Email On Acid Case Study

The Challenge

- EOA is a unique SaaS platform that aids global brands in the management of their email marketing campaigns.
- Companies across the globe send billions of email campaigns annually, and there is a finality in sending an email. EOA’s software platform enables customers to deliver email perfection every time. By reviewing and verifying every element of an email, a customer’s brand and marketing message is rendered consistently.
- EOA is the industry leader and represented a key piece of the complete email marketing puzzle.
- The client was seeking to be acquired by a strategic company with a strong balance sheet, large sales and marketing organization, and a complimentary service offering where EOA would represent another arrow in the quiver.
- The owner’s goals were to provide an opportunity for continued employment growth, put the business in the hands of an owner that could maximize the next leg of growth, and create liquidity.

The Solution

- The challenge Merit Investment Bankerit faced was twofold: projecting the market size as almost infinitely larger than the current sub-$100 million amount since every company that cared about its brand was a potential customer and conveying the sophistication underlying EOAs service offering, which is embedded in the software.
- The Merit Investment Bank team worked closely with the majority owner of EOA to position EOA as a company poised to take advantage of the significant opportunity ahead:
- Email campaigns were growing as companies had seen significant benefits with the shift to electronic marketing due to Covid-19.

- Companies understood that the value of their brand could be negatively impacted by an email rendering improperly or a link not working, and “email testing” as part of an email campaign was growing.

- Companies were moving away from homegrown, in-house “testing” solutions to much more sophisticated systems.

- The other important aspect of the transaction was building a buyer list that creatively captured different buyer categories, both domestic and international, that could best leverage what EOA had created.

The Results

- Another challenge of the transaction was something that many business owners/founders experience, which is the emotional difficulty in letting go of “your baby.” EOA’s majority owner was no different. Since its inception in 2009, the majority owner had poured his existence into the business. The Merit Investment Bank team proved to be good listeners and helped advise the client at each step of the process.
- In the end, Pathwire, the most trusted platform for sending, receiving, and tracking emails, acquired EOA to create a significant liquidity event for the founders.
- Pathwire is a portfolio company of Thoma Bravo, the world’s leading software-focused private equity firm.
- The founders were very pleased with the outcome of the transaction, and the majority owner was grateful that the Merit Investment Bank team was by his side throughout the transaction.