In the last week there have been two major announcements in the world of email marketing and marketing automation: SharpSpring and MailChimp have both been acquired. This is despite every marketing blog that chased the cool clickbait headlines in the middle of the 2010s announcing the death of email.
Firstly, email is not “dead”. There are about a quarter of a million results for the search “email is dead” on google (with the phrase in quotes) and every one of them is wrong. Email is still an incredible (if annoying, hateable and frustrating) way of communicating. Oh yes, email also works really well as a marketing channel if you use it correctly. And these two acquisitions prove email’s value.
SharpSpring was acquired by Constant Contact and Clearlake Partners for a cool quarter of a million dollars. We’re a SharpSpring partner, so unashamedly biased – we love the platform and feel it’s a massively underrated marketing technology tool. It isn’t Marketo, but it’s not trying to be Marketo.
And then Intuit steps up with $12Bn to buy Mailchimp. This is a huge amount of money for a company that is in a very competitive space. Yet there were few people questioning the wisdom of the move when it was announced.
Of course, the two acquisitions have very different motivations. Constant Contact has struggled against MailChimp in terms of market share. The acquisition of SharpSpring brings them more features and capabilities that gives Constant Contact customers who are frustrated by the limitations of the platform somewhere to go. It’s a great move. Unglamourous yes, but clearly an indication that Constant Contact is serious about growing its business in larger and larger organisations.
The move is also great for SharpSpring too. It is a company that has consistently lost money. Although this isn’t unusual for a marketing automation platform: there are high switching costs when moving from one MAP to another, so the vendors have fought for market share rather than profitability. But it’s clear that SharpSpring could benefit from more resources to ensure they become a meaningful part of the marketing automation landscape. Let’s face it, the competitors such as Salesforce (Pardot), Adobe (Marketo) and Oracle (Eloqua) are companies with incredibly deep pockets.
Personally, I don’t see SharpSpring taking a huge share of the marketing automation marketplace, but I do see them growing strongly. They have a great product and compelling pricing, so I am confident they will be successful. They also have a different go-to-market model, using agencies as their primary channel. In fact, there are SharpSpring customers out there that don’t realise they are using SharpSpring as their agency has white-labelled the product and put their own branding onto the platform.
The Intuit acquisition of MailChimp is targeting a different market: it’s clear that Intuit believes they could sell email marketing to their SME customer base (and presumably also offer Intuit to the SMEs using MailChimp). This makes absolute sense, and although Intuit is less strong outside of the USA, I find it very hard to argue with the logic.
So, what does this mean for B2B tech marketers? Realistically the MailChimp acquisition isn’t going to impact many of us, unless we’re in start-ups. Even so, most B2B technology start-ups tend to invest in more comprehensive marketing automation tools, so I don’t see MailChimp being a major factor here. The SharpSpring acquisition is more interesting, however, although it will have no impact if you’re using one of the big marketing automation vendors. If, however, you’re looking for a marketing automation tool, then SharpSpring becomes much more attractive, particularly if you plan to work with a marketing automation agency. And if you’re with SharpSpring I think it means that you can feel much more comfortable with your choice: not only do you have a powerful platform with great pricing, the finances and therefore long-term security of SharpSpring are now much stronger. And, of course, whatever tool you are using, you can feel a lot more confident that the market has real faith in email as an influential marketing channel in the future.