- Date
- June 4, 2013
- Kind
- Acquisition
- Significance
- High
On June 4, 2013, Salesforce.com and ExactTarget announced a definitive agreement under which Salesforce would acquire ExactTarget, a provider of email and digital marketing software, in a transaction valued at about $2.5 billion. Trade press at the time described it as Salesforce’s biggest acquisition to date.
The terms
- Salesforce would start a tender offer for all outstanding ExactTarget shares at $33.75 per share, in cash.
- The boards of directors of both companies approved the transaction unanimously.
- Salesforce commenced the tender offer on June 12, 2013.
Context
Coverage framed the deal as a push by Salesforce into marketing automation. The announcement is preserved in ExactTarget’s filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, linked below.
Why it matters
It moved Salesforce beyond sales and service into marketing, and set a pattern that has repeated for a decade: large CRM and experience vendors buying their way into marketing software rather than building it.
What happened next
The sources we reviewed cover the announcement and the start of the tender offer on June 12, 2013, not the completion.