Sprinklr Adds Product Features with Acquisition of Dachis Group

Sprinklr, a provider of social relationship infrastructure, has acquired social and brand analytics company Dachis Group. With Dachis Group's customers, the enterprise-geared social platform will serve 400 companies, compared to Sprinklr's 350-customer client base pre-acquisition.

The acquisition was driven by "client demand," according to CEO Ragy Thomas. It will add feature sets in three key areas that were already on Sprinklr's road map, speeding up their product development. The two companies also share many clients, adding to the sense that they are a good fit together. "When we discovered quite a few of our clients were using Dachis Group, it made more sense to go at it together," Thomas says.

Dachis Group brings technological capabilities in brand analytics, content optimization, and employee advocacy. The company, founded by former Razorfish founder Jeff Dachis, also has more inroads with agencies, which Sprinklr plans to target as customers. "We are hoping with our new additions to the suite to create an agency-focused end-to-end solution," Thomas says.

Dachis Group's brand analytics is the "primary value add for our clients," Thomas explains. It allows brands to "use social as a mirror for brand perception," Thomas says. "They have algorithms that compute brand love, brand mindshare, and brand awareness by using the world's largest focus group"—social. A company could compute brand health before and after a commercial airs, for example, allowing agencies and brands to see the impact of paid media. "That's super powerful for brand marketers and the agencies that serve them," Thomas underscores.

The content optimization tool created by the Dachis Group allows brands to see the topics that are trending among their influencers, not just the social media community at large, enabling them to comment on the things their followers care about. The employee advocacy solution makes it easier for employees to see and engage with a brand's posts or tweets, creating a larger group of brand evangelists to spread the word about a brand. They will also become part of Sprinklr's capabilities.

Sprinklr plans to natively integrate the Dachis Group platform on an "aggressive timeline" consistent with their product releases, which usually come out every two weeks in order to "keep up with the speed of social," Thomas explains. Sprinklr currently has 15 different modules, including social listening, social publishing, social analytics, and campaign management.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Thomas called it a "happy outcome for both parties." Dachis Group had raised $57.5 million in venture capital funding, while Sprinklr has gotten by with $37.5 million in funding. Thomas attributed the difference to Dachis Group's original solution-based—not technology-based—approach, which affected valuation. Both companies were founded around five years ago. With enterprise social one of the fastest-growing segments of the market, the combined cash and stock deal gives investors a new horse to bet on.

"Brands are increasingly recognizing they need an infrastructure to deploy across their touchpoints, where they can respond and talk back to the consumer," not just in marketing, but through social selling, marketing, recruiting, and PR. "Social has emerged to become much bigger than marketing," Thomas offers, changing the shape of business as it expands across an organization.

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