ExactTarget buys Twitter app CoTweet
- Added:
- Mar 05, 2010
Email marketing firm ExactTarget has acquired Twitter business app CoTweet for an undisclosed sum.
Founded in 2008 and based in San Francisco, CoTweet is a Web-based collaboration platform that allows companies to manage multiple Twitter accounts from a single dashboard.
The tool supports multiple editors, track conversations, assign roles and create follow-up tasks. The company has a growing client list, including Whole Foods, McDonald’s, Microsoft, Ford, Dell, Pepsi, Sprint, Intuit, Salesforce.com, USA Today and Coca-Cola.
The deal will see ExactTarget incorporate Co-Tweet’s technology, creating a tool for marketers to manage social media, email and mobile communications.
CoTweet will operate in San Francisco as a business unit of ExactTarget and will lead the company’s social media product development.
CoTweet co-founder and chief executive Jesse Engle will lead the San Francisco operation and spearhead the creation and expansion of the company’s social media lab.
“What we’re seeing in the market is organizations are moving quickly to try to capture the potential of social, but are discovering that it’s siloed and not integrated effectively with other forms of digital communications,” said Scott Dorsey, ExactTarget co-founder and chief executive officer. “By combining the power of ExactTarget and CoTweet, we can provide businesses a complete solution to tie together all forms of interactive communications and drive deeper customer engagement online.”
“We see a huge opportunity to build on ExactTarget’s incredible business and customer relationships to help companies drive more measurable value from social media,” said Engle. “As part of ExactTarget, we’ll have the global resources to cement our early lead, rapidly expand our platform and develop the next generation of social media communication tools.”
Forrester Research predicts social media marketing will grow faster than any other form of interactive marketing.
In its 2009 U.S. Interactive Marketing Forecast Report, the independent research firm estimated social media marketing will grow at compound annual rate of 34 percent, reaching $3.1 billion by 2014.
"This acquisition is strong validation that valuable, sustainable businesses are emerging from the Twitter ecosystem," said Dick Costolo, Twitter's chief operating officer. "An ExactTarget and CoTweet combination should lead to even further digital marketing innovation through use of the Twitter platform."
The acquisition of CoTweet follows ExactTarget’s record-breaking 2009 that welcomed the company’s 36th consecutive quarter of growth in the fourth quarter 2009 and saw annual contracted revenue soar to $114 million and total GAAP revenue exceed $95 million.
In 2009, ExactTarget also secured $145 million in venture capital investment and opened its first international office in London.
