MAILCHIMP ACQUIRES COURIER MEDIA
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Mailchimp, an all-in-one marketing platform for small businesses, has acquired Courier Media, a London-based media company. Courier produces a bi-monthly magazine and newspaper full of educational and inspirational content for modern entrepreneurs and small enterprises, as well as a newsletter, podcast, and events.
Since 2013, Courier has empowered the next generation of entrepreneurs with practical and authentic stories, which aligns with the values of Mailchimp, resonating with entrepreneurs and small businesses worldwide, thus being one of the key rationales behind the transaction. In fact, Jeff Taylor, the founder of Courier, spent the past seven years focusing on exactly the same customers as Mailchimp, i.e. small business owners. Jeff Taylor and Soheb Panja, co-founder and editor-in-chief, started noticing that there is a new generation of people who seemed interested in business, but who would typically not pick up the Financial Times, or sit down to watch The Apprentice or Dragon’s Den. Yet, there are these people all having really evolved conversations about businesses, people would be sitting in coffee shops working through business models.
There has been a big shift in terms of the relationships that people want between the way they earn their money and the way they lead their life. It is a shift in aspiration from an older generation where success is measured in money and luxury, to one where the ultimate goals are to be happy with the ways that you lead your life, having a sense of freedom and self-satisfaction. That’s where Courier came from. “Our mission, like theirs, has always been to be a voice and a trusted friend for a new generation of entrepreneurs who don't look or act like 'big business.' In Mailchimp, we’ve found a perfect fit with a company who loves what we do today on a small scale, and who can help us impact millions more people on a level we could never have achieved on our own,” said Jeff Taylor. The deal with Mailchimp will allow the company to benefit from Mailchimp’s tremendous reach while also operating independently. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the deal will help Mailchimp continue their global expansion. According to Courier’s website, the bimonthly magazine reaches 100,000 readers in more than 26 countries. On the other hand, Mailchimp will provide Courier with resources to help make more content available in more places to more people.
Every major publisher has been through some kind of transformation in recent years – whether a print-to-digital transformation or vice versa, a revenue-model transformation, or horizontal as well as vertical expansion of the business model. I have previously reported on two of my favorite publications, namely Moncole and Highsnobiety (Read more: Click here). While Highsnobiety’s origins sit in the digital world, Monocle is deliberately not developing a dedicated digital format for the iconic Monocle magazine. Highsnobiety and Monocle have proven that it is key to put the customer first and build a vertically integrated ecosystem around them. In terms of Courier, the company started as a free business magazine produced in east London, then shifted its focus to an internationally distributed paid-for glossy magazine, reaching a global audience of aspirational entrepreneurs.
After all, it is about offering a fully integrated and emotional experience of the brand and the product, paying particular attention to a loyal community and offering a sense of belonging, as well as way to identify with the company and its mission.