Meltwater Goes Social With JitterJam Acquisition
Meltwater Group has acquired CRM software developer JitterJam. Together, the companies plan to offer an integrated solution that provides marketing, communications, and advertising professionals with a comprehensive set of tools to engage with customers and analyze their behaviors.
The social media monitoring company purchased JitterJam for $6 million and will also acquire all of its employees. JitterJam currently blends email and social media with the user’s contact database. Meltwater intends to integrate JitterJam’s core features of contacts, analytics, and notifications into its Buzz product. The JitterJam platform will still be offered as a stand-alone solution and the integrated product will be available by the summer.
“We have been tremendously impressed with Meltwater’s rapid growth in the social and marketing space,” said Ric Pratte, co-founder, president, and CEO of JitterJam, in a statement. “Meltwater’s expertise, highly impressive customer base, and exceptional sales organization will help us bring the integrated JitterJam platform to a primed worldwide audience. We’re thrilled to be part of Meltwater.”
Jorn Lyseggen, CEO and founder of Meltwater, says the company analyzed as many as 20 social media companies when scoping out a potential partner during the past nine months. “JitterJam was a company that was standing out pretty early in the process,” he remembers.
Lyseggen believes JitterJam is “one of the most comprehensive social CRM systems out there” due to the founders’ background and experience. “They bring that CRM expertise to the social media space,” he maintains. “The talent that the founders represent makes us think they will be a very valuable contribution to our existing organization.”
Lyseggen also says the acquisition represents a “new chapter for Meltwater.” “We are historically coming from the news monitoring side,” he explains. “Now we are really signaling a serious investment and commitment to social media. We aspire to do the same thing with social media and social CRM as we were able to do in the news monitoring space.”
Lyseggen believes Meltwater can bring in $100 million in three years just by entering the social space and that this acquisition gives the company a leadership position as a social CRM provider.
Meltwater also bought social media monitoring client BuzzGain last year and plans to continue acquiring additional businesses and technologies with the intention of expanding its product suite.