google Apps, announced this past Wednesday that it has integrated Marketo with Gmail.

This move narrows the gap between sales and marketing, because Marketo clients can now access both Salesforce information and Marketo’s marketing automation intelligence in the inbox.

Its most recent acquisition of Insightera and cooperation with Cirrus are part of a greater plan for Marketo to innovate. They launched Marketo Financial Management in May and released their Customer Engagement Engine in June this year.