Automattic buys MailPoet, what’s behind the acquisition?
One of the definitely most interesting news from the WordPress ecosystem is that Automattic has acquired MailPoet. The idea behind this acquisition is to give Woocommerce users the ability to use this popular marketing solution right from the admin area.
Automattic buys MailPoet
The plugin has been used on over 300,000 websites for building a mailing list, managing transactions, and abandoned cart emails. This nine-year-old company is now a team of 11 that will be joining Automattic.
What’s the idea behind the acquisition of MailPoet?
It seems that the general idea is closely related to WooCommerce. This year was a year of growth for e-commerce and WooCommerce web stores started popping out around each corner of the web.
By adding MailPoet to the Automattic fleet of services will ensure that the WooCommerce gets valuable marketing tools integrated in the WooCommerce admin area. Many WooCommerce users will surely benefit from such fine integration.
In WooCommerce’s acquisition announcement, CEO Paul Maiorana said adding MailPoet “helps accelerate our roadmap toward a fully-integrated commerce experience.” Last year Maiorana and Gjerstad met at WordCamp U.S. and exchanged ideas about a partnership.
Gjerstad reported that almost a quarter of MailPoet users are running WooCommerce stores. The plugin’s developers have been expanding its WooCommerce functionality over the past years with features that help store owners catch customers’ emails, measure revenue coming from emails, send automated emails using purchase data based on products purchased before, ability to customize store emails, and recover abandoned carts.
“As our conversation progressed in the following months, we came to realize that we shared a common vision for stores; with store owners being able to access email right in their dashboard,” Gjerstad said.
MailPoet SMTP servers
Earlier this year MailPoet introduced its own SMTP solution to ensure emails sent from the plugin land in recipients’ inboxes, instead of flagged as spam. This silent background feature includes store emails as well, bringing higher deliverability without users having to depend on separate SMTP plugins.
Maiorana said Automattic’s initial focus of the acquisition is to work together on improving the experience for WooCommerce users, but the company plans to “evolve our collaboration in a way that can benefit the entire WordPress community.” MailPoet’s FAQ’s on the announcement reiterates that all WordPress users will continue to be able to use the plugin, even if they do not have a WooCommerce store.
There are no immediate changes planned for the plugin’s features.
