Deutsche Post acquires email specialist optivo

• Enhances position as a neutral technology service in online marketing
• Mail CEO Gerdes: "Another bridge between traditional dialogue solutions and the digital world"

Bonn/Berlin

Deutsche Post is taking over optivo, one of the leading German email marketing services. This expands the Bonn-based company’s portfolio in the online advertising market to include the attractive technological field of email marketing. "optivo is an ideal addition to our technology solutions in the online advertising market. Since 2010, we have been successively building up our Online Marketing business unit. Our goal is to be a neutral technology service and the first choice for the advertising industry" says Juergen Gerdes, Corporate Board Member for MAIL at Deutsche Post DHL.

optivo offers advertisers technical solutions and services to expand their existing customer base. With its email marketing software, optivo® broadmail, companies can send customized newsletters and campaign emails and evaluate them effectively. The multi-channel solution integrates social media, text messaging, mobile email, web and fax in addition to traditional email. The software can send up to 20 million emails per hour and is easily integrable into existing system architectures such as web analysis and CRM solutions. "Deutsche Post is an established and major player in the online advertising market and is therefore the ideal partner for positioning our innovative technology on an even wider scale. In addition, we benefit from the company’s international presence" says optivo CEO Ulf Richter.
Building block for cross-media orientation

optivo’s technologies and services are especially suited for cross-media dialogue solutions. Deutsche Post has confirmed how important email marketing is in a number of cross-media campaign management tests with several customers in which combinations of advertising mail and email were among the options that were tested.

All cases in the test campaigns clearly showed that a targeted, cross-media approach is considerably more successful then a mono-media approach. "The future of dialogue marketing lies in intelligently integrated campaigns that combine the strengths of both online and offline media. optivo allows us to build another bridge between traditional dialogue solutions and the digital world" says Juergen Gerdes.

optivo was founded in 2001 and today employs around 85 people. The company is one of the market leaders and a trendsetter in professional email marketing. Their innovations in marketing automation and mobile email optimization (mobile fusion) have drawn much attention. Over 850 customers from diverse industries use the company’s software and services. These include both medium-sized as well as larger companies and corporations. optivo will become a 100% subsidiary of Deutsche Post. The current management and staff will continue to independently operate the business.

Deutsche Post’s parent group, Deutsche Post DHL, already includes other online marketing players. For example, in 2010 Deutsche Post acquired Europe’s largest targeting platform, nugg.ad, followed in 2012 by the purchase of intelliAd Media, a leader in bid management for search engine marketing and multichannel tracking.