• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, December 20, 2013

Oracle said Friday it will acquire Responsys, a cloud-based B2C marketing software company, for $27 per share in cash or approximately $1.5 billion in cash.

Marketers use Responsys to combine email, mobile, social, display and the Web campaigns. The move focuses on servicing the customer through the entire lifecycle by extending Oracle's Customer Experience Cloud services, including commerce, sales, service, social and Oracle Marketing Cloud.

The Board of Directors of Responsys already approved the transaction, which should close in the first half of 2014, according to the company. 

Oracle made several online social media marketing software acquisitions in the past few years, such as the $871 million purchase of Eloqua.