StrongMail Systems, a vendor of on-premise products for marketing and transactional e-mail, has been selected for e-mail delivery for Marketo (News - Alert), a B2B marketing firm, as the e-mail delivery platform for its marketing automation system, Marketo Lead Management.

 

Marketo's marketing automation software features e-mail marketing, lead nurturing, lead scoring, and closed-loop reporting capabilities. It's designed to "help marketing and sales teams work together to generate and qualify sales leads, shorten sales cycles and demonstrate marketing accountability," company officials say.

 

Prior to the launch of Marketo Lead Management in March 2008, the company wanted an e-mail delivery platform that would integrate with its marketing automation system and provide e-mail deliverability, management and reporting to its clients.

 

The Marketians decided that OEM-ing StrongMail's e-mail delivery technology would give it full ownership of this mission-critical component of its system, company officials say.

 

Phil Fernandez, president and CEO of Marketo, said having StrongMail as part of their infrastructure "gives us ultimate control over e-mail delivery at a fixed cost that is much cheaper than outsourcing to an ESP."

 

Marketo integrated StrongMail with the Marketo Lead Management product to use StrongMail's "marketing and transactional e-mail features, including smart bounce processing, real-time reporting and e-mail deliverability services," Marketo officials say.

 

Last month Lexnet Consulting Group announced the second in a series of integrations between StrongMail and CRM products – this time for Sage SalesLogix from Sage Software (News - Alert).

 

StrongMail is an on-premises e-mail marketing and transactional e-mail product. "As with SageCRM customers, we found that Sage SalesLogix customers were looking for real-time integration between their CRM system and an e-mail marketing product," said Steve Chipman, president of Lexnet, a StrongMail partner. "Historically, Sage SalesLogix has been mainly implemented as an on-premises CRM product, which makes it a good match for StrongMail's e-mail marketing appliance."

 

"We are thrilled that Lexnet is continuing to roll out CRM integrations with StrongMail," said Steve Murphy, North American Channel Manager for StrongMail Systems. "By integrating StrongMail with multiple CRM platforms, Lexnet is addressing the needs of a large number of companies."

 

StrongMail is headquartered in Redwood City, Calif., and is funded by Sequoia Capital (News - Alert), Evercore Partners, Globespan Capital Partners and DAG Ventures.