The News: Switzerland’s national postal service, SwissPost, has acquired a majority stake in virtual event platform provider SpotMe. Members of SpotMe’s management team will retain an equity stake in the company after the acquisition but terms of the deal were not disclosed. Read the full Press Release here.
Virtual Event Platform SpotMe Acquired by SwissPost
Analyst Take: The SwissPost acquisition of SpotMe would, at first glance, appear to make for an odd combination. Typical mail carriers would seem to share few common business interests with a software startup that specializes in developing software that fosters interaction and engagement among attendees of an online event.
Upon further examination, however, the deal serves to offer an accurate mirror of changing mindsets that are driving long-term thinking among vendors of virtual event solutions.
First, it should be noted that SwissPost is no typical postal service. The organization operates a venture financing arm and has invested in a range of technology companies, including Matternet (a provider of drone logistics services), Profital (a platform that helps businesses manage digital brochures), Starship Technologies (a building of self-driving local delivery robots) and Scandit (a deliverer of barcode scanning software for smartphones.)
SwissPost’s eclectic mix of portfolio investments is illustrative of a strategic approach that is highly comfortable with a long-term approach to building a technology business. That represents a good fit for SpotMe, which is competing in a virtual event marketplace that promises to transform the process of hosting and attending online events over time while finding itself in a market that is struggling to replicate the fast-paced growth experienced by virtual event platform providers during the height of the COVID pandemic.
The SwissPost investment represents a vote of confidence for the long-term prospects of the virtual event marketplace. At the same time, it appears to acknowledge that leading players in the market face significant headwinds in driving sales growth in a post-COVID market where a substantial share of marketers and event planners have been eager to return to the normalcy of in-person events.
We expect that the SwissPost investment will enable SpotMe to continue driving investment in developing its online event solution until market interest in virtual conference options rebounds.
Market factors are pointing to a rekindling of virtual event demand that may emerge sooner rather than later. Stricter regulations on third-party browser cookies in Europe are poised to change how marketers collect consumer data from users’ web browsers by 2024. At that point, we believe that marketers will be looking for new vehicles for forging digital connections with prospects and customers online – a trend that is expected to foster a greater willingness among marketers to experiment with virtual event options.
SwissPost appears to lean into the concept of driving privacy-infused digital solutions that are in keeping with tighter European controls on third-party cookies. One of SwissPost’s objectives, according to the release, is to strengthen “its role as a trustworthy carrier of sensitive customer and business information.”
With the SwissPost investment in hand, SpotMe will be able to look beyond some of the short-term challenges experienced in the virtual event market to continue the development of an engagement platform that will be well-tuned to the evolving needs of marketers – particularly those in Europe – in 2024 and beyond.
Disclosure: Wainhouse Research, part of The Futurum Group family of companies, is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of Wainhouse Research as a whole.
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Author Information
Steve Vonder Haar is a Senior Analyst with Wainhouse – a Futurum Group company. His area of expertise and focus is enterprise streaming and virtual events.
