Sprinklr buys Booshaka for deeper customer engagement

Booshaka pulls data from platforms like Marketo and Stripe, and generates social media ad campaigns

It's almost become a cliché to say that, these days, brands know more about us than we know about ourselves. But it is likely true. We have given them so much information than they've ever had become. Mountains of data, just waiting there.

Social media management platform Sprinklr wants to give enterprise brands and even deeper understanding of its audience, and a better way to connect. So it announced on Monday that it has acquired Booshaka, a company that helps marketers leverage customer data to increase sales and engagement.

No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

Founded in 2012, Booshaka uses "one-click connector technology" to take data from technology platforms, such as ExactTarget, Marketo, Shopify, and Stripe, and automatically generates smart segments from customer activity that sync to Facebook and Twitter as custom audiences. Its clients include Unilever, A+E Networks, and Rue La La.

Booshaka technology will be integrated with Sprinklr’s Experience Cloud, which will allow brands to apply real-time audience segmentation to social data. Basically that means that they can better understand their audiences and deliver improved experiences, and not just in brand advertising.

For Booshaka, the company gets access to Sprinklr's existing customer base, as well as its reach and scope. Some of Sprinklr's clients include IHG, Intel, Microsoft, Samsung, and Virgin America, and partners like Deloitte Digital, Accenture, Havas, and Razorfish.

"Sprinklr is the world’s most complete enterprise social technology platform -- one that is redefining how global brands manage customer experiences across social networks and first-party digital properties. We will be integrating our audience management and segmentation platform into their application suite while continuing to enhance our existing service," Erik Ober, CEO at Booshak, wrote in a blog post. 

"By joining Sprinklr, we have an amazing opportunity to accelerate our vision and deliver greater value to our customers. The company has unprecedented momentum and we couldn’t be more excited to be a part of it."

For Sprinklr, it means giving its customers deeper customer insights.

"Customers will be able to start using Booshaka features within Sprinklr soon (no hard date yet) via API connectors. When we acquire a company, it’s common practice for us to rebuild their product as part of our platform’s unified codebase -- a big differentiator for us. Booshaka gets a clean slate to rebuild the product the way they would like, having learned the things they've learned and with access to our entire stack," Simon Mansell, General Manager of Paid and Services at Sprinklr, told me.

"During this time, we’ll be planning out our roadmap with the best ways to re-architect the platform and integrate Booshaka to offer the most value to our customers. This acquisition will initially affect our Paid Ads module only, but there is potential to leverage these capabilities in other parts of the platform."

That means that Booshaka customers will continue to use the Booshaka platform and will transition over to the newly-combined Sprinklr product "when the time is right."

Booshaka's 10 person team will be moving to Sprinklr’s San Francisco office. Ober will be reporting to Mansell,and will be helping to "grow Sprinklr’s paid media business while also exploring new ways to leverage audience data to fuel innovation throughout Sprinklr’s platform."

Booshaka had raised $2 million in a convertible note from investors that included FF Angel, Rothenberg Ventures, Signatures Capital, Streamlined Ventures and numerous angels.

(Image source: linkedin.com)