Cloud-based ERP and omnichannel software specialist NetSuite announced plans to acquire cloud-based commerce marketing automation company Bronto Software for $200 million. The companies expect the deal to close in the second quarter of 2015.
Privately held Bronto offers a host of capabilities designed to unify a shopper’s omnichannel journey, including messaging, marketing CRM and automation. The company, which offers tools designed for commerce marketers to personalize and execute on various aspect of email, Short Message Service (SMS) and social campaigns, provides the commerce marketing automation platform used by more than 1,400 brands, including Armani Exchange, Timex and Trek Bikes.
“By adding Bronto’s capabilities to our product, our customers are not only able to offer compelling commerce experiences, but they can engage customers on an ongoing basis between site visits and across channels,” Andy Lloyd, general manager of commerce products for NetSuite, told eWEEK. “NetSuite and Bronto are a natural fit—we were both born in the cloud—and we have already partnered together with Bronto building a NetSuite-certified SuiteApp linking SuiteCommerce to the Bronto Marketing Platform last year. Together, we are ideally positioned to help commerce marketers turn one-time buyers into lifelong customers.”
Bronto also provides list management and segmentation tools to assess engagement across all messaging channels, which include common list building features like Website landing pages and pop-up boxes as well as text-to-join SMS campaigns.
“Increasingly, there will be a recognition that clicks on a marketing campaign are no different than clicks on a site—they are the start of what needs to be a cohesive customer journey,” Lloyd said. “Mobile is a great example of how the complexity of today’s multi-device world is driving the need for a single brand experience.”
The way customers consume content, whether it is in email or on-site, is dramatically different on mobile than it is on computers, Lloyd said. “So marketers are asked to build very different shopping customer journeys for different devices and different delivery mechanisms. Inevitably, this leads to broken experiences,” he said. “By unifying the commerce site and marketing systems, mobile experiences will be dramatically improved, because you’ll be able to build the entire customer journey from a single, unified system.”
NetSuite reported first quarter revenue of $164.8 million, a 34 percent increase from the same period in the prior year. The latest quarter is the eighth consecutive quarter in which the company posted more than 30 percent year-over-year growth in recurring revenue.
The company’s cash flows from operations were $28 million in the first quarter, up from $19.1 million in the same period in the prior year.
On a generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) basis, NetSuite’s net loss for the first quarter of 2015 was $22.7 million, versus a net loss of $22.2 million in the same period last year. In this interval, non-GAAP net income was $9 million, compared with non-GAAP net income of $4.4 million.