Constant Contact Redefines Cloud-Based Marketing Automation With Bantam Live Acquisition

Salesforce.com has been pushing its Chatter social networking platform for the corporate class with the new public service, Chatter.com, promoted with two ads while the Super Bowl halftime show.

On Wednesday, Constant Contact made a move to keep pace with the social networking expectations of its clients by acquiring Bantam Live, a contact management and social CRM provider for $15 million. This acquisition follows Constant Contact’s purchase of NutshellMail last May which enabled the email marketing company to link its messages to Twitter and Facebook.

In fact, if social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter continue to outpace traditional email as the primary communications and collaboration platform for a new generation of businesspeople, at that time Constant Contact could become the MS Outlook of the future for a broad, cross-section of small- and mid-size businesses which already depend on its email marketing capabilities.

Many in the SaaS/Cloud world have been speculating about when Salesforce.com will acquire a marketing automation vendor to round out its ‘Sales Cloud’. But, Constant Contact is suggesting that its marketing automation platform could be the centerpiece of a broader set of day-to-day business functions.