French CRM Provider Brevo Acquires WonderPush and Octolis
French firm Brevo, the provider of software as a service (SaaS) solutions for customer relationship management (CRM), has made two new acquisitions, the company announced recently. The purchase of WonderPush and Octolis brings the total number of companies that Brevo has acquired since 2019 to 10, as the company works to expand capabilities with an eye to surpassing the $1 billion mark in revenue by 2030.
Formerly known as Sendinblue and founded in 2012, Brevo caters to for-profit businesses and non-profit organizations alike, offering its clients a suite of marketing communications software that delivers unified views of the customer journey. It counts more than 500,000 business entities as clients, including eBay, H&M, Louis Vuitton, Carrefour, and Michelin.
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Brevo’s latest acquisitions are aimed at strengthening its real-time interaction capabilities and at centralizing customer data so that the company can better understand and respond to customer needs.
WonderPush, founded in 2014, is a push notification platform for mobile apps and websites that is used by more than 5,000 customers worldwide, including global publishers such as Volkswagen, Manchester City, and Ubisoft. The company’s push notification solution is able to send up to 350,000 push messages each second.
Octolis, established in 2021, is a customer data platform (CDP) that enables users to consolidate customer data information more easily to, say, personalize marketing campaigns or create target audience groups. Among its clients are KFC, Virgin, and Le Coq Sportif.
By offering a full push-notification service as well as its own CDP, Brevo adds powerful capabilities to its CRM solution, according to Armand Thiberge, founder and CEO of Brevo. “Acquiring WonderPush and Octolis represents a step further for Brevo to offer a state-of-the-art CRM to its clients,” notes Thiberge. “It’s a huge competitive advantage to be able to offer such a unique integrated, easy-to-use, all-in-one platform for greater business visibility and greater reach.”
The acquisitions will enable Brevo to exceed €100 million—equivalent to $108 million—in annual revenue. The company is on track to push past €1 billion in revenue by 2030, which Thiberge has described as an “ambitious goal.”
The founders of both companies, Frederic Mahé of WonderPush and Yassine Hamou of Octolis, together with their respective teams will join Brevo and help oversee the technical integration of their solutions into the Brevo ecosystem, executives from Brevo confirm. Paris-headquartered Brevo employs more than 800,000 workers globally and has offices in eight locations worldwide, including Seattle and New York City in the US.
Data Capture Company Formstack Acquires Forms Builder Formsite
Workplace productivity company Formstack, which uses a no-code solution to create custom forms and documents, is acquiring Formsite, a builder of online forms and surveys. Financial terms of the transaction are not available, but the acquisition aims to expand both the reach and the capabilities of the two companies.
For Formstack, the deal enables the Fisher, Indiana-headquartered provider to reach a wider audience and offer a broader range of solutions. The Formstack Suite to collect and manage data is used by more than 20,000 organizations, including Advent Health, Virgin Galactic, and Netflix.
For Downers Grove, Illinois-based Formsite, the acquisition enables the company’s customers to gain access to Formstack capabilities and its advanced workflow automation. Initially formed as a way to help people with no programming or coding experience create professional-looking Internet surveys, the company has grown organically without the help of external investors or stockholders. Formsite solutions serve more than 10,000 clients today.
Rob Lawrence, COO at Formstack, says the company has a history of helping customers capture data and put it to work. “This acquisition strengthens our position as a leader in the data collection market and will also enable Formsite users to tap into all of our additional offerings and derive even more value from their current deployments of Formsite.”
“We’re incredibly excited about the value this acquisition will deliver to Formsite customers,” said Randy Vroman, CEO of Formsite. “Our customers can expect the same great product experience and responsive customer service they have come to expect from Formsite and will experience complete continuity with no disruption to their current data capture solutions.”
Canadian EX Provider Workleap Acquires Texas-based Pingboard
Workleap, a provider of employee experience (EX) and digital experience software, has acquired Pingboard, a human resources software company known for its organizational chart and employee directory capabilities. The deal comes five months after the company formerly known as GSoft rebranded as Workleap and received an investment of Canadian $125 million from global investment group CDPQ to pursue growth through acquisitions.
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Financial details of the transaction have not been disclosed, but the acquisition is in line with the Workleap vision of expanding and unifying its ecosystem of workplace tools to tackle the full employee journey and simplify the work experience. The deal will also enable Montreal, Canada-based Workleap to gain a footprint in the US, as new talent from Austin, Texas-headquartered Pingboard joins its new owner.
Pingboard, founded in 2013, offers a subscription software platform for companies with a workforce that is primarily remote in nature or is distributed across multiple locations. Its internal communications and employee connection solutions can be used to deliver organizational charts, employee directories, peer-to-peer recognition systems, and onboarding mechanisms.
Simon De Baene, co-founder and CEO of Workleap, says the ability to easily visualize and understand the workplace is especially valuable in the current era of hybrid work environments. The acquisition, De Baene submits, will unlock synergies in the products of both companies and enable the newly unified organization to increase the value it can bring to customers.
Author Information
Alex is responsible for writing about trends and changes that are impacting the customer experience market. He had served as Principal Editor at Village Intelligence, a Los Angeles-based consultancy on technology impacting healthcare and healthcare-related industries. Alex was also Associate Director for Content Management at Omdia and Informa Tech, where he produced white papers, executive summaries, market insights, blogs, and other key content assets. His areas of coverage spanned the sectors grouped under the technology vertical, including semiconductors, smart technologies, enterprise & IT, media, displays, mobile, power, healthcare, China research, industrial and IoT, automotive, and transformative technologies.
At IHS Markit, he was Managing Editor of the company’s flagship IHS Quarterly, covering aerospace & defense, economics & country risk, chemicals, oil & gas, and other IHS verticals. He was Principal Editor of analyst output at iSuppli Corp. and Managing Editor of Market Watch, a fortnightly newsletter highlighting significant analyst report findings for pitching to the media. He started his career in writing as an Editor-Reporter for The Associated Press.
