IBM completed its acquisition of cloud software platform company Silverpop, which has a cloud-based platform for personalizing customer engagement. The move extends IBM’s software-as-a-service offerings for marketing automation for both business-to-business and business-to-consumer marketing.
Atlanta-based Silverpop is privately held and terms of the deal were not disclosed.
According to IBM, Silverpop’s platform “reduces the complexity of omni-channel marketing and makes it easier to personalize each customer interaction in real time.” The platform draws information from permission-based data, including social media, Web, e-mail and mobile activity, according to IBM, which offered the following use cases for Silverpop’s technology:
- A retailer can recognize that a customer has looked at a particular item on a website repeatedly, and that customer has entered a local store. If the customer has opted in, a text message can be sent to tell the customer that the item is in stock and/or on sale in store.
- A supplier could use a behavior-based scoring model to assess customer engagements, from a first inquiry to repeat purchases, and deliver “personalized messages from the local sales representative about the preferences and position of the customer in the buying cycle.”
IBM added that with this acquisition, more than 8,000 organizations now use its enterprise marketing management tools globally, and that it now has more than 100 SaaS offerings “that can be quickly deployed with little technical knowledge to accelerate time to value.”
“Silverpop’s powerful marketing automation capabilities will be infused across IBM’s enterprise marketing portfolio to help organizations exceed expectations throughout the customer journey,” said Kevin Bishop, VP of Customer Engagement Solutions at IBM. “This will allow IBM to make it easier for clients of any size to acquire, retain and maximize the lifetime value of their customers.”
IBM will be showcasing Silverpop’s customer engagement solutions at its Smarter Commerce Global Summit this week in Tampa, Fla.
