Twilio has obtained consumer details system seller Segment for $three.two billion in inventory in a transfer that enables the unified communications as a support (UCaaS) seller to compete in the consumer engagement technological know-how market place.
The acquisition is expected to close in the fourth quarter. The offer will unify consumer details profiles for Twillio users by connecting details the firm collects via channels these kinds of as video, e mail and messaging, to Segment’s CDP. The merged Twilio-Segment entity will permit users to make consumer engagement “more personalised, timely and impactful,” mentioned Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson in a website submit.
“Twilio has a sizeable existence in cloud communications. Segment will help companies control consumer details,” mentioned Brad Cleveland, co-founder and past president of the International Purchaser Management Institute (ICMI) speak to middle affiliation. “To deliver a great consumer practical experience, you require the two. I see this as indicative of a greater trend—bringing all factors demanded to deliver and control great consumer experiences into toolsets that do the job with each other.”
A consumer support CDP
In latest years, CDPs have emerged as tools for advertising teams to gather consumer intelligence to produce more powerful and personalised strategies. Twilio’s Segment acquisition moves the CDP away from the advertising software stack and into the consumer support cloud.
The acquisition will make it possible for Twilio to improve deeper roots in its users’ technological know-how mix, mentioned CDP Institute founder David Raab. He predicts Twilio will lengthen its reach into advertising technological know-how by obtaining promoting tools for internet sites, e-commerce apps and social media channels, which will deliver personalised advertisements focused from details Twilio collects on the support facet.
“Currently being a unified communications firm is not a practical lengthy-phrase placement, due to the fact unified communications are just apps that sit on a system and can as a result be very easily replaced,” Raab mentioned. “Proudly owning the system is the only way to remain truly embedded with the shopper.”
Twilio problems Microsoft, Oracle, Saleforce
Microsoft, Oracle, Adobe and Salesforce have all not long ago unveiled CDPs. SAP has a person on the cusp of launch. A Twilio-Segment consumer engagement system built on the nicely-revered Segment CDP, which has been around for appreciably longer, and is more sophisticated than these newer entrants, mentioned Constellation Analysis analyst Nicole France. Thus, a Twilio-Segment combo should not be underestimated it could be a sizeable competitor to those tech giants.
An additional intriguing component of a Twilio-Segment consumer engagement system is the heritage of the two organizations. Both Twilio CEO Lawson and Segment CEO Peter Reinhardt commenced as builders on their own, which helps make their solution to fixing the problem of unifying consumer details more “practical” than substantial sellers these kinds of as Microsoft, she mentioned.
While the major program organizations prioritize problems of integrating their present apps and ingesting 3rd-get together details sources with their CDPs, a smaller sized, developer-centric firm can get on even bigger-image concerns.
“They’re seeking to solve the problem of ‘What does very good consumer engagement seem like, what defines very good consumer experiences?'” France mentioned. “The mixture of two technologist CEOs [could] support bridge that hole. They the two appear to this without the baggage that comes with major, recognized program organizations, and they have the prospect to solve these complications in different ways.”
