Digital marketing and creative software provider Adobe Systems Inc. will acquire marketing campaign management company Neolane for approximately $600 million, Adobe announced today. The deal is expected to close in July.
Neolane, which is based in Paris, France, will become the sixth product in Adobe’s suite of marketing technologies, collectively known as the Adobe Marketing Cloud, the vendor says.
“This is a critical addition to our complete set of analytics, targeting, social, content management and media optimization solutions,” writes Brad Rencher, senior vice president and general manager, digital marketing, at Adobe in the company blog. “Neolane will integrate with our solutions to empower cross-channel and highly personalized campaign management across the web, e-mail, social, mobile, point-of-sale, direct mail, call center and other emerging channels.”
The acquisition will fill in Adobe’s gap in understanding offline customer data, such as from stores, call centers and direct mail campaigns, allowing Adobe clients to use online data to influence offline marketing and vice versa, says Matthew Langie, senior director, strategic marketing at Adobe. For example, an outdoor sports retailer might notice that a consumer browses its web site for only Trek mountain bikes, then send him a direct mail offer for 20% off a Trek bike the next week, Langie says.
“The combination of Adobe and Neolane will give customers richer customer profiles, greater activation of social and mobile data, better definition of highly valuable customer segments and more sophisticated automation and execution platforms,” Rencher writes.
Previously, Adobe allowed customers to use Neolane’s campaign management tools with its products through its Genesis integration program, Langie says. Many of Neolane’s more than 400 customers worldwide already use Adobe, says Stéphane Dehoche, CEO and co-founder of Neolane. “Combining our capabilities into Adobe Marketing Cloud will open up a level of visibility that makes these marketers’ day-to-day work easier and more effective.”
Neolane says its retailer clients include Barnes & Noble, No. 27 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide and Sephora (No. 144) as well as French retail chain Carrefour Group, No. 17 in the Internet Retailer Europe 500.
Neolane will be the latest acquisition in a string Adobe began in 2009 with analytics technology provider Omniture, followed by the purchase of content management provider Day Software in 2010, data management platform Demdex in 2011, video advertising platform Auditude in 2011 and display marketing company Efficient Frontier in 2012.
108 retailers in Internet Retailer’s 2013 Top 500 Guide report using Adobe to provide rich media; 204 for analytics and 11 for personalization technology.