ExactTarget Acquires CoTweet. What Does It Mean?

For most of my readers, you heard it here first.

I have had the privilege to meet, chat, and work with the brilliant team at ExactTarget over the past month. It is always fascinating to meet people that want to change the way corporate culture uses social media. It has been said that the future of social media is in enterprise expansion and we are officially witnessing the push into one virtual platform (thanks to ExactTarget).

As of 11 am (EST) ExactTarget officially announced that they will be acquiring CoTweet, a Web-based collaboration platform that allows companies to manage multiple Twitter accounts from a single dashboard, support multiple editors, track conversations, assign roles, and create follow-up tasks. Social tools have been random and sometimes carelessly developed because the developers did not have the financial means to build a top quality product.

I don’t know about you… but I am overly excited with this step into an enterprise system social media platform. I am overly excited because ExactTarget is an Indianapolis, Indiana based company… and… I am overly excited because Jesse Engle (co-founder of CoTweet) is an awesome guy.

This deal will result in (finally) the expansion of social platforms into a unique collaboration system for one-to-one marketing. I love it. See press release below.

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ExactTarget Acquires Twitter Pioneer CoTweet, Creates Social Media Lab in San Francisco

Businesses Now Have Complete Solution to Manage Social Media, Email and Mobile Communications

SAN FRANCISCO (March 2, 2010) – Global on-demand email marketing and one-to-one marketing provider ExactTarget announced today it has acquired San Francisco-based CoTweet, creating the industry’s first complete solution for managing communications across all interactive marketing channels including social media, email and mobile.

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.”

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, support multiple editors, track conversations, assign roles and create follow-up tasks.  The company has a growing client list, including Whole Foods, Oracle, McDonald’s, Microsoft, Ford, Dell, Pepsi, Sprint, Target, Intuit, Salesforce.com, USA Today and Coca-Cola.

“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 36^th 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, opened its first international office in London, earned the title of a “leader” in email marketing in the “The Forrester Wave: Email Marketing Service Providers Q4 2009” (December 2009) report and added NIKE Inc., Best Buy and Universal Music Group to its client list.  Headquartered in Indianapolis, ExactTarget now employs more than 600 associates worldwide.

About CoTweet, Inc.

CoTweet is the real-time business collaboration platform for Twitter. Working with companies such as Whole Foods, Starbucks, JetBlue, Ford, Pepsi, Sprint, Coca-Cola, the City of San Francisco/311 and Twitter, CoTweet has established itself as the tool of choice to brands to connect and engage with customers and stakeholders. Founded in 2008, CoTweet is based in San Francisco, Calif.  For more information, visit www.CoTweet.com

About ExactTarget

ExactTarget is a leading global provider of on-demand email marketing and one-to-one marketing solutions. The company’s software as a service technology provides organizations a single platform to connect with customers via triggered and transactional email, integrated text messaging, voice messaging, landing pages and social media.  Supported by collaborative global services teams, ExactTarget’s technology integrates with more sales and marketing information systems than any other in the industry, including Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Omniture and Webtrends among many others. ExactTarget’s software powers permission-based multi-channel communications for thousands of organizations around the world including Expedia.com, Aurora Fashions, Papa John’s, CareerBuilder.com, Gannett Co., Inc., The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, The Home Depot and Wellpoint, Inc. For more information, visit www.exacttarget.com or call 1-866-EMAILET.

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Media Contacts:

Cybele Diamandopoulos (FOLIO Communications for CoTweet) – 512.431.5759 or cybele@foliocommunications.com

Lindsay Tishgart (FOLIO Communications for CoTweet) – 512.327.1818 or lindsey@foliocommunications.com

Mitch Frazier (ExactTarget) – 317.670.9611 or mfrazier@ExactTarget.com

Carol Sacks (Tenor Communications for ExactTarget) – 650.520.8261 or carol@tenorcom.com

Lauren Sanders (Dittoe PR for ExactTarget) – 317.202.2280 X 10 or lauren@dittoepr.com