esbconnect finalises management buyout and welcomes in a new age of people-based marketing

Customer acquisition specialist esbconnect has successfully completed a management buyout. CEO and co-founder Suzanna Chaplin takes the reins and will steer the company’s first-party services into the cookieless ecosystem, at a time when email is finding fresh relevance as a vital ID solution.

UK-based esbconnect, which has nine years of industry expertise, can now introduce a suite of products – including Data-Driven Email, First-Party Data Builds and Inbox Extend – to help reach a brand’s KPIs across social and programmatic environments.

The MBO also sees esbconnect add an experienced advisory board made up of serial tech investor Lee Cory, Ometria CFO Xenia Ilyasova and digital specialist and entrepreneur Ray Jenkin.

esbconnect’s new beginning comes amid a surge in demand for first-party data solutions, with email in particular gaining traction as an increasingly valuable post-cookie ID.

Chaplin explains: “We really believe in email as the most powerful customer acquisition tool. With the disappearance of the cookie edging ever closer, marketers are more reliant than ever on email as an identifier. As online marketing changes almost beyond recognition, brands need to ensure they have a first-party data strategy that is fit for the modern age.”

esbconnect helps brands acquire and retain more customers through its proprietary email database of millions of UK consumers. Offering more than 150 targeting variables, the company has set up, managed and run email campaigns for more than 600 brands, driving performance and allowing them to leverage valuable first-party data in the social and programmatic spaces. 

esbconnect’s services deliver rich insights for brands. Its customer acquisition platform reaches some 17m consumers across the UK, and it tracks opens and click-rates of 50m emails each month, helping brands to monetise data, find new customers and grow their databases.

“Following the successful completion of the management buy-out, we are so excited to be able to double down on growth, with a newly refreshed vision and a number of key product developments in the pipeline for the rest of 2023 and beyond,” says Chaplin.

“With such significant changes in the marketing landscape, the buyout felt like perfect timing. We are laser-focused on our plans to help brands deliver effective marketing in this cost of living crisis. This year will see us scale up as we support increasing numbers of advertisers and publishers with our technology – enabling their teams to develop future facing marketing strategies fit for the modern age. Through people-based marketing, and despite the death of the cookie, a bright future awaits.”

esbconnect’s platform enables clients such as Hello Fresh, Clarks and Ted Baker to engage new customers on any device and channel, using email as a trusted digital ID. Its platform puts brands in front of millions of consumers whilst building a multi dimensional picture of an individual across channels and devices. It delivers precision targeting at scale; connecting email, cookie and mobile data to track customer journeys live from platform to platform. Its GDPR-compliant proprietary database of 15 million UK consumers is rigorously cleaned, verified, opted in, and overlaid with rich data on demographics and behaviours, thereby allowing advertisers to unlock the value of email data and deliver a reliable picture of customer intent.

Also published in: MarcommNews