To help position itself for the Internet of Everything, personalization platform SmartFocus has purchased proximity marketing platform TagPoints and content analytics platform Content Savvy.
TagPoints is centered around the use of beacons in stores. Beacons utilize Bluetooth to send and receive messages — such as location-specific discount coupons — to smartphone-carrying customers in a store. TagPoints, whose products include mobile marketing campaign software and a brandable app, installed the first beacon tech in a U.K. shopping center.
“Having an ability to have apps that relate to beacons and create recommendations is where we see the industry going,” CEO Rob Mullen told VentureBeat. Deal terms have not been made public.
He pointed to the personal value that beacon-handled messaging could have for his own shopping excursions.
“My biggest pain in the States is trying to find my way around the mall,” Mullen said. Beacons “give you the proximity and show me where a shirt [that was in the store window] is, and I can get it and get out without queuing up.”
Content Savvy, based in Buffalo, New York, utilizes machine learning and natural language processing to analyze content-based big data wherever it takes place, such as in social media posts. The newly acquired firm has said that its tech can determine, for instance, if a participant in an online conversation truly intends to make a purchase.
SmartFocus said in its announcement that the acquisitions are part of its “strategy to develop the U.K.’s first omnichannel digital marketing system,” where the channels are expanding into the Internet of Everything.
“Beacons give you a level of opportunity,” Mullen told us, as do RFID and other emerging location-specific technologies that go beyond smartphones and tablets. “We’re specializing in the apps that work with these sensors.”