I love it when people tell me that SMS is dead. I always give a little smile and agree that yes, my wife and I do communicate more on WhatsApp or iMessage than by text nowadays. However, the reason I smile is because I think about the likes of Darwin Private Equity who invested £11 million in Esendex back in the summer – I bet they don’t think that SMS is dead.
That’s because it isn’t dead of course. Messages between individuals (peer-to-peer) may have dropped, but the business SMS market is booming. And now Esendex is using part of its new cash reserves to buy Text Marketer, another business SMS player – albeit one that is focused on the other end of the industry.
This looks like a good move by Esendex. It already has the high-service end of the market sewn up – working with the likes of Ocado, Virgin Media and Gatwick Airport. Now they can tick off the high-quality, low-cost end of the market too!
The Esendex team seems quite bullish about the whole thing. Geoff Love their CEO says:
“Text Marketer is an excellent acquisition for Esendex… [and] was an obvious choice. With their impressive growth, strong client base and well positioned price-led offering, we can now serve a wider range of customers with differing business SMS needs… This acquisition signals our intent to lead this industry. Our ambition is to become Europe’s leading business SMS provider.”
Good luck to Geoff and his team. And congratulations to the Text Marketer guys as well!
