Providers of social management are often regarded as some of the best in the business. More than 1,400 customers will be served by the merged firm.

Two of the most successful brand in social media management software are coming together: Spredfast and Shoutlet. Today, Austin’s Spredfast announced that it will be purchasing a competitor situated in Madison, Wisconsin.

All five main broadcast television networks and 50 of Interbrand’s top 100 worldwide companies will be among the merged company’s more than 1,400 clients, helping to limit the already congested sector of social management platforms.

Forrester Research lead analyst Nate Elliott called that encouraging news. “Marketers would welcome any consolidation in a category as cluttered as this one,” Elliott wrote in an email to Marketing Land. Additionally, Spredfast and Shoutlet are two of the most formidable competitors in this space. If Spredfast can successfully navigate this transition, they will emerge even stronger.

Recent rankings of social connection platforms by Forrester gave excellent grades to both Spredfast and Shoutlet. Alongside competitors Percolate and Sprinklr, Spredfast has been recognised as a “leader” in the industry. Among the second-tier “strong performers,” which also included Expion, Hootsuite, and Falcon Social, Shoutlet was named the best all-around tool.

According to Rod Favaron, president and CEO of Spredfast, both companies’ platforms were designed to interface seamlessly with other digital marketing tools, making them a natural fit. Brandwatch, Kenshoo, Crimson Hexagon, Google Analytics, Opal, Symantec, Salesforce, Synthesio, and Sysomos are just some of the numerous technology partners listed on the Spredfast website.

According to Favaron, openness is essential to Spredfast’s approach and what sets it apart from rivals who provide less flexible tools.

“We have much more of a collaborative, open best-of-breed culture and strategy than most companies,” he said in a phone interview. “That’s really unusual in this industry.”

When asked to elaborate, Favaron said, “We think 2016 and 2017 are really the years when social goes from being a standalone set of tools that a business buys to a set of enterprise products that integrate with all of their other enterprise products.”

For the time being, the amalgamated business will keep both platforms active and integrate their own sets of capabilities. Nearly 500 companies, including Best Buy, Four Seasons, and Lowe’s, use Shoutlet because of its robust CRM feature, which integrates social data with popular CRM tools like Salesforce. Updated social intelligence and listening technology, Spredfast, was just released. Last year, Spredfast combined with Mass Relevance, another Austin-based social marketing business, and became a preferred partner with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.

The private corporations did not disclose the terms of their agreement. With the addition of Shoutlet’s management and staff in Madison, Spredfast’s headcount will reach over 600. After serving as president and co-founder of Shoutlet, Aaron Everson will now serve as the company’s general manager.

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