Salesforce buys digital marketing firm Krux in $700m deal

Salesforce continues its data-marketing focus in latest acquisition

Cloud CRM company Salesforce has agreed a $700m deal to acquire digital marketing startup Krux - the latest in a long line of data marketing purchases made by Salesforce.

The acquisition is part of the company's strategy to expand its offerings outside of its core of CRM.

While a relatively young company, Krux counts customers ranging from the BBC to Kellogg's among its clients, and claims that its service allows customers to store, analyse and act on ever-increasing amounts of data.

"This allows Krux to help companies create and reinforce consumer relationships through a virtuous cycle of valuable interactions and experiences," the website states.

A filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission confirmed the deal, and Salesforce will pay $340m in cash and the rest in stock.

Krux co-founder Tom Chavez said in a blog post that the deal is the ideal move for the company to expand the reach of its offerings to more customers.

"As a part of the Salesforce ecosystem we've had the opportunity to work closely with the Salesforce team to create integrations that make our customers even more successful," he wrote.

"Beyond the strategic and technology fit, we believe our companies' core values, which include innovation, trust, transparency and, most importantly, customer success, are in perfect alignment and offer an exciting foundation on which we can continue building the industry's smartest marketing cloud."

The news comes amid a flurry of purchases and potential deals at Salesforce. The firm was in the running to acquire LinkedIn, which eventually went to Microsoft, and has been linked with a potential deal for Twitter.

Salesforce also bought collaborative office suite company Quip for $582m and will pay $2.8bn for Demandware in a deal that is expected to close by mid-2017.