Piano Acquires SocialFlow to Connect Social Media Strategies to Customer Journey Orchestration

Integrated social media tool will enable content optimization and enhanced on-site personalization

Piano, the Digital Experience Cloud, today announced it has acquired SocialFlow, a social distribution and marketing platform for media companies. The addition of SocialFlow onto Piano’s platform will allow social media teams to optimize engagement and attention across multiple accounts and gain a deeper level of insight into how content is driving revenue. SocialFlow’s tools help streamline execution to efficiently manage organic posting across platforms, manage paid social media campaigns, and collect data on user clicks.

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Organizations often face a fundamental challenge in determining which content will perform well on social media, when to publish it for maximum impact and then tracking results. These brands produce hundreds to thousands of articles and videos per month and have scores of social media accounts, with multiple team members managing those channels. Executing a social media strategy at scale requires tools built intentionally for the needs of publishers.

“Our goal at Piano is to help organizations bring data together, make it available in real time and leverage it effectively to fuel both analysis and targeting,” said Trevor Kaufman, CEO, Piano. “Although social media has continued to grow as an integral part of digital strategy, the full scope of its impact has been a blind spot for most brands, limited by the confines of digital marketing attribution models. Adding SocialFlow to our offering will open a new realm of opportunities to create connectors between social media and the on-site user journey, and we’re excited to help our clients enrich their strategies with this new level of digital sophistication.”

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SocialFlow’s tools facilitate posts across more than 10,000 social media accounts with 2.7 billion collective followers. Its impressive client roster includes major media organizations such as The Associated Press, the BBC, CNN, Condé Nast, NBC, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.

“SocialFlow has spent the last decade helping publishers create value from their social content. Now with the combined power of SocialFlow and Piano, publishers will be able to unlock new insights across digital touchpoints,” said Jim Anderson, CEO, SocialFlow. “I’m excited to watch the Piano team take what we’ve built at SocialFlow and bring it to the next level as part of their full digital experience platform.”

The transaction is a cash purchase, with funding provided by Updata Partners, Rittenhouse Ventures and Sixth Street Partners, and results in Piano acquiring 100% of the shares of SocialFlow. Houlihan Lokey served as the exclusive financial adviser to Piano on the transaction, while Macquarie served as exclusive financial adviser to SocialFlow.

In the last three years, Piano has expanded its global footprint and strengthened its product offering through the strategic acquisitions of Norway-based Cxense (2019) and France-based AT Internet (2021). The business has grown by more than 560% in that period, earning annual recognition on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 and Inc. 5000 lists. Piano’s platform has also received accolades such as New Product of the Year in the Business Intelligence Group’s BIG Awards for Business, Best Subscription Platform in the Digiday Technology Awards, Data Management Solution of the Year in the Data Breakthrough Awards and more.

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