Leading social software gurus Spredfast announced today that they've acquired Shoutlet, a cloud-based social marketing platform and innovator in social data integration. Combined, the companies now serve over 1,400 customers, with 600 employees in offices in Austin, Texas, as well as New York, Minneapolis, Chicago, DC, Madison, Wis., and worldwide in London and Sydney.
The combination of Spredfast and Shoutlet creates a company with powerful resources for brands looking to keep up on social, including a sophisticated social campaign builder, enriched social CRM data, and expanded integrations that power deeper consumer insights.
"This acquisition follows many major company milestones for Spredfast," said Rod Favaron, President and CEO. "In the last 18 months, we've been named a Leader in the Forrester SRP Wave, completed a successful merger with Mass Relevance, launched three new products, announced inaugural membership in partner programs with Pinterest, Tumblr, and Facebook, and seen unprecedented company growth. It's an exciting time to be on this rocket ship."
We spoke with Favaron to hear more about what this news means for the companies.
What does this acquisition mean for you all?
We reached out to Shoutlet because they were three key things we were interested in: people, technology, and customers. And, the two products are quite complimentary. We're excited about taking their product and innovating and putting together with ours. For us, it's about accelerating growth, positioning the combined companies better in the social space, combining over 600 employees and 1400 customers all around the world and in 30 countries.
What are some of the changes existing customers will see?
If you're a Shoutlet customer, very soon you will have access to a set of products from Spredfast that we think are pretty exciting. In addition, Spredfast has a very big, active customer community and tools for helping customers. From a Spredfast customer perspective, we're really excited about a couple of Shoutlet products we will be taking to market.
In what way will this combination make the companies, together, more attractive and innovative?
Between the two companies we have the largest product development team with a focus on social. We will be able to innovate more quickly. If you use social technology and social networks, you know it changes rapidly. Say Pinterest comes out with a new capability for brands marketing products. There's a challenge in adopting that if you're General Mills across 40 brands. You need tools. You can't just log into Pinterest like a consumer would. You need tools between you and Pinterest as a brand. And that's what we do. We build products for big brands to take advantage of the social networks so they can improve their customer communications and customer relationships.