Yelp has decided to provide its full reviews data set to social media and reputation monitoring tool Sprinklr. This is a first and an exclusive deal for now, but Yelp indicated it was open to working with others in the future.
Sprinklr’s customers are national, multi-location brands and franchises. In a blog post, Yelp explained how the content would be used:
Sprinklr will use Yelp data, in addition to 20+ other social media channels like Facebook and Twitter to help large brands, like David’s Bridal and Outback Steakhouse, better understand what their customers are saying online. In addition, Sprinklr allows large brands to understand how conversations are trending over time, either positively or negatively, and exactly how customers feel about specific aspects of a businesses’ locations, such as service, decor, facilities, value, and more. They mine Yelp review text to create word clouds and sentiment scores, among other tools. Businesses around the world, both large brands and local, can now take advantage of this holistic monitoring ability through Sprinklr.
Yelp didn’t disclose whether it’s receiving any fees from Sprinklr. However, I inferred from comments that even if there were fees, they’re not material. Instead, Yelp sees this as a way to expose the value of its content and reviews to brands, which it hopes will become engaged on the site — in other words, claim profiles, respond to reviews.
Yelp hinted at this in its post:
For businesses who want to join the conversation with their customers and engage with them directly, we recommend claiming your Yelp pages, responding to reviews and adding photos and business information. Whether you’ve got one location or many, get started at biz.yelp.com.
Previously, display ads were the primary brand advertising vehicle on the site. However, in the middle of last year, Yelp said that it would phase out display advertising in favor of native and local ads. Yelp is also growing transactions and bookings through the site.
This deal with Sprinklr represents a creative effort by Yelp to reach out to a broader array of companies. Yelp is also seeking to evolve from a pure local directory/search site into a platform that offers scheduling, transactions and some CRM functions.
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