The Dutch company MessageBird has announced the acquisition of Sparkpost. With this takeover, the company wants to increase its reach in the United States and add email services to its portfolio.
Sparkpost is an American company that focuses on sending e-mails. The service helps companies to plan, execute and optimise their email programmes. It is the largest of its kind, with 4 to 5 trillion emails sent per year and clients such as Disney, Zillow, PayPal, The New York Times, Adobe, LinkedIn, Pinterest and JP Morgan.
Email was still missing from its services
MessageBird focuses more on other forms of digital B2C communication, such as with live chat, video, SMS, WhatsApp, Instagram, Google Business Messages, Apple Business Chat, Voice, Messenger, WeChat, RCS, Line and Telegram. With its services, the company has already attracted major international customers such as Domino’s, ABN Amro, Lufthansa and Snappcar. Email, however, was not yet part of MessageBird’s portfolio, even though, according to the company, it is still the largest business communication channel in terms of volume.
The takeover of Sparkpost fills this gap and brings MessageBird a step closer to its goal of setting up a worldwide omni-channel platform which makes it just as easy to communicate with a company as with your friends.
Half a billion euros
MessageBird has paid 600 million dollars for the acquisition, just under half a billion euros. To finance this sum, the company raised one billion dollars (830 million euros) in a Series C investment round. The transaction is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2021, after which MessageBird and Sparkpost will continue under one roof. This will give the combined company 700 employees, about 500 of whom work in Amsterdam. The customer base will total 25,000.
Reactions
“With the proliferation of communications channels available today, businesses are increasingly challenged to meet customers where they are. By making the world’s most popular channels available via a single platform, MessageBird is taking the heavy lifting out of customer communications,” said Robert Vis, CEO and Founder of MessageBird. “We’re pleased to partner with SparkPost to add email to our platform and take another step in our mission to make communicating with a business feel as natural as communicating with a friend.”
“Businesses around the world recognize that email is an incredibly effective channel to engage, retain and convert customers. At SparkPost we have moved beyond email delivery to help businesses optimize their email channel with powerful analytics and insights. We are excited to announce our joint efforts with MessageBird to help our customers worldwide advance the consumer experience across channels and further their success”, said SparkPost’s CEO, Rich Harris.
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