Digital marketing company Sendinblue, which is headquartered in Paris but has its U.S. headquarters in Seattle, is making its fifth acquisition in roughly a year.
On Tuesday, Sendinblue announced it has acquired Yodel.io, a cloud-based business phone company headquartered in San Francisco. Sendinblue made three acquisitions in September 2021 for a combined total of over $47 million, and it followed that up with another acquisition in March for an undisclosed amount.
“The addition of Yodel.io furthers our mission of reducing digital marketing costs for (small businesses) while creating additional touchpoints for customer success,” Armand Thiberge, founder and CEO of Sendinblue, said in a release. “Business owners need ways to strengthen customer relationships while controlling their costs, and we’re continuing to invest in and expand the Sendinblue platform to meet those needs.”
A Sendinblue spokesperson said Yodel.io's 10 employees are all joining Sendinblue, and the employees will work remotely. Sendinblue now has more than 600 employees, according to the spokesperson, and the Yodel.io brand will continue to exist for now but will eventually be folded into the Sendinblue brand, with Sendinblue planning to add Yodel.io's services for its own customers in the second quarter of 2023. The companies aren't disclosing the financial terms of the deal.
Sendinblue, founded in 2012, offers services like email and SMS marketing, customer relationship management and marketing automation. The company raised $160 million in 2020. Its acquisitions since September 2021 include New York City-based MeetFox, a scheduling and video conferencing software company, and Chatra, a messaging platform.
"We are always looking for companies that can really extend our product offering and for companies that complement our team," Steffen Schebesta, Sendinblue's North America CEO and vice president of corporate development, previously told the Business Journal. "That's our whole philosophy basically behind all our acquisitions."
Yodel.io, meanwhile, launched in 2016. Its phone services include automated menus and the ability to manage calls from a variety of devices. On its website, Yodel.io lists DoorDash and NBCUniversal as clients.
