January 21, 2016
By Oren Smilansky,

Shutterstock Partners with Sprinklr, Optimizely

Shutterstock took a step into the marketing arena today and announced technology integrations with Optimizely and Sprinklr. With the incorporation of Shutterstock's application programming interface (API), end users of the two platforms gain the ability to search, test, and license content from Shutterstock's media library directly within their home platforms.

"The speed of content development is growing increasingly fast," says Janet Giesen, director of business development and API partnerships at Shutterstock. "A lot of marketers have to get involved in the creative process and select images quickly for social media campaigns, blog posts, content marketing campaigns, and landing pages."

Shutterstock's API enables a range of integrations across Web sites, mobile applications, content management, and more. According to an official statement, the company's "best-in-class" search algorithm allows users to quickly browse through 70 million images and 3 million video clips, as well as additional media content.

Each of the integrations aims to give marketers simplified access to media during essential phases of their workflows, Giesen says.

For Optimizely, provider of an experience optimization and testing platform, the plan is to give customers the ability to run experiments and A/B tests surrounding the art and photographs they work into their Web and mobile A/B testing campaigns.

"With this integration, companies can discover which Shutterstock images provide the best experiences across Web and mobile without ever leaving our Experience Optimization Platform," said Wyatt Jenkins, vice president of product at Optimizely, in a statement. For the vendor, the integration follows alliances recently established with Localytics and CallTrackingMetrics.

Meanwhile, Sprinklr, a firm that offers social relationship technologies to enterprises, will enable its customers—most of whom are already Shutterstock customers as well, according to Giesen—to license images directly within its Content Marketing Module.

"We're trying to facilitate a seamless process by integrating [media] downloads into [our Content Marketing Module]…so [our customers] can build a unique experience for their customers wherever they might be," says Anna O'Brien, Sprinklr's director of product management. Prior to today's integration, marketers using Sprinklr were frequently inconvenienced at crucial moments, as they were required to exit the system to find content that makes Facebook or Twitter posts engaging to customers. According to O'Brien, the integration could save marketers significant amounts of time and energy in searching for the desired pictures.

Optimizely and Sprinklr are the first to join Shutterstock's API partner program, but the company is "open to new marketing tools and creative tools" that will help it expand its reach into a marketer's workflow, Giesen adds.

The two companies will be joining the likes of Facebook and NewsCred in leveraging Shutterstock's technology.

"We're not only a content company anymore," Giesen says—its goal is to become more of an end-to-end platform.

And Sprinklr looks forward to evolving alongside Shutterstock. "We hope to provide a brand new wealth of resources to not only create content, but also to inspire content," O’Brien says. In many cases, she states, the photographs aid marketers in coming up with new ideas. "Being able to easily explore the library and see what's out there to help solidify an idea is something that a lot of brands want to do but have struggled to prior to having the advanced search capabilities and integration," O'Brien says.