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Eloqua filed an IPO for $100 million. What does this say about the space in general?
Details - Is this a disappointing number for the marketing automation space? May rekindle debate about whether Marketing Automation is its own space or will/should be part of a CRM provider.
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2 Answers
Well, the $100 million figure is not representative of the space, but rather of the company doing the IPO. Sure, the prospects of a sizable market have some play but more importantly, other vendors will be watching closely to see how the market reacts to the announcement and ultimately what price will Eloqua shares settle on.
I've written before about the Marketing Automation space (here http://bit.ly/gCVgfn and here http://bit.ly/kAQOQ4). I still think this is a hot space, VC money is flowing, the market is still young, and the technology is maturing.
Interesting to note there are already a bunch of Email Service Providers already listed on the public stock market (see http://www.emailvendorselection.com/email-service-providers-for-sale-on-stock...).
Should MA be part of CRM? I personally think that with time, all of these solutions (including email, marketing automation, social media monitoring, etc.) will become part of the CRM. But that will take a while. Maybe Salesforce.com will come out with a market-changing announcement next week at Dreamforce... let's see!
It's hard to predict how this one will end. Eloqua is one of the few in the space that has the beef to pull something like this off. There is still a real possibility that one of the big CRM or ERP systems will move to take them out before the IPO actually occurs. Being a public company is still really hard these days. They may be able to yield more enterprise value by being acquired.
No matter what happens, the next shoe to drop is the most interesting and probably more indicative of the future of the space. Does Marketo follow suit? Does Salesforce FINALLY do something? Is there another wave of vendors to meaningfully emerge from the Net Results, Lead Life, Pardot crowd?
It should be fun to watch!
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