Marketo acquires sales engagement tool ToutApp

Marketing platform Marketo is helping to advance the combination of marketing and sales tech today with the announcement that it has acquired sales engagement platform ToutApp.

ToutApp provides salespeople with tools for managing their efforts, including campaigns and marketing content. In the announcement, Marketo said its platform has been trying to bring sales and marketing departments together around customer engagement. ToutApp says it is used by over 100,000 salespeople and more than 400 enterprise customers. Deal terms were not announced.

Marketo already offers Sales Insights, which can be integrated with customer relationship management (CRM) systems in Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics so salespeople can better manage their leads.

Last September, Marketo added native account-based marketing (ABM) capabilities, to help marketers pitch to companies and their buying teams.

Analyst David Raab told me via email that he didn’t “understand why Marketo had to buy them, as opposed to simply integrating via their partner exchange.”

He noted that “there’s a lot of overlap in functionality between the two,” but added that the acquisition “gives Marketo a better entrée into sales teams, which may be the reason,” as well as possibly a better integration with CRMs.

It’s not yet clear if ToutApp will be fully integrated into Marketo or remain as a separate but integrated app. (We’ve reached out to both companies for comments but have not yet heard back.)

Raab suggested that a technical integration might be a big effort with little added value, but, if they don’t fully integrate, it’s really two related but somewhat overlapping tools.

Marketo went private last year, which can give it more flexibility in taking the development — and acquisition — steps it needs to remain competitive. Chief among those development efforts is a platform being re-engineered for next generation requirements, called Project Orion.

[Article on MarTech Today.]

About The Author

Barry Levine

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.