Acquisitions are nothing new in the e-mail space. Earlier this summer, in the midsize e-mail market, online services firm Protus acquired GOT Corp., which counts among its divisions the Campaigner platform. A week before that, e-mail marketing services firm Blue Sky Factory acquired NTarget, a travel-focused e-mail marketing firm.
On the enterprise level, Acxiom purchased Digital Impact and Epsilon acquired Bigfoot Interactive in 2005 and, in 2004, Experian took over CheetahMail.
But Return Path’s acquisition of Habeas this week has a new twist. Most of the acquisitions in the past have been at the ESP level, bringing together e-mail marketing platforms, but this is one of the first acquisitions that the space has seen at the deliverability end. Both companies are big names when it comes to creating a good reputation for e-mail marketers.
Return Path runs Sender Score Certified whitelist and Habeas has its own SafeList, which track large e-mail senders to make sure that they are complying with CAN-SPAM rules.
While Habeas will be folding into Return Path, these two services will remain independent as they both have different relationships with different ISPs and both offer different options.
It will be interesting to see how this combined company will influence the reputation space in general.
