Category : General

Yesterday, a blockbuster deal was announced in the marketing software world, as Adobe agreed to purchase Neolane, a Paris based company for $600 million cash. The enterprise software and marketing worlds are aflutter today, as analysis pours in to help paint the strategic picture behind the deal.

Adobe, as most of the technology using world is aware, has long been associated with tools that creative marketers use to design, deploy and deliver creative content. (Is there anyone who hasn’t opened a .pdf file in the life?) Adobe Acrobat, Photoshop and the Adobe Creative Suite are iconic products that are used by creative folks worldwide. Less known about Adobe is that they’ve spent the past several years trying to diversify their business into the marketing management software world. Over the past couple of years, they’ve been on an acquisition binge, buying Omniture in 2009 and followed by Day Software (2010), Demdex (2011), Auditude (2011) and Efficient Frontier (2012). This vast assembly of systems, databases and code has been thrown into a meta brand called the Adobe Marketing Cloud. Neolane is the latest and not probably the last in this attempt to create a strong position in the enterprise marketing software market.

What is interesting about the acquisition, at least from a Boingnet standpoint, is what Neolane has built and the fact that Adobe felt it had to grab it. Neolane has specialized in “cross-channel marketing campaign management”, which is a fancy way to say that they provide software that manages how campaigns are deployed, tracked and reported on across both print and electronic channels. Boingnet has been leading the way in this space for years. The Boingnet platform manages online and offline campaigns, with all data tracked through Personal URL’s (pURL’s), which are personalized landing pages optimized for targeted content delivery and for conversion of leads into sales. While Boingnet is focused on the mid market, SMB’s and agencies, Neolane has traditionally done well with extremely large enterprises (approximately 400 customers generating an estimated $80 million in 2013 revenue – about $200k per customer!).

As Boingnet rolls out version 2 of the Boingnet platform in coming months, many of the same features that only the largest companies in the world have been able to afford will be available to the massses. We applaud Neolane with what they’ve built, and think that the Adobe acquisition might be a great thing for their employees and customers. We welcome Adobe to the cross-channel party, and we look forward to delivering on a similar vision, but with a platform for the 99% of businesses and agencies, not the 1%.

Checking in – Boingnet version 2 update

If you’ve had any discussions with the folks here at Boingnet, you can tell that anticipation is building for version 2 of the Boingnet platform. We’ve been hard at work coding away at this completely new version. Our vision for Boingnet has expanded, and we are intent on becoming the go to platform for marketers, direct marketers and digital agencies to use for any and all Personalized Marketing campaigns. Early feedback we’ve received from customers and agency partners who have been helping us test has been tremendous, and we are looking forward to rolling out the new version in the next few months. In addition to a major refresh on the user experience, taking into account requests from our customers and partners, we are rolling out tons of new capabilities, including:

• A complete user interface/user experience update
• A new Campaign/Channel based approach to Boingnet campaigns. Channels are considered the delivery mechanism for a campaign, and can range from Direct Mail, Email Marketing, Web based campaigns, Google Adword Campaigns, Mobile/SMS and social campaigns.
• New editor capabilities & user interface update
• New Personal URL campaign capabilities
• Email marketing – enabling Boingnet customers to publish email based campaigns using the same template & editor driven approach that’s been used to create pURL & QR Code campaigns for years. Imagine, your print and email campaigns built with the same editor, using the same reports, and driving prospects back to the same pURL’s to be converted to leads or customers.
• Integrated Drip Marketing – Boingnet will automatically follow up with your prospects/customers based upon rules that you establish. Email “drips” will be generated to trickle out to campaign lists when you want and how you want. Drip Marketing moves customers through your marketing funnel and presents highly qualified leads to your sales people.
• Mobile Marketing via SMS will be the next channel to roll out – either with or shortly after the primary release
• Social Marketing via Twitter, Facebook, Linked In and other social networks will come soon afterward

We’ll keep you informed as we finish up & roll out our new product. Combined with our upcoming move into newer, bigger space, Boingnet is poised to really take off!