As it achieves a preliminary close on its first round of funding, LeadSift has signed a deal to market its lead-generation product through Salesforce.com – a deal that came together because of an article on Entrevestor.com in May.

Halifax-based LeadSift is announcing as early as today a $500,000 preliminary close on its first round of funding, which includes a $250,000 investment from Nova Scotia’s innovation agency, Innovacorp. 

That announcement is coming just four days after San Francisco-based Salesforce, the social media company that bought Radian6 of Fredericton and GoInstant of Halifax, unveiled a new suite of social media analysis tools provided by 20 different suppliers, including LeadSift.

It’s difficult to state what the biggest news is with LeadSift because so much has happened to the company since we wrote about it on Entrevestor in May, just before it graduated from the Launch36 accelerator program organized by PropelICT.

The article described LeadSift’s software, which scans the tweets of people in a geographic location and automatically finds those who are intent on making a purchase. The purpose is targeted marketing, so an auto dealer, for example, could find a person who’s looking for a certain make of car, track that person down and help him or her find a suitable vehicle. What’s more, LeadSift can rank the people tweeting about a purchase so the most likely candidates appear first on the list.

What’s really cool – at least for Entrevestor – is the article was noticed by Ed Sullivan, the New York-based Vice-President of Product Alliances at the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, who contacted LeadSift immediately. The company was putting together its new Marketing Cloud ecosystem, which brings in independent providers to offer large corporate clients a suite of social media analysis tools. Salesforce announced Friday at its Cloudforce 2012 event in New York that 20 companies – including LeadSift – would join the Marketing Cloud ecosystem.

“For us, it means a validation of LeadSift in that Salesforce thinks that it’s a good enough product to put in front of hundreds of its Fortune 100 customers,” said LeadSift CEO Tapajyoti Das in an interview.

Though he is excited about the exposure to these large corporations, Das said he does not expect a huge gain in revenues from the deal. The important aspect is the credibility it brings the company.

Das and his three co-founders have been putting together a round of financing since they emerged from Launch36 in May, and are now in the final stages of closing a round that comprises funding from several groups.

Members of East Valley Ventures, the group of investors and mentors surrounding Gerry Pond, committed to invest in the company, as did Innovacorp. At the same time, it was one of the winners of MentorCamp, which led to investment commitments from MentorCamp CEO Permjot Valia and other tech gurus attending Atlantic Innovation Week, including some from South Africa, San Francisco and Britain.

The LeadSift co-founders were preparing to close on a round of about $500,000 from Innovacorp and these angels, but they also had interest from venture capital investors from outside Atlantic Canada. So they ended up closing a round of convertible notes with Innvacorp and the angels. If LeadSift concludes a funding deal with a venture capital firm in the next 60 days, these notes will convert to equity.

Das said one VC fund is now conducting due diligence, indicating such a deal is certainly possible.

LeadSift is continuing to roll out its product and will have a beta product ready for testing by the time it attends the Ad:Tech conference in New York next month. It expects to be ready for a product launch in January.

The company has taken office space in downtown Halifax and is now hiring a sales and marketing executive and developer.