Jorg Lyseggen, founder and CEO, Meltwater Group
Norwegian media buzz monitoring and talent management firm Meltwater Group announced the acquisition of social network customer relationship management firm JitterJam, for $6m.
Together the companies say they will provide marketing, communications and advertising professionals with the, "most comprehensive set of tools for tracking and engaging with customers on social channels to transform conversations into lasting relationships."
CBR’s recent interview with the CEO and founder of Meltwater Group, Jorn Lyseggen, saw him explaining that he believes his firm can build a $100m monitoring the buzz on social networks.
"We are the number one player in online news monitoring and we believe we can become number one in social media," Lyseggen told CBR. "Our objective is to do the same for social media as we have done in online news and build a $100 million business in the next three years."
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The company said that with the acquisition of JitterJam, marketing professionals will be able to, "leverage the combined power of SCRM, social media monitoring, search engine marketing and analytics to convert social conversations into lasting relationships."
JitterJam combines email, social media and mobile engagement with a contact database to provide businesses with a consumer engagement and marketing platform. The JitterJam platform is built for consumer-facing companies who are looking to generate ROI from social, mobile and email engagement and marketing. The JitterJam platform will be integrated over time with the Meltwater Buzz product, the firms said.
"Meltwater was bootstrapped with $15,000 ten years ago and has now grown to a $100 million leader without external funding in the online media monitoring space. Also, we have proven we have the expertise to achieve rapid success in emerging markets," said Lyseggen. "The Social CRM space is clearly experiencing fast growth and within three years we aim to generate $100 million a year in Social CRM solutions alone. The JitterJam technology and talent will help us achieve this goal."
Meltwater has 55 offices around the world serving around 18,000 customers. All of JitterJam’s staff are said to be joining Meltwater.
Analyst firm Gartner has said that, "By 2013, spending on social software to support sales, marketing and customer service processes will exceed $1 billion worldwide." The firm also predicts that "during the next two years, 30 percent of leading companies will extend the goals of their online community activities to the design of enhanced service processes, such as Social CRM."
Read our recent interview with the CEO of Meltwater here.
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