Acquire upgrades customer support platform. Acquire has announced the release of its newest software that streamlines customer conversations. Acquire enables businesses to better serve customers by providing multiple conversation modes, including text, chat, voice, video, co-browse (a form of on-screen collaboration), and social messaging apps such as Facebook and WhatsApp. The conversational approach enables agents to speed up interactions. Acquire’s analytics and reporting capabilities further enable businesses to measure, iterate, and improve operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.
ShipBob joins Shopify Plus as Certified App Partner. ShipBob, a global cloud-based logistics platform for small and medium-sized businesses, has achieved Shopify Plus Certified App Partner status. The ShipBob platform gives Shopify Plus merchants a single view of their inventory, orders, and shipments across all sales channels and locations, in addition to advanced analytics with insights into shipping performance, inventory allocation, and fulfillment costs.
Ecommerce Product Releases
Financing providers Clearbanc and FirePower partner to expand offerings. Clearbanc offers ecommerce and SaaS start-ups an alternative to traditional financing in the form of non-dilutive growth capital. FirePower lends from million to million to companies with excellent visibility into their future cash flows. Combined, Clearbanc and FirePower can invest as little as and up to million, with terms and conditions developed by founders for founders.
eBay launches automated Promoted Listings campaigns. eBay sellers can now use rule-based technologies to automate how they promote new listings and adjust their ad rates. New rule capabilities make it easier for sellers to streamline how listings are added to their Promoted Listings campaigns. By selecting the “automate suggested ad rate” option, sellers can balance performance and costs by having eBay automatically adjust ad rates according to the rules that sellers set.
Bambuser’s “One-to-Many” live-stream shopping service.
Tock
Constant Contact
Squarespace acquires Tock, a reservation, takeout, and event platform. Squarespace has announced it has acquired Tock, a platform serving the hospitality industry via online reservations, table management, takeout, and events. With this acquisition, Squarespace continues the evolution of its product suite, enabling millions of worldwide businesses to build a brand and transact with their customers online.
CommerceIQ expands ecommerce channel optimization beyond Amazon. CommerceIQ, a player in ecommerce channel optimization, has announced it is extending support beyond Amazon for all major online retailers, including Walmart, Instacart, Target, Costco, and Home Depot. With coverage connecting sales, marketing, and supply chain operations, CommerceIQ enables advertisers to leverage its optimization platform to drive growth. Advertisers can leverage CommerceIQ’s expanded capabilities to track and optimize sales channels, activate machine-learning-based automation, and generate cross-channel reporting from a single portal.
WeCommerce acquires Stamped, a ratings, reviews, and loyalty-program provider. WeCommerce Holdings has announced the acquisition of Stamped.io for roughly 0 million. Stamped offers a software suite that enables Shopify merchants to collect and feature customer reviews and product ratings and create their own loyalty and rewards programs.
ShipBob
Vimeo brings the power of video to Constant Contact. Vimeo, a video platform, and Constant Contact, an email and marketing platform, have announced a strategic partnership to bring the power of video to hundreds of thousands of global marketers. Vimeo will now power scalable video creation, hosting, and management directly within Constant Contact’s marketing platform. This integration unlocks access to Vimeo’s suite of tools to help marketers reach and convert new customers with video. Constant Contact users can create and distribute marketing videos, embed GIFs in email campaigns, capture leads with contact forms and sync them to their Constant Contact accounts, and measure video performance — all from one secure dashboard.
Threekit introduces Shop Threekit, a 3D marketplace. Threekit, a 3D and augmented reality platform, has announced the launch of Shop Threekit, a 3D marketplace. From Shop Threekit, users can visit more than 20 ecommerce stores that have enabled 3D, augmented reality, and virtual photography. With a few clicks, shoppers can configure and view, for example, their own TaylorMade SIM2 driver or custom Crate & Barrel sofa.
Got an ecommerce product release? Email releases@practicalecommerce.com.
Here is a list of product releases and updates for mid-April from companies that offer services to online merchants. There are updates on live-stream shopping, eBay ad campaigns, customer experience platforms, loyalty programs, and more.
Talkwalker lets brands monitor mentions in podcasts. Talkwalker has added podcasts to the list of sources it covers. With Talkwalker’s new Speech Analytics technology, brands have visibility over what is being said about them in text, image, video, and audio. By including a catalog of 35,000 podcasts from a variety of platforms such as Apple Podcasts, Talkwalker is accessing a world of conversations from which professionals can benefit.
Bambuser launches self-serve platform for live video shopping. Bambuser announced the launch of a live video shopping “One-to-Many” starter package, a self-service option. With the starter version, businesses can quickly incorporate shoppable live-streaming into their ecommerce strategy.
