Top 10: B2B Marketing platforms

2021. Terminus raises $90M to grow its B2B marketing platform



Terminus, a startup which is building platform that views sales and marketing in integrated way, through account-based marketing, has closed a Series C of $90 million. The area that Terminus specifically focuses on within that is account-based marketing. In short, this is a way for B2B sales and marketing teams to conceive of potential targets at a business not as individual entities but collective groups. This means a more joined up effort to work across whole organizations, providing a way to market something to more than one person, increasing the chances of connecting with someone to then make the sale.


2015. Marketing software Pardot improves collaboration and productivity



B2B marketing automation software Pardot (owned by Salesforce) rolled out several nice productivity and collaboration improvements: Chrome extension, that can track emails, faster data synchronization, data visualization and new customization features for reporting. The Chrome extension for Gmail - is a marketing automation plug-in that lets sales reps send trackable emails directly from Gmail. It is not just about making life easier for sales reps so they can sell more and better; it's also a new B2B tool, almost a stealth one as it is disguised as an innocent email plug-in, for sales. It's a similar story with the other enhancements. The data synch with Salesforce is now the fastest out of any marketing automation tool, checking for changes every two minutes. It's convenient for the reps, and surfacing prospect insights so sales reps can respond before the competition is crucial.

2014. LinkedIn acquires B2B marketing service Bizo to power its Ads



LinkedIn will acquire Bizo, a service that helps advertisers reach businesses and professionals. Bizo offers targeting and analytics for display and direct response ads. The deal is worth around $175 million. In a blog post about the acquisition, LinkedIn’s David Thacker pointed to the growth of business-to-business advertising on LinkedIn, particularly of its Sponsored Updates ad unit. (LinkedIn reported that its Marketing Solutions division brought in $101.8 million in revenue in the first quarter of 2014 — up 36 percent year-over-year.) Bizo’s technology could help LinkedIn improve its offerings.


2013. Oracle Buys Responsys for $1.5 Billion, Merges with Eloqua



Exactly a year to the day after Oracle announced its $871 million buy of marketing automation company Eloqua, Larry Ellison and company announced plans to acquire marketing cloud player Responsys for $1.5 billion. Oracle's dive into the marketing arena in 2012 has ticked off a year of acquisitions, most notably resulting in a competition with its major competitor, Salesforce. Salesforce bought ExactTarget in mid 2012 in response to the Eloqua buy. That move came less than a year after ExactTarget itself had bought up B2B marketing automation vendor Pardot. Now both Oracle and Salesforce have marketing systems that are expressly designed for either B2B or B2C customers.