SparkPost acquires eDataSource, adding inbox insights to its email platform

Email marketing platform SparkPost has announced plans to purchase reputation management, email deliverability and analytics provider eDataSource.

The acquisition is expected to provide SparkPost and eDataSource customers the combined abilities to create, send and measure email performance and inbox placement analytics. The announcement also included plans to launch new capabilities, including automatic seeding and real-time blacklist alerting.

Why we should care

Reaching the managed inbox continues to pose challenges for marketers. Deliverability is becoming increasingly complex, and email marketers often feel the negative impacts on their email marketing efforts every day. Many email service providers (ESPs) can give users insight into email performance based on metrics, but marketers often turn to third-party deliverability solutions to enhance placement and deliverability insights, and the upcoming merger seeks to address these challenges for its customers.

Integrating deliverability insights into the platform could have a strong impact on email marketers’ understanding of deliverability. With one in five emails never reaching the intended inbox, the integration between SparkPost and eDataSource could signal a coming change in how we can leverage martech and data to better understand and manage our relationships with subscribers.

“By better understanding deliverability and inbox performance, customers will be able to optimize their sending for improved engagement and business results from their email,” said SparkPost CEO Rich Harris. “Deeply integrating sending and analytics will provide richer insights and new capabilities like automatic seeding, accurate weighting of inbox placement and blacklist impact based on actual sending patterns.”

Deliverability and optimization are two of the most important factors for reaching the managed inbox, and gaining a holistic understanding of the science email marketing is critical for marketers who want to achieve better outcomes.

More on the news

• According to SparkPost, 37% of B2C organizations use its technology to deliver email.
• SparkPost plans to integrate eDataSource’s brand, employees and products in the coming months.
• eDataSource customers will have the option to migrate their email services to SparkPost if they choose. It will continue to be offered for use with other providers.

About The Author

Jennifer Cannon

Jennifer Videtta Cannon serves as Third Door Media's Senior Editor, covering topics from email marketing and analytics to CRM and project management. With over a decade of organizational digital marketing experience, she has overseen digital marketing operations for NHL franchises and held roles at tech companies including Salesforce, advising enterprise marketers on maximizing their martech capabilities. Jennifer formerly organized the Inbound Marketing Summit and holds a certificate in Digital Marketing Analytics from MIT Sloan School of Management.