Rebel Is a Start-Up That Develops Interactive Email Services for Enterprises. Salesforce Intends to Leverage Rebel’s Technological Capabilities so That Its Customers Can Do a Lot More with Promotional Emails

Marketing and Commerce Clouds are perhaps the smallest departments of Salesforce. This fact is possibly the biggest driver in Salesforce acquiring Rebel, which is known to bolster direct email campaigns that brands initiate. This acquisition will permit email recipients to do a lot more with promotional emails. The first phase of this acquisition will revolve around Salesforce integrating Rebel’s API into its Marketing Cloud Operations.

The founders (of Rebel) noted that “with Rebel’s Mail and API solutions, brands, including Dollar Shave Club, L’Oreal and HelloFresh, turn emails into an extension of their website or app — collecting data, removing friction from the conversion process, and enhancing the customer experience. Rebel will enhance the power of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud and fundamentally change the way people interact with email.”

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Both the companies have not been commenting on the future of Rebel’s existing clientele. Analysts confirm that, in the past, in events like these, the acquired company would usually have to let go of its clients. However, customers have not been formally notified about anything. Furthermore, Salesforce is not revealing Rebel’s buying price. Founded as Rebelmail by Joe Teplow and Trever Faden, the company managed to raise $3 million through investors such as:

• Lerer Hippeau
• Sinai Ventures
• David Tisch
• Gary Vaynerchuk

Adobe and Salesforce are steadily becoming arch rivals in the marketing services domain. To keep up with the competition, Salesforce has been making several acquisitions. Perhaps the most celebrated one is Salesforce’s purchase of ExactTarget in 2013. Rumors were rife that in the recent past Salesforce wanted to acquire Adobe as well. Adobe, on the other hand, recently acquired Marketo for a whopping $4.75 billion dollars.

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Here are Salesforce’s division wise revenue statistics for the previous quarter of 2018:

• Marketing Cloud – $452 million
• Sales Cloud – $1 billion
• Service Cloud – $892 million
• Salesforce Platform-$712 million

Clearly, Marketing Cloud is the least money-making division of Salesforce. Acquiring Rebel is not suddenly going to put Salesforce’s Marketing Department into their top-earning bracket, however, Salesforce is hinting at making efforts to boost this division.

The important fact is that most email providers are now adding several rich features to their own products. With original companies taking initiatives to amplify their email products, it’s questionable if enterprises such as Salesforce need to acquire third parties for a better quality of email experience. Companies such as Microsoft and Google allow their clients to build email solutions in-house. Only time will tell how companies such as Rebel shape up.

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