Bloomreach, a leading Digital Experience Platform (DXP), has announced their acquisition of Exponea, a Customer Data and Experience Platform (CDXP). This news comes just months after both companies publicized a formal strategic partnership.

With the acquisition, Bloomreach could very well become the next SaaS “unicorn” of the digital experience stack, integrating their market-leading e-commerce capabilities with Exponea’s best-in-class customer data (CDP) and marketing automation platform. This combination has the potential to accelerate the creation, personalization, and optimization of powerful commerce experiences – and drive rapid growth for both B2C and B2B brands.

The last two weeks have seen a dramatic news cycle from across the DXP stack, with major investment announcements from industry leaders like Sitecore. As Covid-fueled digital transformation continues to drive market activity, companies are leveraging billions to fund their expansion strategies. To support the acquisition of Exponea, Bloomreach also announced an investment of $150 million from Sixth Street Growth.

“We have been incredibly impressed by the leadership teams of both Bloomreach and Exponea and look forward to partnering with them as they continue to develop and capitalize on their market-leading platform,” said Michael McGinn, Partner at Sixth Street and co-head of Sixth Street Growth. “Technology serving more bespoke customer experiences is a rapidly expanding market and we are pleased to join Bloomreach in its leadership of the digital commerce experience and marketing sector.”

The investment from Sixth Street Growth will also fuel the ongoing growth of Bloomreach’s digital commerce experience platform. Bloomreach Experience Platform (brX) drives over $200 billion in digital commerce experiences across many of the world’s largest online retailers, brands, distributors, and B2B manufacturers – representing 25% of retail e-commerce in the U.S. and U.K.

From partnership to acquisition

As noted, Bloomreach and Exponea had only recently announced a strategic partnership – a calculated first step towards integrating the companies. By working with a shared customer base, it’s fair to say that the alliance served as a testing ground for combining Bloomreach’s rich catalog of DXP capabilities with Exponea’s customer-centric approach to unifying data.

As digital technologies evolve at an accelerated pace, enterprise organizations are doubling down on solutions that enhance the value of data. While third-party platforms will continue to have a role in every ecosystem, brands are struggling to stitch together multiple solutions with manual effort – and falling behind. By integrating the digital experience and customer data layers, businesses will have greater control over personalizing and optimizing the customer experience.

The combination of Bloomreach and Exponea will deliver the market’s only true commerce experience platform, unifying the full spectrum of customer and product data. Bloomreach’s real-time, AI-based recommendations and actions will allow clients to drive purchases and enhance loyalty, while Exponea’s customer data capabilities will augment relevance and improve performance. Further, Exponea’s leadership in consumer data, privacy, and security will ensure that customers can securely access and manage this powerful integration of data.

For information on how Exponea’s data privacy will be handled post-acquisition, click here.

What’s next for Bloomreach?

DXP is on fire – and the Covid-19 pandemic was the match. As companies and brands pivoted towards digital at a breakneck pace, technology providers were crushed under the weight of a decade of transformation.

Consolidation continues to be a core strategy: in the past six months alone, Hyland acquired Alfresco, Twilio acquired Segment, and most recently, Episerver acquired Optimizely. Meanwhile, enterprise DXP providers such as Acquia and Sitecore released major new products and services. While acquisition is key, many leading DXP platforms (along with CMS, CRM, and more) are investing in innovation to compete beyond 2021.

With competition getting so fierce – particularly amongst enterprise players – Bloomreach is exerting more dominance in the e-commerce category. However, while other DXP and CMS platforms pose a threat to market share, one of the biggest existential challengers is Amazon.

By combining capabilities, Bloomreach and Exponea are continuing to fortify the beachhead against the world’s largest online retailer – and enabling brands to shape their e-commerce strategy to compete more effectively. This could give them a significant edge in the coming years, especially as Jeff Bezos steps down and Andy Jassy, the head of AWS, takes the reins as Amazon’s new CEO.

“Incredible e-commerce experiences happen when we reach a customer with exactly the right product at the right time on the right channel, and that requires a deep understanding of products and people which hasn’t been possible until now,” explained Raj De Datta, CEO, Bloomreach. “The coming together of Bloomreach and Exponea positions Bloomreach to be the market-leading commerce experience platform in a multi-billion-dollar market that is expanding quickly. As a solution, Bloomreach is now uniquely at the intersection of marketing, commerce, and AI.”

About Bloomreach

Bloomreach is digital experience enhancement platform that enables highly personalized digital experiences for retailers, banks, distributors, manufacturers, public service agencies and other enterprises. It powers brands representing 25% of US and UK e-commerce. Its flagship product, brX, is a digital experience platform built specifically for brands, retailers, and B2B companies who want to grow their revenue online while delivering each of their customers a premium, personalized commerce experience. brX combines content management capabilities with market-leading commerce-specific, AI-driven search, merchandising, and personalization in one flexible, API-first next-generation platform. Bloomreach serves over 500 global brands including Albertsons, Staples, Bosch, Puma, FC Bayern München, and Marks & Spencer.

About Exponea

Exponea is a Customer Data and Experience Platform (CDXP) that collects and unifies data from all customer touchpoints into a unified Single Customer View and utilizes this data to help e-commerce businesses to convert and retain customers by acting on customer signals with the right message at the perfect time through the preferred channel. Built from the ground up (i.e. no acquisitions) for retail and e-commerce, Exponea collects and unifies data from all customer touchpoints to give businesses the insights and action opportunities they need to execute campaigns that deliver real results.

About Sixth Street

Sixth Street is a global investment firm with over $50 billion in assets under management and committed capital. Sixth Street Growth is the firm’s dedicated platform for making customized, non-control private investments in growth-oriented companies. The Sixth Street Growth team partners with companies and management teams to provide bespoke, accretive financing solutions that often fall between traditional growth equity and commercial debt. Sixth Street has invested over $4 billion in more than 40 companies in its growth investing strategy since inception. Select current and past representative Sixth Street Growth investments include Airbnb, AvidXchange, AvePoint, Gainsight, and MDLive.