Digital experience platform Optimizely has announced it is to acquire marketing platform Welcome.
Optimizely’s offering incorporates A/B testing, content management and ecommerce, while Welcome’s solutions range from content planning and production to marketing resource management and digital asset management. Its customers include the likes of Panasonic, Sodexo and Pure Storage.
“We believe a world-class customer experience starts with an outstanding marketer experience,” said Alex Atzberger, CEO of Optimizely. “By combining Welcome’s campaign planning, content production and asset management capabilities with Optimizely’s existing breadth of digital experience solutions, we empower marketers to rapidly launch campaigns and control the optimisation of every digital touchpoint which results in growth for the business.”
The companies said the acquisition would enable a unified and end-to-end offering for marketing teams as they adapt to the hybrid work environment while being required to offer increasingly personalised experiences.
“We could not be more excited to be joining the Optimizely family,” said Shafqat Islam, CEO and co-founder of Welcome. “We’ve made it our mission to transform the way marketers work, by delivering a purpose-built solution to orchestrate all of marketing. Now, together with Optimizely, we believe we are unifying two category-leading solutions to see that mission through.”
The deal is expected to close in Q4 of 2021, subject to the usual conditions and regulations. Optimizely said it would integrate Welcome’s offering into its existing technology stack once the deal was complete.
The acquisition builds off a purchase earlier in the year, when Optimizely acquired customer data platform Zaius. Optimizely framed that acquisition as giving it access to the context of customer interactions in order to build better experiences.
“In a world where first-party relationships and data are essential for digital leaders, being able to bring data across assets, behaviours and customers into a single view is necessary to drive the right outcomes,” said Alex Atzberger at the time. “With Zaius as part of Optimizely’s Digital Experience Platform, we just accelerated and made it simpler to add the context of the customer to digital decisions that maximize ROI.
