Article's Content
Article's Content
Welcome to volume 41!
Leo season starts tomorrow; are my fellow fire 🔥 signs as excited as I am?!
Not so into astrology? How about acquisitions, because we are currently in acquisition szn.
Today we are covering five different acquisitions, and no one asked but, the total spent across all four financially disclosed acquisitions was $16.8 Billion!
Before we get into that, here’s a peek at what’s to come:
- Bill.com is acquiring its way to being a full-service suite provider.
- Twillio is speeding into text-based cloud communications.
- Zoom snags Five9 to ride the post pandemic dip.
FREE WEBINAR… Marketing is more like investing than you think.
Do you know why marketers should think more like investors to drive content results?
Do you know which content assets are most frequently driving acquisitions?
Do you know how brands are creating SEO Moats?
If you answered no or maybe to one or more of the questions above, Ross’s webinar Why Marketers Should Think More Like Investors to Drive Content Results is perfect for you!
It’s free, and it’s happening on July 28, at 9:00 AM AST! Don’t miss out – Register Here!
Get You Bills2go
Society is all about electronic solutions.
Invoice2go offers a mobile-first accounts receivable solution for small businesses with the top-rated invoice app on the Apple App Store. It provides a free invoice generator tool, which doesn’t get as much traffic as it deserves, and provides a free invoice template that receives 1,200 organic visitors a month.
Bill.com offers an online business invoice and payments workflow solution. Whose mission is:
This $625M cash and stock split acquisition will see two payment solution providers team up to continue on a joint mission to simplify the process of doing business and getting paid for it.
The keyword “invoice generator” has over 100 pages ranking for it, with 109K global monthly searches, and Bill.com could have chosen any of these companies to acquire.
So why Invoice2go?
Within the fintech niche, trust and transparency are two of the most critical factors for your brand to establish. If your audience can’t trust your company well then, I doubt they will trust you to handle anything to do with financial statements or bank information.
Bill.com has done a fantastic job of building audience trust through the use of social proof, which you can read more on here: How Bill.com Uses Social Proof To Establish Trust With Millions Of Visitors.
Finding the right partner was crucial to Bill.com, so as to not jeopardize its reputation. Invoice2go was the best fit for this because not only does it have the #1 invoice iOS app, it also has:
- Domain Rating (DR) of 70
- 317 dofollow backlinks with a DR > 70
- 148 backlinks from sites with the term “best” in the title
- 114 backlinks from sites with the term “top” in the title
*Data provided by ahrefs and recorded on July 21, 2021.
These backlinks are not only a sign to search engines that this is a trusted site — it is a sign to Bill.com that it is a trusted service. Over 250 online resources have recognized Invoice2go to be amongst the elite providers of invoicing services, SaaS products, or entrepreneurial tools.
With that being said, Inovice2go has developed its own trustworthy reputation, one that will bolster Bill.com’s reputation, and ultimately allowing these two companies to combine into a payment platform powerhouse!
Key Takeaways
- Bill.com built its brand on trust and turned to trusted sources when looking for the best growth partner.
- Invoice2go is being recognized for the quality of service it provides and the well-crafted app it has brought to the market.
- Being the best has its benefits; the more your brand is recognized in the industry, the more likely it is to be rewarded come acquisition season.
Twilio Goes All In On Texting
“Customers have made it clear that messaging is a preferred channel for communicating with brands… It is more essential than ever that businesses can reach their end customers on the right channel, at the right time, with the right message, and the combination of Twilio and Zipwhip creates an enormous opportunity to expand the options we can provide to businesses and elevate their overall experience.”
– John Lauer, CEO and co-founder of Zipwhip
Surely John Lauer was smiling cheek to cheek as they announced the estimated $825M cash stock split acquisition of Zipwhip by Twilio. But I like to believe that smile wasn’t only a result of the millions raked in, but also from knowing the two companies will provide continued excellence in message-based communications.
Because, as much as I personally don’t enjoy a texting relationship with brands, it does work.
*According to data from PCMag from September 2020
“Today’s digital economy has every business evaluating the best ways to interact with their customers. Across every industry, Twilio sees messaging as an increasingly popular, trusted, and effective way to engage… We’re very excited to make Zipwhip a part of the Twilio team and to leverage our combined messaging expertise across all channels to offer businesses of all sizes the most robust suite of messaging offerings.”
– Simon Khalaf, SVP and general manager of the Twilio Communications Platform
While Twilio has a wide range of communications solutions, they are choosing to double down on providing text messaging services and ensuring it is as strong as possible.
Excluding Twilio’s learn, blog, and docs pages, its SMS service page is the top page based on organic visits (behind the homepage). Twilio.com/sms brings in 5,500 visitors a month across 2,300 keywords, at a value of $38K.
Zipwhip doesn’t have the same level of organic clout, but (unlike the story below) digital marketing prowess doesn’t always equate to product prowess.
Twilio recognizes the growing success of text messaging as a form of brand communication, and they see that Zipwhip is the best choice to continue developing this service offering. And according to Mr. Lauer, they share the same vision,
“Twilio and Zipwhip share a vision for the future of business messaging and its growing role within customer engagement.”
This acquisition didn’t occur out of competition fear or blurred by marketing smoke screens; Twilio believes Zipwhip is the right fit to help quickly expand this service. We will wait and see how this partnership takes off as the integration is finalized.
Key Takeaways
- Acquisitions are a great way to invest in quickly expanding a product line.
- Twilio is taking a gamble on texting as the next big thing in brand communication by acquiring Zipwhip.
- Zipwhip may not have the most impressive digital presence, but that’s not to say their product isn’t superior.
Why Zoom Choose Five9 Over the Rest
Both Zoom and Five9 have been on fire over the last couple of years. Investors have responded accordingly, and both companies have seen ridiculous returns since their original IPO dates:
Zoom was a winner during the pandemic as we leaned on video conferencing to remain connected, and now that we are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel, we are moving away from hanging out virtually behind our screens.
This is why Zoom needs to expand its product offering to maintain hold of the estimated 2.1B organic visits it gets every single month to zoom.us.
And that’s where the $14.7B acquisition of Five9 comes in…
Five9 is a contact center as-a-service solution that saw its revenue climb 33% to $435 million last year. The software allows call center agents to operate all over the globe and from anywhere in the world. Some of their competitors include companies like: NICE inContact, Genesys, Talkdesk and Cisco.
What’s interesting here is this:
According to both Gartner & Forrester, NICE has the better product… but it’s capturing the least amount of traction from SEO (all things considered).
Across the board, it looks like Genesys is doing the best job at SEO overall, but Five9 has certainly done a good job at generating the most valuable keywords and driving the most significant amount of total traffic.
While analysts wouldn’t say that Five9 is the best solution on the market, the team at Five9 is the best at marketing and establishing a diversified stream of traffic, which Zoom is looking for.
It’s as if sometimes, your marketing engine is just as (if not more) important than the actual product or service that you’ve created.
For more on this acquisition, make sure to check out the full story: Zoom’s $14.7B Choice to Acquire Five9 Over Its Competitors.
Key Takeaways
- Marketing mastery plays a role in boosting brand value.
- Reaching broader audiences and keyword mastery may mean more to an acquiring company than the product offering alone.
- Analysts weigh in on which companies are the top dogs within their respective industries, but that doesn’t mean those companies are seen as the best.
OTHER NEWS OF THE WEEK:
Chorus.ai was en route to being acquired by one of the SaaS bigwigs, and ZoomInfo went for the gold with a $575M acquisition.
Working on expanding digital brands, Foundry raised $100M in its latest funding round.
In final acquisition news, IBM is expanding its cloud service offerings with the financially undisclosed takeover of Bluetab.
BRAIN FOOD OF THE WEEK:
Last week we saw that AI is taking over the music industry, and this week I am here to report that AI is breaking into the voice acting industry.
Vocal deep fakes used to be popular amongst scammers and internet fraudsters, but now, with the rise of AI assistants and voice search, the quality of artificial vocals has greatly improved.
TWITTER THREAD OF THE WEEK:
Lessons on Startups, Career, and Life by Sumit Grrg
WHAT WE’RE WIRED INTO THIS WEEK 🎧:
Ginger by BROCKHAMPTON (Best Track: BOY BYE)
Originally sent out, by me Cali B, on Thursday, July 22, 2021.
Stay up to date with all of our latest findings by subscribing to our newsletter today. Signing up also gives you early access to Ross’ Tuesday essay full of exclusive industry insights.
Quick, do it now before the next drop!
