IBM has announced its plans to purchase Unica.com, a marketing software maker, for around $480 million. IBM is purchasing Unica in an effort to improve their customer loyalty and satisfaction. Unica has over 1,500 customers including Best Buy and US Cellular.

IBM recently purchased Coremetrics, a Web analytics vendor. The software produced by Unica will work in conjunction with the technology of Coremetrics, and also with IBM’s WebSphere Commerce platform.

IBM is not the only company making this new effort to improve customer satisfaction. Adobe recently purchased Omniture, a company that provides Web analytics, as well as Day Software, a Web content management vendor.

Altimeter Group analyst Ray Wang said that IBM’s purchase of Unica will help complete a range of software that “captures the digital transformation” many marketing and service providers are dealing with. “You start with key assets such as Coremetrics that provide insight, you leverage Unica for marketing automation, and you conduct commerce through Sterling Commerce,” he said.

Rather than attempt to enter into sales force automation capabilities, IBM will most likely concentrate on the market for integrating CRM capabilities with other systems. This is evidenced by IBM’s other recent purchase of Cast Iron Systems, a data integration vendor.