Constant Contact adds social CRM with Bantam Live
Constant Contact has added social CRM to its product range by acquisition of Bantam Live. Bantam Live is a contact management and social CRM provider owned and operated by privately held Bantam Networks. Constant Contact acquired Bantham on February the 15th for a cash purchase price of no less than $15 million.
About Bantham Live
New York-based Bantam Live is a social CRM platform built on a Ruby on Rails platform. Bantam Live’s social CRM technology will help to create a unified repository of data across all channels, including clicks, email opens, survey responses, event participation and social media interactions. It will play a crucial role in how data is captured, reported and analyzed for Constant Contact’s more than 400,000 small business customers.
Social CRM
By understanding how their customers share, refer, endorse and engage across all channels, small businesses will be able to engage their customers and drive business success. Social CRM functionality will eventually be built into all of Constant Contacts products, including a paid social media marketing offering, which the company expects to release in the second half of 2011.
Bantam Live CTO Henry Poydar will join Constant Contact as a director of engineering managing the technical integration. The entire Bantam Live team will continue to be based in New York City, working from a new Constant Contact development office to be opened this year.
Small freebie for current Bantam Live customers
While Constant Contact integrates the social CRM technology into its core engagement marketing services, Bantam Live will be free of charge to active Bantam Live customers.
Social media acquisitions by ESPs become a trend
The aquisition and further focus on Social Media by ESPs is now officially a trend. Earlier we reported on the social media buy ins in the article “Why your ESP needs to buy a Social Media company” (with some very interesting comments) and the recent purchase of techlightenment by Experian.
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