Twilio finalises US$3.2 billion acquisition of Segment

Cloud communications platform provider Twilio has completed its acquisition of a customer data platform provider Segment.

This transaction is valued at approximately US$3.2 billion in Twilio Class A common stock, on a fully diluted and cash-free, debt-free basis.

"Nearly every company is focused on acquiring, retaining and growing their customer relationships through digital engagement," says Twilio co-founder and CEO Jeff Lawson.

"However, the biggest impediment to great digital engagement are the data silos that prevent companies from truly understanding their customers. With the addition of Segment, Twilio's Customer Engagement Platform now enables companies to both understand their customer, and engage with them digitally — the combination is key to building great digital experiences.

Segment will become a division of Twilio and will continue to be led by Segment CEO and co-founder Peter Reinhardt, reporting to Lawson.

"Exceptional customer engagement requires not only high-quality data but the infrastructure to activate those insights across every channel and customer interaction," says Reinhardt Segment.

"By bringing Twilio and Segment together, we will help businesses build a foundation of actionable insights critical to engaging with customers based on their needs and preferences to deliver a positive, seamless and effective customer experience.

Together, this acquisition will provide developers and companies:

• Insight into the way customers interact across channels to create a single, unified view of the customer journey.
   
• The ability to break down data silos to make customer engagement more personalised, timely and impactful across channels.
   
• Access to the cloud communications platform to more effectively manage customer communications including SMS, messaging, voice, video, email, internet of things (IoT) and more.
   
• A flexible API that allows developers to connect sources of customer data, such as web or mobile apps, with analytics tools, without having to write new code. 
   
• A steady supply of quality, high-velocity first-party data that easily integrates into existing systems.
   
• A single platform with views for the marketer, the contact centre agent, the product teams and the developers that reveal data-driven insights to serve individual needs. 

"Customer engagement doesn't begin or end at the arbitrary lines between internal departments. Companies that recognise the central role of customer experience to their success are striving to unify customer engagement regardless of communication channel or the parts of the organisation involved. They need better platforms to help them do so," comments Constellation Research vice president and principal analyst Nicole France.

Twilio intends to provide financial updates on its fourth-quarter earnings call.