Software firm Drift has acquired a startup called Siftrock to help expand its marketing and sales automation offerings. The purchase price wasn’t disclosed in a Tuesday press release announcing the deal.
Drift touted the acquisition of the Seattle-based startup during its annual “Hypergrowth” event in Boston, where Drift is headquartered. The company also announced partnerships with Marketo, Demandbase, and Outreach, and the launch of new products, including “Drift Assistant,” a virtual assistant that the company says uses artificial intelligence technologies to manage “digital paperwork” for sales and marketing teams.
Siftrock’s technologies will power the virtual assistant’s capabilities for marketers, Drift said. It will enable them to manage e-mail responses automatically, make the message content more conversational, and keep their contacts and other e-mail data updated. Siftrock’s customers include Glassdoor, Citrix, and SurveyMonkey, according to a Drift press release. Four-year-old Siftrock doesn’t appear to have raised any venture capital.
Drift develops digital sales and marketing tools for businesses across a variety of sectors—mostly companies that sell products and services to other businesses. The startup’s products include chatbots that interact with visitors to a company’s website.
Drift has raised at least $107 million from investors, including Sequoia Capital, CRV, General Catalyst Partners, and HubSpot (NYSE: [[ticker:HUBS]]), a Cambridge, MA-based sales and marketing tech firm. Drift founders David Cancel and Elias Torres (pictured above) sold their last startup, Performable, to HubSpot.
Drift and HubSpot have been investing in products and services that would seem to put their businesses more in competition with each other. And Drift’s one-day Hypergrowth event took place the same week as Inbound, HubSpot’s annual marketing and sales conference in Boston. In an April interview, Torres downplayed any competition between the two companies and said they have a good relationship, despite HubSpot’s not investing in Drift’s latest funding round.
