TapClicks buys Raven Tools

TapClicks’ reporting and analytics platform, geared toward mid-sized and enterprise agencies and media companies, gathers data from over 175 marketing and ad tools.

Raven Tools’ platform, targeted at small to mid-sized businesses, provides marketing reports from over 20 platforms, like Google Analytics, Bing Ads, Twitter and Facebook. It also supports engine optimization and offers Site Auditor, for auditing websites’ search engine readiness.

Today, the companies announced that TapClicks has acquired Raven Tools, thus providing a marketing reports platform for any business size. Deal terms were not made public.

Combined, the companies say they now have the largest customer base for a marketing reports platform, combining info from multiple vendors and serving customers in over 70 countries with tens of thousands of monthly reports.

TapClicks Founder and CEO Babak Hedayati — who fled Iran as a child and settled in Silicon Valley — told me that a typical TapClicks customer might be a marketing agency managing campaigns for a few hundred clients, like auto dealers.

They utilize a variety of marketing and ad tools, and when they want to analyze and compare the performance of specific campaigns, they generate and send a report via TapClicks. It can also provide related functions, such as receiving orders from clients and handling workflow. Here’s a sample screen:

“TapClicks is standard for mid- and high-end [agencies and media companies],” Hedayati said. Raven Tools offers a comparable capability on the low end, integrating fewer platforms but with search engine optimization, site auditing, a link manager and other capabilities.

Raven is entirely self-service, while TapClicks is self-service with access to ongoing support for certain kinds of activities. And here’s a sample Raven screen:

Hedayati said that, over the next year, his San Jose, California-based company will integrate the technology of the two companies, although he’s still examining whether there will be an integrated dashboard. The Nashville-based Raven will stay in its current office and keep its brand.

He suggested that TapClicks’ customers might start using Raven’s Site Auditor the way web developers have in the past — showing prospective customers how their sites are not optimized for search, and then offering to fix that.

At the low end, Hedayati said, he used to see Raven a lot as a competitor and sometimes Cyfe, adding that “we don’t have a lot [of competitors] in the mid- and high-end.”

Among those few, he added, is Datorama, but now “we’re the only guys where a [customer company] can start small with Raven Tools and then scale up with TapClicks as you grow.”

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About The Author

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.

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