Marketing automation vendor Marketo has filed for a $75 million IPO, adding fuel to speculation on whether it will soon be snapped up in an acquisition.
From 2010 to 2012, Marketo’s revenue grew from $14 million to $58.4 million, according to its S1 filing. The San Mateo, Calif.-based marketing automation firm has raised $108 million in venture funding to date. The company closed its most recent round in November 2012, $50 million led by Silicon Valley firm Battery Ventures.
Its S1 filing also revealed Marketo’s strong ties with Salesforce.com, rumored to be a possible acquirer. “We rely on the fact that Salesforce.com continues to allow us access to its APIs to enable these customer integrations,” the document reads.
Marketo is one of the few independent marketing automation firms left and appears to be following a path similar to its competitor, Eloqua, which was acquired by Oracle for $871 million last year soon after issuing its own IPO.
Marketo may not be in a rush to be bought up just yet, according to Constellation Research CEO and principal analyst Ray Wang, who noted that the company is “at a size where being an independent for the next two to three years is a viable option.”
The companies that could be interested in adding a marketing automation firm to its portfolio, Wang added, include Adobe (“to complement their efforts in Marketing Cloud and to gain a new set of customers”), SAS (“to expand its cloud-based offerings”), SAP (“to add marketing to the mix”) and Salesforce.com, which is reportedly replacing its Eloqua deployments with Marketo.
Marketo has about 2,000 customers, which include CenturyLink, Citrix, Gannett, General Electric, Medtronic, Moody’s, and Panasonic.
