Evergage Joins the MLM Vendor Landscape and gets Acquired

Marketing Lead Management (MLM) automation continues to be a priority investment – in our new global survey of 1500 business decision makers, 72% said they’ll invest in new MLM software – over half for their first time. 

My new MLM Vendor Selection Matrix report, with the 2020 MLM vendor landscape as selected by those 1500 respondents, will come out later this month. But, due to this week’s news, I’ll point out NOW, that it is an interesting mix of Email Service Providers, Marketing Automation vendors and even some specialist vendors, such as the vendor Evergage. 

Variously described as a Personalization Engine, Customer Data Platform, and other categories that analysts like to invent, Evergage is an exciting newbie on the MLM block. Regardless of category (and marketing professionals do not buy in categories), Evergage earned its place in this survey because it has been found and deployed by marketing professionals who searched for more functionality to optimize their ongoing engagements with buyers and customers.  

My interviews showed that many firms are deploying it together with their established MLM platform to improve the customer engagement process. In the context of MLM, it is mostly bought by experienced users of Marketo, Eloqua and Salesforce Pardot seeking a 1-to-1 customer engagement: personalized  email campaigns, website or mobile app renditions, and other lead generation activities.

Earlier this week, Salesforce acquired Evergage. It is unlikely that Salesforce wants Evergage as its CDP, though it may well leverage some of its IP and people, as that product roadmap is already well underway. No, I think Salesforce bought the vendor to enhance its own MLM offering for all the reasons described above. 

For those of you needing some background, here is the already-completed Evergage vendor scorecard for my upcoming VSM report. This is what I write up for each vendor in the report and it is sent to all survey respondents and to our research clients.

Always keeping you informed! Peter