Sendinblue, the digital marketing platform that focused on email when it was launched in 2012, has acquired three ecommerce companies: Chatra, Metrilo and PushOwl, for a total of more than $47 million, expanding its services for small businesses and global reach.
The purchases are “part of Sendinblue’s longer term vision to expand our marketing capabilities and dive into the growing e-commerce space,” says Armand Thiberge, CEO, Sendinblue.
The news follows a $160 million Series B funding round in 2020.
With these deals, Sendinblue now has more than 500 employees, and 80 new job opportunities are open at the company.
In addition, the firm has added offices in Sofia and Bangalore that are joining its locations in Seattle, Paris, Berlin, Noida and Toronto.
Founded in 2014 by Murry Ivanoff and Peter Iliev, Bulgaria-based Metrilo is a marketing and sales analytics SaaS platform for e-merchants.
Chatra -- founded in 2015 by Yaakov Karda, Maria Karda, Artem Polikarpov and Slava Olesik -- is a messaging platform for SMBs. It provides a centralized platform for interactions with customers, including those by live chat, emails and social media.
PushOwl, based in India, was founded in 2016 by Shashank Kumar. It facilitates web push notifications.
According to Sendinblue, the acquisitions will enable its SMB clients to do the following next year:
- Monitor ROI and improve overall sales performance through Metrilo
- Deploy automated chat notifications based on visitor behavior and respond to questions one-on-one through live messenger app Chatra
- Deploy website push notifications to consumers to reduce abandoned shopping carts via PushOwl.
These tools are present on CMS-content management systems such as Shopify and Magento. The company notes that U.S. consumers are expected to spend more than $933 billion on ecommerce this year.
In addition, pandemic-era restrictions “prompted many small and medium-sized businesses to pivot - to digitize their marketing efforts and invest in ecommerce strategies,” says Steffen Schebesta, CEO of North America and vice president of corporate development, Sendinblue.
The addition of Chatra, Metrilo and PushOwl will help the firm meet those needs, Schebesta adds.