Seismic Acquires Grapevine6 To Enable Social Selling And Employee Brand Advocacy

Sydney, Australia – December 2, 2020 – Seismic, an industry-leading and award-winning sales and marketing enablement platform provider, today announced the acquisition of Grapevine6, a patented social and digital sales engagement platform. With this acquisition, Seismic strengthens its ability to provide sales professionals with relevant content sourced from 11,000 third-party publishers using Grapevine6’s AI engine. This will enable sellers to engage more frequently with their relationships through meaningful, authentic online conversations taking place on social media platforms.

The acquisition will result in a new, integrated offering called Seismic LiveSocial. A social engagement solution for sales and client-facing teams, LiveSocial will help sellers become trusted advisors by enabling them to authentically engage with their clients across the social media landscape. With LiveSocial, sales teams can share timely, reputable, and compliant content in their own voice, targeting the right buyers across multiple social platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Additionally, brand leaders can amplify audience reach through employee-led social sharing, leveraging Seismic LiveSocial to measure the ROI of their social engagement strategy.

“Social media has cemented itself as a critical front line between organisations and their customers with analysts* reporting that 75% of B2B buyers and 84% of C-level executives use social media to make purchasing decisions,” said Richard Kulkarni, Vice-President, Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ), Seismic. “With the global pandemic as a catalyst, social selling skills and digital eminence have become vital competencies for workforces. Seismic LiveSocial not only empowers sales teams to engage clients more effectively on social media channels but also helps turn every employee into a brand ambassador, delivering a strong advantage in this new business reality.”

The Grapevine6 acquisition and launch of LiveSocial follows solid financial performance by Seismic, including its US$92m Series F funding round and strong Year-on-Year revenue growth.

“In today’s dynamic sales landscape, buyers want to hear from and connect with trusted individuals, not brands, on social media,” said Doug Winter, Seismic co-founder and Chief Executive Officer. “Grapevine6 will be instrumental to providing additional customer value by combining Seismic’s industry-leading sales enablement platform and Grapevine6’s digital engagement platform, further empowering sales teams to educate and engage with buyers online — while simultaneously helping to build their personal brands in an authentic way.”

Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, and founded in 2013, Grapevine6 has grown into one of North America’s leading engagement platforms in the digital sales space. The company was named a leader in Forrester’s Sales Social Engagement Tools report and boasts a 5-star rating on G2. Grapevine6 enables tens of thousands of advisors and sales professionals, including four of the five largest wealth management firms in North America and the largest social selling program in the world at SAP.

“Social media has transformed the buyer’s journey. Savvy buyers now use social media to not only gather information and connect with peers, but also to research the sales professionals and advisors they’re partnering with. The current sea change to digital communication is an opportunity to better serve customers by enabling salespeople to humanise relationships with personal stories — the true promise of digital selling,” said Mike Orr, Chief Executive Officer, Grapevine6. “Partnering with Seismic over the past few years in creating a content ecosystem, we realised how aligned we are in our vision for digital selling and that an acquisition created a win-win for all of Grapevine6 and Seismic customers.”

Unifying social engagement and sales enablement creates unmatched customer insights for sales and marketing to personalise the conversations that drive revenue growth. By engaging in an authentic way, sales professionals build trusted relationships with the right buyers across multiple digital channels. Creating a single content experience enables sales professionals to find the right content for the right channel faster and have full, compliant control into how and where they share content.

The full team from Grapevine6 will join Seismic, including Orr, who will continue to lead the LiveSocial team.

For more information about Seismic’s Grapevine6 acquisition and new LiveSocial offering, visit our blog.
 

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