Epsilon Interactive’s Valentine, The Winner of This Week’s ESP Acquisition Is...

David Daniels | February 14, 2006, 12:05 PM

Epsilon and DoubleClick E-mail Solutions. In what seems to have become a weekly occurrence, the further consolidation of the ESP vendor space continues. Alliance Data Systems through its Epsilon business unit acquired DoubleClick’s E-mail Solutions (that is Dartmail and UnityMail) in a deal that is expected to close at approximately $90 million dollars.

The deal makes the combined company the largest ESP in terms of overall annual e-mail volume sent and Epsilon will benefit from DoubleClick’s worldwide footprint. The deal also includes the 220 people that work for the DoubleClick e-mail group. There are definitely some synergies here with the Epsilon offering that are not too dissimilar from the original vision of what the combined DoubleClick offering was (or could have been), however like any merger the hardest part of this one will be the technical integration and overlap.

No doubt Epsilon and the massive product development team they have acquired will be up to the task, but the platforms are distinctively different under the hood. Epsilon Interactive is an Oracle Shop, Dartmail is a SQL Server, Dartmail is a Windows shop, Epsilon Interactive lives in the Sun, Linux world. Perhaps this is a Tomato, ToMOTo issue, but still there is serious work to be done in order to integrate, manage and market the product lines, not to mention throwing UnityMail into the mix, which is a beast unto its own. The UnityMail offering is a good grab as well and could provide the runway that Eplison needs should they decide to go further down market to the middle and SMB space, where we believe there is some decent opportunity.

As with the other acquisitions before them, their success will be based on their ability to quickly service the existing client base, leverage and exploit the synergies of the combined companies and manage the integration and future development of the organizations infrastructure.