Marketo today announced that it has redefined marketing automation with the acquisition of Crowd Factory, Inc., a leading social campaign management platform. With its first acquisition, Marketo breaks social marketing from its usual silo, making it an integrated and integral part of every online marketing initiative. With social marketing a mandate for every company – large and small, business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) – this combined solution enables marketers to amplify and measure social-enabled campaigns to deliver more customers and gain an immediate competitive edge.

"Social marketing campaigns and marketing automation have been like the proverbial two ships passing in the night, with most social marketing tools sitting in silos disconnected from mainstream marketing processes. Today we have changed that game," said Phil Fernandez, president and CEO of Marketo. "By combining Crowd Factory with Marketo, marketing professionals can finally use integrated social campaigns to boost the reach and impact of every marketing initiative they undertake – at every step in the customer lifecycle. Since releasing our first products four years ago, Marketo's innovation has repeatedly reset the standard for marketing solutions, and we're thrilled to do it again with this revolutionary development in social marketing automation."