net optimization software program startup Moz has been acquired by e mail promoting and advertising and marketing agency iContact, a subsidiary of J2 World. Phrases of the deal weren’t disclosed.
Rand Fishkin and his mother Gillian Muessig launched Seattle-based Moz once more in 2004. The company, initially usually referred to as SEOMoz, grew into one amongst Seattle’s excessive startups, though its journey was not always straightforward. Moz, which constructed a reputation for its firm transparency, decrease 28% of its staff in 2016 and went by way of financial struggles in 2013.
Moz was ranked No. 10 on the GeekWire 200, our document of excessive privately held tech companies inside the Pacific Northwest. The startup is worth it and rising. It declined to supply revenue numbers.
Firms comparable to Alaska Airways and Zillow Group use Moz to help fine-tune their net optimization and rank larger in search engine outcomes. Search and net optimization continues to be a rising commerce, rather more than twenty years after companies comparable to Google and Yahoo launched on desktop. The proliferation of cell devices and completely different additional areas the place prospects conduct on-line searches, along with inside cell apps and shopping for web sites comparable to Amazon, has created fixed demand for net optimization corporations.
Moz’s mannequin will keep intact beneath its new proprietor. iContact helped ship 68 billion emails ultimate 12 months for small and mid-sized corporations. The company works in tandem with its sibling producers Campaigner, SMTP, and Kickbox, all owned by J2 World, a publicly traded agency that reported Q1 revenue of 398 million, up 20% year-over-year.
Moz will probably be a part of J2’s e mail promoting and advertising and marketing producers and pair sources to help the shared purchaser base with search strategies and analytics.
“The shared cope with delivering extremely efficient digital promoting and advertising and marketing choices is a perfect match for our mannequin, staff and neighborhood,” Moz CEO Sarah Bird, a former lawyer who took over as CEO in 2013, talked about in an announcement.
Moz employs larger than 300 people. The company acquired six completely different startups and had raised 29.1 million in exterior capital.
“If we ask our shoppers, which we do routinely, what the first system that they need, previous e mail, it’s undoubtedly net optimization. So there’s an superior pairing of net optimization and e mail promoting and advertising and marketing,” Michael Pepe, president of iContact, talked about in a video announcement.
Fishkin left Moz in 2018 and left the board in September 2020. He now runs Seattle promoting and advertising and marketing startup SparkToro.
