Microsoft Dynamics CRM Adds Marketing Automation and Planning with MarketingPilot Acquisition

Microsoft CVP for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Bob Stutz today announced that Microsoft has acquired marketing automation and resource management firm MarketingPilot.

"More and more, marketers are being asked to drive the overall strategy and execution of customer interactions across multiple channels and touch points, and to measure ROI on those interactions," Stutz wrote in his first blog post to the CRM Connection blog. "As part of these industry trends and emerging business opportunities, I am excited to announce that Dynamics CRM has closed on the acquisition of MarketingPilot."

The move into marketing automation should come as no surprise to those watching Dynamics CRM closely.  At WPC 2012 in July, product manager Bill Patterson stated clearly that Microsoft planned to make investments in marketing automation, and given the maturity of many players in the space, an acquisition seemed like the most likely option. Specifically, he told the WPC audience, "We want to help our customers drive more engagement either on their own web sites or through social media. It's an area that we haven't touched for some time." 

Here's more from Stutz's announcement, which puts the emphasis on the marketing resource management (MRM) capabilities of MarketingPilot:

"MarketingPilot provides Integrated Marketing Management solutions to better understand their customers, manage and streamline marketing operations and create automated and measurable multi-channel marketing campaigns.  This acquisition is a very exciting step forward for us, and will accelerate our ability to better meet the needs of CMO's through rich business intelligence, and better enable marketers to successfully ...