Forrester Wave Social Depth Platforms q2 2015

For: B2C Marketing The Forrester Wave™: Social Depth
Platforms, Q2 2015
Professionals
by Kim Celestre, June 22, 2015
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Four Customer-Centric Vendors Lead The Pack

Among the seven SDP vendors Forrester evaluated -- Acquia, Jive, Lithium, Livefyre,
Salesforce, Sprinklr and Zimbra -- we found four Leaders, two Strong Performers, and
one Contender.
The SDP Market Evolves To Meet The Real-Time Needs Of The Age Of
The Customer
The social depth platform (SDP) market has become increasingly critical to digital
strategies because more B2C marketing professionals seek ways to weave dynamic social
content and experiences into their branded websites. This evolution is driven by the age
of the customer. Buyers actively seek out social content that will help inform a purchase.
Analytics, Integrations, And Strategy Are Key Differentiators In The SDP

Market
As many SDP features have become table stakes, value-added offerings and a cohesive SDP
strategy dictate which providers will lead the pack. Vendors that offer advanced analytics,
a broad set of integrations with other marketing systems, and the right mix of product
enhancements, services, and solid customer references meet B2C marketers’ needs.
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FOR B2C MARKETING PROFESSIONALS JUNE 22, 2015
The Forrester Wave™: Social Depth Platforms,

Q2 2015
The Seven Community Providers That Matter Most And How They
Stack Up
by Kim Celestre
with Mary Pilecki and Mike Carpenter
WHY READ THIS REPORT

In Forrester’s 62-criteria evaluation of social depth platform (SDP) vendors, we identified the seven most
significant software providers — Acquia, Jive, Lithium, Livefyre, Salesforce, Sprinklr, and Zimbra — in
the category and researched, analyzed, and scored them. This report details our findings about how well
each vendor fulfills our criteria and where they stand in relation to each other to help B2C marketing
professionals select the right partner for their social depth community platform.
Table Of Contents Notes & Resources

2 Marketers Influence Buyers Through Social Forrester conducted survey- and product-
Experiences based evaluations in February and
March 2015, surveyed 49 end users, and
SDP Vendors Create Dynamic Destinations
interviewed seven vendors and 21 user
5 Social Depth Platform Evaluation Overview companies including Acquia, Jive, Lithium,
Livefyre, Salesforce, Sprinklr, and Zimbra.
Our Evaluation Considered Current Offering,
Strategy, And Market Presence
Related Research Documents
7 Evaluated Vendors Provide Rich Social
Best Practices For Social Content Hubs
Experiences
Executive Q&A: How Online Communities
10 Vendor Profiles
Help You Achieve A Social Depth Objective
Leaders How To Create A Social Depth Strategy
Strong Performers
Contenders
12 Supplemental Material
© 2015, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available
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and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. To
purchase reprints of this document, please email [email protected]. For additional information, go to www.forrester.com.
FOR B2C MARKETING PROFESSIONALS
The Forrester Wave™: Social Depth Platforms, Q2 2015 2
MARKETERS INFLUENCE BUYERS THROUGH SOCIAL EXPERIENCES

The age of the customer has ignited a new era of rich digital experiences that reflect the way
buyers explore a brand today. And a brand’s most valuable marketing asset, its own website, has
become even more critical today since it is often a first stop for buyers in the explore stage of the
customer life cycle.1 Nearly half of prospective buyers will visit a brand’s web page to gather relevant
information that will help inform their purchase decision.2 Instead of the standard static content on
a corporate web domain, dynamic websites that display the latest trends, customer sentiment, and
buyer profiles are the most effective for driving exploration.3 Social content plays a critical role on
these sites since many B2C marketers realize that they can provide a more immersive experience by
curating social content and creating online communities.4 And many buyers will spend more time
on web pages that have social content than those that don’t.5
SDP Vendors Create Dynamic Destinations

Fortunately for marketers, there is a thriving technology category that activates social experiences
on websites. Forrester refers to this category as “social depth” which is defined as:
Technologies that add social content and interactions (e.g., blogs, ratings and reviews, user
generated content, forums, online communities) to branded websites to drive exploration of
products and services.
With SDP technologies, marketers have the option to launch standalone online communities
or weave social experiences throughout their entire websites. B2C marketers invest in these
technologies as part of a broader digital strategy, so it is crucial to select a platform that fits into
their overall marketing approach (see Figure 1). For example, the Home Shopping Network uses an
SDP for product ratings and reviews and to support its vibrant online community. Its community
connects buyers to celebrities and hosts over a half million discussions on HSN’s products. Sony
recently transformed its website into a highly immersive experience where content such as tweets,
videos, and images are curated.
Since full SDP implementations can take up a significant percentage of a marketing budget (in
some cases, well over half a million dollars for just the platform), technology selection requires
meticulous planning and critical evaluation. It is important to choose a vendor that provides a
robust technology and services offering, which should help you:
■ Facilitate your buyer’s discovery of social content. A social depth strategy could include both
branded and user-generated social content in the form of blogs, images, videos, social network
posts, comments, and discussion threads. But site visitors can easily get overwhelmed if they don’t
know where or how to find content that is relevant to them. SDPs provide a variety of advanced
search, navigation, and personalization features that help expedite the content search process.
© 2015, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited June 22, 2015

■ Moderate real-time interactions on your website. The real-time nature of social content
provides opportunities to marketers who want to show the latest and greatest content on their
website. But real-time also brings the challenge of keeping out unwanted visitors, spam, and
content. Marketers consider moderation to be the most important feature in an SDP platform
(see Figure 2).Over half of the vendors in our evaluation provide sophisticated moderation and
management tools to help marketers ensure that quality discussions and content are posted.
■ Capture and publish user-generated content from external social networks. User-generated
content has significant influence on a buyer’s purchase decision. SDPs provide the ability to
import, curate, and publish images, videos, and social network posts from sources outside of the
brand’s site. And all of the SDPs in our evaluation provide the ability to rate and review products
and content on a brand’s site.
■ Track and analyze your buyers’ behavior and site activity. Online communities can provide
boundless user data that provides priceless insights to marketers. An emerging strength of SDPs
is the ability to track site visitor profiles and online behavior to help marketers determine the
right mix of content and interactions that will successfully influence a buyer’s purchase decision
(see Figure 3). And integration with more sophisticated analytics and business intelligence tools
are mandatory for marketers to know if their investment is paying off.
■ Help you design and implement a successful social depth strategy. The SDP market
has become mature and as a result, SDP features are becoming less and less differentiated.
Customers demand that vendors step up and provide value-added services that will help them
be successful. They appreciate and buy from technology vendors that build strong partnerships
with their clients — partnerships that begin with design and continue well past implementation.
An SDP client stated, “The expertise that comes with the product is the most important feature
to my social depth efforts — it’s the human factor. It’s being guided by experts on how to drive
the Ferrari rather than just being thrown the keys.”6

Figure 1 SDPs Contribute To The Brand’s Digital Strategy
“Please indicate how much you agree or disagree with each of the following statements:”
Somewhat disagree
4%
Neither agree
nor disagree
18%
Our social depth
Strongly
platform is part of
agree
a broader digital
45%
marketing initiative
for our company
Somewhat
agree
33%
Base: 49 social depth platform end users
Source: Forrester’s Q1 2015 Global Social Depth Platform Wave™ Online Survey
119972 Source: Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized reproduction, citation, or distribution prohibited.
Figure 2 The Most Important SDP Feature Is Moderation
“Thinking about your company’s primary social depth platform,

which features are most important to your social efforts?”
The ability to moderate user activity on the site

(e.g., posts, comments, discussions) 33%
The ability for the platform to

27%
be customized to meet our requirements
The platform’s overall ease of use 24%
Reporting and analytics capabilities 24%

The ability to facilitate the search and
navigation of content that is 20%
posted on the website
(multiple responses accepted)
Note: Not all responses are shown.

Figure 3 The Majority Of Users Agree That SDPs Positively Influence Sales
“Please indicate how much you agree or disagree with each of the following statements:”
Strongly disagree
Somewhat disagree 2%
6%
Our social depth Strongly agree

Neither agree platform has helped 39%
nor disagree us increase sales of
33% our offering
Somewhat agree
20%
SOCIAL DEPTH PLATFORM EVALUATION OVERVIEW

To assess the state of the social depth platform market and see how the vendors stack up against
each other, Forrester evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of top SDP vendors. Forrester included
seven vendors in this assessment: Acquia, Jive, Lithium, Livefyre, Salesforce, Sprinklr, and Zimbra.
We selected each of these vendors for its ability to (see Figure 4):
■ Provide capabilities required for a social depth marketing objective. We sought vendors that
provide a majority of desired social depth platform features (e.g., blogs, ratings and reviews,
social content curation, and commenting) in addition to their core community features.
Vendors also had to offer at least some of their social depth capabilities á la carte to clients who
want to embed standalone features into their home page and product pages.
■ Show consistent investment in the social depth product. Since some vendors offer social
depth product(s) in addition to their core offerings (e.g., social relationship platform, enterprise
collaboration platform), we required vendors to have sold their social depth products for at least
the past two consecutive years.

■ Support enterprise-class deployments. Forrester’s clients seek enterprise-class platforms, so

it was critical to require that the vendors in this evaluation have what it takes to handle large
deployments and often appear in the consideration set of Forrester clients.7 We sought vendors
with a minimum of 100 active clients and an SDP deployment of at least 500,000 end users.
Figure 4 Evaluated Vendors: Product Information And Selection Criteria
Vendor Product Version

Acquia Acquia Platform 3.9
Jive Jive-x 8c5
Lithium Lithium Social Customer Experience Platform 15.4
Livefyre Livefyre Studio N/A
Salesforce Salesforce Community Cloud Spring ’15
Sprinklr Sprinklr First Party Experience suite 6.0.31
Zimbra Zimbra Social 8.5
Vendor selection criteria

The vendor offers all of the platform capabilities required for a social depth marketing objective which
can also be added to their clients’ web pages a la carte.
The product has been generally available for at least two consecutive years.
The product has at least 100 active customers.
The vendor has clients with deployments in excess of 500,000 members or users.
Source: Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized reproduction, citation, or distribution prohibited.
Our Evaluation Considered Current Offering, Strategy, And Market Presence

After examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we
developed a comprehensive set of evaluation criteria. We assessed vendors against 62 criteria, which
we grouped into three high-level buckets:
■ Current offering. We assessed the SDP features of each vendor’s platform and evaluated the
breadth and depth of its capabilities. We also looked at how the platform integrates with other
critical marketing platforms and how the platform serves non-US clients.
■ Strategy. In this category, we evaluated the vendor’s product strategy, corporate strategy, and
SDP focus. We also assessed its services offerings and each vendor’s customer satisfaction rating
from its references.

■ Market presence. Last, we considered the size of the vendor’s current installed base, its 2014
revenues, and the number of employees dedicated to developing, selling, and supporting its
social depth offering.
EVALUATED VENDORS PROVIDE RICH SOCIAL EXPERIENCES

The evaluation uncovered a market in which (see Figure 5):
■ Jive, Lithium, Livefyre, and Salesforce lead the pack. All four of the Leaders provide a robust
set of pure social depth capabilities and the right balance of customization, integrations, and
OOTB features for marketers across a range of industries. Customer references were consistently
positive, offering high NPS scores and brand loyalty for these vendors. But there were key
differences that set these Leaders apart. Lithium stood out with its sophisticated analytics
capabilities and SDP strategy. Jive received high marks for its content discovery and usability.
Livefyre excelled with its real-time content publishing and moderation capabilities. Salesforce
provides ample globalization and advanced user profile features.
■ Sprinklr and Zimbra offer competitive options. Both of the strong performers provide an
impressive mix of social depth capabilities but vary greatly in their strategies and business
models. On one end of the spectrum, Sprinklr has a “full suite” social marketing offering
that helps clients meet their reach, depth, and relationship objectives. It acquired Pluck in
March 2015, right before our evaluation. But Sprinklr inherited Pluck’s shortcomings and its
customers were unimpressed with the platform’s mediocre reporting and analytics features. On
the other end of the spectrum, Zimbra offers a community platform that is best known for its
collaboration and support capabilities. It has the most sophisticated administration features of
all the vendors in this evaluation, but its customer references were lackluster.
■ Acquia lags behind. Acquia provides clients a highly customizable solution. It received a strong
application development score in our evaluation, but note that implementations requiring
significant development come with associated costs. Acquia’s customers gave it low satisfaction
scores and were disappointed in its lack of services offerings.
This evaluation of the SDP market is intended to be a starting point only. We encourage clients to
view detailed product evaluations and adapt criteria weightings to fit their individual needs through
the Forrester Wave Excel-based vendor comparison tool.

Figure 5 Forrester Wave™: Social Depth Platforms, Q2 ’15
Risky Strong
Bets Contenders Performers Leaders
Strong
Go to Forrester.com to
download the Forrester
Lithium
Zimbra Wave tool for more
Jive detailed product
Acquia Sprinklr
evaluations, feature
Livefyre
Salesforce comparisons, and
customizable rankings.
Current
offering
Market presence
Weak
Weak Strategy Strong


Figure 5 Forrester Wave™: Social Depth Platforms, Q2 ’15 (Cont.)
Forrester’s
Salesforce
Weighting
Livefyre
Sprinklr
Lithium
Zimbra
Acquia
Jive
CURRENT OFFERING 50% 3.42 3.64 3.55 3.43 3.35 3.49 3.81
Product information 0% 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
User identity 5% 3.00 4.50 4.50 4.50 5.00 5.00 4.50
Content discovery 15% 3.80 4.40 3.50 3.00 3.80 4.60 4.20
Content publishing 5% 2.75 3.50 3.00 4.55 2.20 4.55 3.45
Administration and deployment 25% 3.80 3.80 4.00 4.60 4.00 3.60 4.80
Applications and tools 10% 4.75 3.75 4.00 2.75 2.50 3.50 2.50
Reporting and analysis 15% 2.75 2.25 4.00 2.25 2.00 3.00 3.50
Third-party integration 5% 3.95 3.15 2.00 1.25 2.45 4.00 1.05
Usability 15% 2.50 4.50 2.50 4.00 3.50 2.00 4.00
Globalization 5% 3.00 1.75 3.50 2.00 4.50 2.50 3.00
STRATEGY 50% 1.97 4.43 4.80 4.71 3.70 2.22 2.46

Product strategy 20% 3.30 3.70 4.10 4.05 3.95 2.30 3.00
Corporate strategy 10% 5.00 3.00 5.00 5.00 1.00 1.00 3.00
Services 20% 1.55 4.45 4.90 4.50 4.05 3.30 2.80
Customer satisfaction 50% 1.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 4.00 2.00 2.00
Cost 0% 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
MARKET PRESENCE 0% 3.65 4.00 2.30 3.15 4.40 3.20 1.95

Installed base 40% 2.00 3.00 1.50 5.00 3.50 4.00 2.00
Revenue 50% 5.00 5.00 3.00 2.00 5.00 3.00 2.00
Employees 10% 3.50 3.00 2.00 1.50 5.00 1.00 1.50
All scores are based on a scale of 0 (weak) to 5 (strong).


VENDOR PROFILES
Leaders
■ Lithium’s superior capabilities and insights drive sophisticated marketing initiatives. Lithium
has established itself as a thought leader for social depth marketing communities and boasts a
variety of retail and financial services brands that have award-winning sites.8 The vendor has a
holistic vision of providing its clients with a total community that consists of customers, prospects,
influencers, employees, and advocates. Lithium continues to integrate Klout and advanced analytics
into its offering which will make the platform even more powerful for big marketing programs.
Its greatest strength lies with its marketer-friendly reporting and site analytics tools. Clients like
Lithium’s data drill-down capabilities and visualization features but express disappointment with
its lack of native mobile capabilities. Despite the platform’s mobile shortcomings, client references
sang praises for Lithium’s exceptional platform, services, and support.
■ Livefyre handles high volume content loads with advanced real-time moderation. Livefyre
continues to evolve its platform at an assertive pace. Its 2013 acquisitions of Storify and Realtidbits,
along with its fall 2014 release of Livefyre Studio, have helped it round out its offering.9 Today
it provides a highly competitive SDP option for B2C marketers who grapple with a significant
volume and cadence of social content. Salesforce and Adobe recently became Livefyre investors
in its Series D round, a credible nod to Livefyre’s advanced moderation and content curation
features.10 Livefyre’s vision is to help clients engage with consumers through real-time conversation,
user-generated content, and advertising. Livefyre clients give the vendor high customer
satisfaction scores for the platform’s ease of use and automated moderation tools. Its core platform
provides all of the features a marketer needs to implement an SDP strategy, but Livefyre’s lack of
third-party integrations and services partners were notable weak points in our analysis.
■ Jive offers a mobile and user-friendly platform that is a customer favorite. Since its IPO
in 2011, Jive has struggled to meet shareholder expectations and stay competitive in a rapidly
evolving SDP landscape.11 But after building new strategic partnerships and investing in
third-party integrations in 2014, Jive is on a renewed trajectory of investing in its feature-rich
external-facing community platform (Jive-x).12 Jive received high marks for its advanced mobile
features and ease-of-use: the two primary ingredients for accelerating user adoption of its
platform. Customer references were favorable, touting Jive’s professional services and customer-
centricity as highlights (and a primary reason for switching to Jive from other competitors). But
after a couple of years of focusing primarily on its employee collaboration product, Jive will have
to gain its customers’ confidence in its long-term SDP strategy. To achieve this, it must deliver
its aggressive product road map that includes capabilities for lead generation, nurturing, brand
engagement, and social hubs.

■ Salesforce emerges with a sharp focus on transforming business processes. Salesforce

dialed up its development efforts on its Community Cloud platform that was launched in 2013
along with 2,000 customer use cases.13 Although the platform is lacking in content publishing
capabilities and availability of standalone social tools, it gets high marks for its advanced mobile
features, identity management, and extensive global support. Salesforce clients are happy with
the vendor and the usability of its platform but also communicated that it fell short on some
community capabilities specific to B2C brands (primarily due to its legacy B2B focus). The
vendor’s vision is to tightly integrate clients’ systems of record (e.g., Salesforce CRM) to their
systems of engagement (e.g., Community Cloud, Chatter). For example, Community Cloud can
automatically generate a customer support case based on discussions that are taking place on a
product web page or online community.
Strong Performers
■ Zimbra provides a strong offering with advanced administration features. Zimbra (previously
known as Telligent) stands out from the pack with its sophisticated administration and deployment
features that help it provide a solid community platform for a variety of marketing use cases. But
clients shared dissatisfaction with Zimbra’s lack of services and support, giving it low scores on
both criteria. The vendor also lagged in third-party integrations, providing minimal flexibility to
clients who want to connect their SDPs with other marketing systems. Zimbra acknowledges these
issues and plans to increase its marketing and technology partnerships going forward.
■ Sprinklr acquires Pluck and adds it to an end-to-end social marketing solution. Sprinklr
acquired vendor Pluck from its previous owner, Demand Media, in February 2015.14 It is in the
process of integrating the SDP into its social suite and plans to provide marketers with an end-
to-end solution that can meet reach, depth, and relationship objectives.15 The platform provides
strong content discovery and content publishing features, but fell short on meeting its B2C
marketing clients’ expectations. Client references gave Sprinklr low scores for its poor usability,
lack of customized reporting, and minimal site performance analytics. Sprinklr also got low
marks for a lack of available applications to run on the platform, offering limited flexibility to
clients who may want to customize the platform to meet their needs. The vendor’s vision to
unite “first party experiences with third party experiences” is misleading. We found the vision
to be more focused on integrating the acquired platform into Sprinklr’s other social marketing
products and less on providing a platform that will meet marketers’ evolving social depth
marketing requirements.

Contenders
■ Acquia offers a highly customizable solution for very complex deployments. Acquia
implements sophisticated digital experiences for well-known brands and provides the most
flexible and agile platform in this evaluation because of the quantity of its integrations and
its application availability. But Acquia’s reliance on developers and third parties for platform
implementation negatively impacted its customer satisfaction scores. Acquia’s client references
found the platform to be too complex, tough to administer, and a challenge to implement.
Clients express that the vendor’s slow and inadequate support services made them question their
investments in the platform. Acquia’s platform is best suited for large, complicated deployments
that require a high level of flexibility. Acquia clients will also need a dedicated IT support team
that can manage a vast ecosystem of best-of-breed applications that are built on the platform.
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
Online Resource
The online version of Figure 5 is an Excel-based vendor comparison tool that provides detailed
product evaluations and customizable rankings.
Data Sources Used In This Forrester Wave

Forrester used a combination of three data sources to assess the strengths and weaknesses of each
solution:
■ Vendor surveys. Forrester surveyed vendors on their capabilities as they relate to the evaluation
criteria. Once we analyzed the completed vendor surveys, we conducted vendor calls where
necessary to gather details of vendor qualifications.
■ Product demos. We asked vendors to conduct demonstrations of their product’s functionality. We

used findings from these product demos to validate details of each vendor’s product capabilities.
■ Customer reference calls and surveys. To validate product and vendor qualifications, Forrester
also conducted reference calls with three of each vendor’s current customers and conducted
online surveys of each vendor’s current customers.
The Forrester Wave Methodology

We conduct primary research to develop a list of vendors that meet our criteria to be evaluated
in this market. From that initial pool of vendors, we then narrow our final list. We choose these
vendors based on: 1) product fit; 2) customer success; and 3) Forrester client demand. We eliminate
vendors that have limited customer references and products that don’t fit the scope of our evaluation.

After examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we develop
the initial evaluation criteria. To evaluate the vendors and their products against our set of criteria,
we gather details of product qualifications through a combination of lab evaluations, questionnaires,
demos, and/or discussions with client references. We send evaluations to the vendors for their review,
and we adjust the evaluations to provide the most accurate view of vendor offerings and strategies.
We set default weightings to reflect our analysis of the needs of large user companies — and/or other
scenarios as outlined in the Forrester Wave document — and then score the vendors based on a
clearly defined scale. These default weightings are intended only as a starting point, and we encourage
readers to adapt the weightings to fit their individual needs through the Excel-based tool. The final
scores generate the graphical depiction of the market based on current offering, strategy, and market
presence. Forrester intends to update vendor evaluations regularly as product capabilities and vendor
strategies evolve. For more information on the methodology that every Forrester Wave follows, go to
http://www.forrester.com/marketing/policies/forrester-wave-methodology.html.
Integrity Policy
All of Forrester’s research, including Forrester Wave evaluations, is conducted according to
our Integrity Policy. For more information, go to http://www.forrester.com/marketing/policies/
integrity-policy.html.
Survey Methodology
Forrester’s Q1 2015 Global Social Depth Platform Wave™ Online Survey was fielded to 62 social
marketers who are client references of social depth platform vendors participating in this Forrester
Wave. These vendors typically recommend their most active clients, and our survey data shows
that these reference clients are significantly more likely to use any given social network than other
leading brands. We call this group of client references “avid social marketers.” Forrester fielded the
survey during Q1 2015. Exact sample sizes are provided in this report on a question-by-question
basis. This data is not guaranteed to be representative of the population, and, unless otherwise
noted, statistical data is intended to be used for descriptive and not inferential purposes. While
nonrandom, the survey is still a valuable tool for understanding where users are today and where
the industry is headed.
ENDNOTES
1
Social depth helps drive buyer exploration through a combination of owned and earned social content. See
the “How To Create A Social Depth Strategy” Forrester report.
2
Source: Forrester’s North American Consumer Technographics® Online Benchmark Survey (Part 1), 2014.
3
A social content hub can be an effective tactic for providing prospective buyers with a dynamic destination
to explore your products and offerings. See the “Best Practices For Social Content Hubs” Forrester report.

4
Many brands are also moving away from building communities on Facebook and other social networks
because of the choppy customer experience and lack of data ownership. See the “Predictions 2015: Social
Media Grows Up” Forrester report.
5
PGA Tour Superstore found that consumers spent up to 20% more time on web pages that contained social
content. See the “Best Practices For Social Content Hubs” Forrester report.
6
This answer was submitted in an open-ended question. Source: Forrester’s Q1 2015 Global Social Depth
Platform Wave™ Online Survey.
7
In Forrester inquiries, clients tell us that they seek SDP platforms that have proven capabilities and
experience that support enterprise class deployments. See the “Executive Q&A: How Online Communities
Help You Achieve A Social Depth Objective” Forrester report.
8
Autodesk and Consorsbank are two Forrester Groundswell Awards winners that run their online
communities on the Lithium platform. Source: “2015 Forrester Groundswell Awards Winners,” Forrester
Groundswell Awards (http://groundswelldiscussion.com/groundswell/awards/winners.php?y=2015).
9
In 2013, Livefyre acquired social storytelling platform Storify, which added social content publishing and
advertising capabilities to its offering. Shortly after the Storify acquisition, Livefyre bought Realtidbits, a
social application that powers real-time engagement. Source: Anthony Ha, “Commenting Startup Livefyre
Acquires Realtidbits For Its Move Into Analytics,” November 21, 2013 (http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/21/
livefyre-acquires-realtidbits/).
10
Source: Anthony Ha, “Content Curation Startup Livefyre Raises $47M More, Brings On Adobe And
Salesforce As New Investors,” TechCrunch, February 19, 2015 (http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/19/content-
curation-startup-livefyre-raises-47m-more-brings-on-adobe-and-salesforce-as-new-investors/#.vhsthi:V0Si).
11
Jive stock prices declined significantly in 2013 and 2014. Source: “Jive Software, Inc. (JIVE),” Yahoo Finance
(finance.yahoo.com/q?s=JIVE).
12
Source: “Cisco To Deliver Jive’s Complete And Fully Integrated Communication And Collaboration
Solution For The Enterprise,” Jive Software press release, May 1, 2014 (https://www.jivesoftware.com/
about-jive/news-room/press-releases/cisco-to-deliver-jives-complete-and-fully-integrated-communication-
and-collaboration-solution-for-the-enterprise/) and Virginia Backaitis, “Jive Bridges the Gap to Office 365,”
CMS Wire, September 16, 2014 (http://www.cmswire.com/cms/social-business/jive-bridges-the-gap-to-
office-365-026514.php).
13
Source: “Salesforce.com Launches New Cloud — Salesforce1 Community Cloud — Defining the Next
Battleground for Customer Engagement,” Salesforce press release, August 27, 2014 (http://www.salesforce.
com/company/news-press/press-releases/2014/08/140827.jsp).
14
Source: Jordan Novet, “Sprinklr buys social community provider Pluck off of Demand Media,” VentureBeat,
February 26, 2015 (http://venturebeat.com/2015/02/26/sprinklr-buys-social-community-provider-pluck-
off-of-demand-media/).
15
Source: Robert Hof, “Sprinklr Speeds Social Spree With Get Satisfaction Acquisition,” Forbes, April 8, 2015
(http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2015/04/08/sprinklr-speeds-social-spree-with-get-satisfaction-
acquisition/).

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Forrester Wave Social Depth Platforms q2 2015

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For: B2C Marketing The Forrester Wave™: Social Depth

by Kim Celestre, June 22, 2015

Four Customer-Centric Vendors Lead The Pack

Analytics, Integrations, And Strategy Are Key Differentiators In The SDP

Access The Forrester Wave Model For Deeper Insight

Forrester Research, Inc., 60 Acorn Park Drive, Cambridge, MA 02140 USA

The Forrester Wave™: Social Depth Platforms,

WHY READ THIS REPORT

Table Of Contents Notes & Resources

MARKETERS INFLUENCE BUYERS THROUGH SOCIAL EXPERIENCES

SDP Vendors Create Dynamic Destinations

© 2015, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited June 22, 2015

© 2015, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited June 22, 2015

Figure 1 SDPs Contribute To The Brand’s Digital Strategy

Base: 49 social depth platform end users

Figure 2 The Most Important SDP Feature Is Moderation

“Thinking about your company’s primary social depth platform,

The ability to moderate user activity on the site

The ability for the platform to

The platform’s overall ease of use 24%

Reporting and analytics capabilities 24%

© 2015, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited June 22, 2015

Our social depth Strongly agree

SOCIAL DEPTH PLATFORM EVALUATION OVERVIEW

© 2015, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited June 22, 2015

■ Support enterprise-class deployments. Forrester’s clients seek enterprise-class platforms, so

Figure 4 Evaluated Vendors: Product Information And Selection Criteria

Vendor Product Version

Jive Jive-x 8c5

Lithium Lithium Social Customer Experience Platform 15.4

Livefyre Livefyre Studio N/A

Salesforce Salesforce Community Cloud Spring ’15

Sprinklr Sprinklr First Party Experience suite 6.0.31

Zimbra Zimbra Social 8.5

Vendor selection criteria

The product has at least 100 active customers.

Source: Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized reproduction, citation, or distribution prohibited.

Our Evaluation Considered Current Offering, Strategy, And Market Presence

© 2015, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited June 22, 2015

EVALUATED VENDORS PROVIDE RICH SOCIAL EXPERIENCES

© 2015, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited June 22, 2015

Figure 5 Forrester Wave™: Social Depth Platforms, Q2 ’15

Weak Strategy Strong

© 2015, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited June 22, 2015

Figure 5 Forrester Wave™: Social Depth Platforms, Q2 ’15 (Cont.)

STRATEGY 50% 1.97 4.43 4.80 4.71 3.70 2.22 2.46

MARKET PRESENCE 0% 3.65 4.00 2.30 3.15 4.40 3.20 1.95

All scores are based on a scale of 0 (weak) to 5 (strong).

© 2015, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited June 22, 2015

© 2015, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited June 22, 2015

■ Salesforce emerges with a sharp focus on transforming business processes. Salesforce

© 2015, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited June 22, 2015

Data Sources Used In This Forrester Wave

■ Product demos. We asked vendors to conduct demonstrations of their product’s functionality. We

The Forrester Wave Methodology

© 2015, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited June 22, 2015

© 2015, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited June 22, 2015

© 2015, Forrester Research, Inc. Reproduction Prohibited June 22, 2015

Objective advice on tools and technologies to connect you with

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