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Article's Content
Welcome to Volume 49!
Without relying on any outside funding, Mailchimp has grown to become a leader in the email marketing industry.
And now, it has become a record-breaker in the acquisition world as it was bought by Inuit for $12 billion! Making it the largest acquisition ever of a privately held company.
Before we get into that, here’s a peek at what’s to come:
- Intuit’s multibillion-dollar bet on Mailchimp
- ShipBob’s social proof formula for technical industry sales success
- Announcements from Zoomtopia and a new virtual partnership
Mailchimp Makes Acquisition History
Intuit, a financial software company, has just acquired Mailchimp, an email marketing software, for $12 billion in a stock cash split.
On the surface, Mailchimp really stands out from Intuit’s suite of SaaS companies that includes Turbotax and Quickbooks. But like in any investment portfolio, diversification is key.
And Mailchimp itself knows the importance of diversification.
Over the past 20+ years Mailchimp has expanded from a humble email software tool to offer:
- Audience management tools
- Insights & analytic features
- Creative assistance tools
- Marketing automation
In fact, the only niche Mailchimp’s new all-in-one platform offering doesn’t specifically cater to is e-commerce.
Intuit said this acquisition is aligned with their goal “to become the center of small business growth, and to disrupt the small business mid-market.”
In the same press release, Sasan Goodarzi, CEO of Intuit spoke to the alignment of Mailchimp and Quickbooks as a way to solve small and mid-market businesses’ pain of growing and running their business by putting the power of data back in their hands.
It seems that the move Mailchimp made to diversify its product offering was key to this ground-breaking acquisition. Intuit was more interested in the all-in-one platform and analytics portion than the email marketing software that made Mailchimp a household name.
For all those Mailchimp users and fans out there, don’t worry about it going anywhere. In its press release, Ben Chestnut Co-Founder and CEO stated:
“While our ownership will change once the transaction closes, which we expect to happen prior to the end of Intuit’s second-quarter fiscal 2022, our platform will stay Mailchimp through and through: the same user-friendly products and tools, the same resources and support, and the same brand you know and love. In fact, our goal is for all of these things to get even better as part of Intuit.”
Key Takeaways
- Mastering a product offering is key to establishing your company as a trusted brand.
- Product diversification when done right, can inflate the value of your company or brand.
- Mailchimp, which has been privately funded since 2001, has broken an acquisition record as it was purchased for $12 billion by Intuit.
ShipBob’s Social Proof Formula
People sometimes struggle to connect with logistical statements and straight facts. Often they crave an emotional connection to the content they are reading.
That is why social proof is the perfect pathway to generate real connections with your B2B audience when selling a highly technical product:
- Testimonials can increase sales page conversions by 34%
- 93% of consumers say online reviews impact purchase decisions
- 2 out of 3 people say they’d be more likely to purchase after watching a video testimonial demonstrating how a business, product, or service had helped another person like them
In industries like shipping and logistics, most company websites rely on technical industry terms and focus on product features using a formula like this:
This style of landing page can be very overwhelming to new visitors. By moving away from this formula ShipBob, which operates in the shipping and logistics industry, has found a lot of success.
Most of ShipBob’s customers are small businesses that have little knowledge of the shipping industry.
So, instead of showing off shiny product features, ShipBob turns to its customers to tell a compelling story and subtly inform new users of the many product benefits. It’s come up with the following page formula:
ShipBob leverages social proof to aid the explanation of and add emotion into its valuable and complicated product features. Let’s take a look at ShipBob’s homepage and the use of social proof to ease the technical nature of its product description.
Notice how they use lots of white space, social proof, and rich design cues in a way that makes the buyer focus more on the customer’s words and data points? This allows the buyer to easily connect with the story and picture themselves succeeding rather than struggle to understand complex industry jargon.
For a full teardown of ShipBob’s use of social proof and holistic coverage of the following points:
- How ShipBob Uses Social Proof at Each Sales Funnel Stages
- 8 Ways ShipBob Uses Social Proof
- Access to a steal their strategy downloadable PDF
Check out Jessica Orika Tee’s essay, ShipBob’s Billion-Dollar Social Proof Formula.
Key Takeaways
- Easy-to-digest statistics offer ease of understanding that is crucial to a non-expert audience.
- Highly technical industries benefit from the use of social proof to create connections with their customers and explain the real value of their products.
- Social proof is the perfect way to place your audience within the success story of your product and see themselves in the shoes of a successful user.
Zoom Is Coming to Facebook’s Horizon
Zoomtopia was held on Monday, September 13, and many announcements were made regarding new and improved feature updates.
One major accessibility announcement was made as Zoom disclosed it is working towards providing real-time transcription services, in 30 languages, by the end of 2022!
Along with the multilingual transcription service, Zoom stated it is working towards offering translation services to paid account users. At this time there has been no comment on which languages will be supported, but it is very exciting to see this new feature be in the works.
We knew that Zoom had plans to move into translation services as it acquired German translation company Kites earlier this year. Backed by Kites, we can expect that this translation service will be possible and viable by the end of the year, as this is a case of using an acquisition to reduce the lengthy and expensive process of R&D.
Another expansion is occurring to an existing product feature: Zoom’s whiteboard.
All the key features we know and love from Zoom’s whiteboard will stick around, but it is going to be available for use outside of Zoom rooms. You no longer need to be on call to access the whiteboard tool for collaborative brainstorming.
According to The Verge, “You’ll be able to add sticky notes, drawings, and comments on your boards and view them whenever you want”. This indicates that Zoom is preparing for use cases within a non-virtual setting as we prepare to get back to precedented times of meeting in person.
However, Zoom is not banking on a full return to non-remote work (as it continues to be a rising trend) and is taking up a partnership with Facebook’s Horizon Workrooms.
Facebook’s VR meeting room will allow you to integrate with Zoom, host video meetings, and connect to Zoom’s whiteboard feature.
Zoom was there for us when we needed it most, and it is proving to continue to be a go-to resource for connecting teams in a modern way. As remote work continues on and we become ever more comfortable with virtual meetings, Zoom needs to remain relevant and ahead of the curve if it doesn’t want to be beaten out by the competition.
Key Takeaways
- Zoom and Facebook are teaming up to create the future of virtual meetings.
- Zoom has pivoted to remain a leader in virtual meetings and meeting support.
- By acquiring Kites, Zoom is able to expand its product offering without investing heavily in R&D.
OTHER NEWS OF THE WEEK:
💸 Beijing is breaking up mega-corporations as it forces Jack Ma’s Ant Group to separate from its core business Huabei and Jiebei.
🪙 One of Salesforce’s greatest rivals Freshworks is aiming and on track for a $9B valuation ahead of its US IPO.
🤖 AV8 Ventures, a venture capitalist company, is launching a second fund of $180M to focus on artificial intelligence technology companies.
BRAIN FOOD OF THE WEEK:
Investing is thrilling but it’s no game and it should be taken seriously.
In the world of Reddit day traders, it is more important than ever to do your own research and ensure you are basing decisions on facts alone.
Recently, a falsified press release was circulated that linked Litecoin to Walmart. It stated that the big box store would accept Litecoin as a payment method, which caused a 20% jump in the cryptocurrency valuation.
Needless to say, when Walmart spoke out against this falsified claim the price fell back to the levels prior. Not only is it your responsibility to do your own research, but it is also crucial companies stay on top of brand name mentions and ensure all fake news is squashed ASAP.
TWITTER THREAD OF THE WEEK:
Facebook’s Secret Elite Treatment by Jeff Horwitz
WHAT WE’RE WIRED INTO THIS WEEK 🎧:
Originally sent out, by me Cali B, on Thursday, September 16, 2021.
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