Yotpo Acquires Swell Rewards To Connect Reviews, Loyalty And ROI with AI-Powered Content

Content SharingProductivity & Enablement

By Sudipto Ghosh On Aug 9, 2018

Yotpo to Offer the First Consolidated, AI-Driven Solution for User-Generated Marketing, Visual Marketing, Referrals, Loyalty, and Customer Data/Insights

In the era of fierce M&As in martech landscape, customer is the winner. Leading martech company for content, Yotpo, has scooped its first acquisition: Swell Rewards. Swell Records is a Boston-based provider of premium incentive marketing solutions for e-commerce and omnichannel brands. The move expands Yotpo’s suite of commerce marketing technology solutions preferred by top direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands like Glossier, 1-800-Flowers and Away Travel. Brands will be able to manage reviews, visual marketing, consumer insights, rewards, and referrals from a single platform uniquely designed to meet their customer content, advocacy, engagement, and retention needs.

Adding Swell Records into its brood will allow Yotpo to further get deeper into the mobile-focused customer-centric marketing ecosystem. Yotpo’s suite of integrated solutions for user-generated content marketing, loyalty and referrals help commerce companies accelerate growth by enabling advocacy and maximizing customer lifetime value.

Like Yotpo, Swell is a provider of cutting-edge technology that supported the rise of D2C brands and surge in e-commerce sales (now reaching upward of $450 billion according to Mary Meeker and Kleiner Perkins), boasting rewards and referrals programs that deliver an average 9x ROI. Since it was founded in 2015, the company has experienced an average year-over-year growth of 313% and serves thousands of brands including mutual Yotpo customers UNTUCKit, Third Love, Tomboy X, Soko Glam, and Quay Australia. Swell Rewards’ Co-founder and CEO Josh Enzer and Co-founder and CTO James Peerless will join Yotpo to lead strategy and product development for incentive marketing solutions.

Both companies would help brands to effectively leverage social proof to increase trust and sales, cultivate loyal customer advocates, and make better business decisions based on customer feedback.

So far, Yotpo has raised $101 million in funding and has over 300 employees globally.

At the time of this announcement, Tomer Tagrin, Co-founder and CEO at Yotpo, said, “The current commerce marketing stack is bloated—too many disparate point solutions are making brands less agile, efficient, and competitive than they could be.”

Tomer added, “By acquiring Swell Rewards, Yotpo will be able to offer a one-stop destination for activating customer advocacy and brand loyalty. And, using our AI, we’ll be able to unlock product and data synergies that will improve acquisition, increase sales, and maximize customer lifetime value. We’re thrilled to forge the next chapter of e-commerce with Swell, whose team, culture, priorities, and vision are a true complement to Yotpo’s.”

Yotpo and Swell have a pre-existing integration that enables commerce brands to reward customers for submitting and sharing user-generated content. The acquisition will enhance those capabilities and set the stage for new solutions that drive business growth. Yotpo’s proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) engine, which facilitates smarter and faster solutions for collecting, managing, displaying, and analyzing high-quality customer content, will be extended to optimize Swell’s existing product line and drive future innovation.

“Swell Rewards and Yotpo are on an accelerated path to deliver some truly amazing products for brands at the scale and speed that today’s commerce marketplace demands,” commented Swell’s Enzer and Peerless.

Josh and James added, “We are committed to redefining the way brands and consumers unite around loyalty and user-generated content while advancing AI-driven client solutions.”

The acquisition marks another milestone for Yotpo, which over the last three years has experienced an explosive period of growth–an 823% increase in annual recurring revenue, a 200% increase in annual contract value on average, and 487% increase in brand customers.

Currently, Swell Rewards, a Yotpo company, is an “incentive marketing” platform; their highly-customizable software has helped thousands of e-commerce and omnichannel merchants administer beautifully on-brand rewards, referral, and influencer marketing programs. Swell was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Boston, MA