On Friday, June 4, Seattle-based startup and search engine optimization (SEO) technology provider Moz announced it has been acquired by the email marketing company iContact Marketing Corp. According to the announcement, Moz and iContact’s combined technologies will bolster a new SEO, email, and digital marketing suite for small and mid-sized businesses. The financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

Moz acquisition combines leading SEO and email marketing technologies

iContact is a subsidiary of J2 Global, which offers a host of other email marketing solutions through iContact’s sibling brands Campaigner, SMTP, and Kickbox. Based on more than 1,100 reviews from verified users, iContact was recently named a Leader in the G2 Spring 2021 Grid^Ⓡ Report for Email Marketing Software. 

Moz sells two core products: Moz Pro, an all-in-one SEO platform, and local SEO and reputation management tool Moz Local. Both solutions were also named Leaders in their respective categories in G2’s Spring 2021 Grid^Ⓡ Reports.

Moz Pro and Moz Local are the foundation of Moz’s brand, but the SEO company has made its own share of acquisitions since it was founded in 2004. In 2012, it acquired Twitter analytics startup Followerwonk, but four years later began to look for a new home for the product, citing a lack of overlap between users of Moz and Followerwonk. In 2018, the company acquired another provider of SEO software, STAT Search Analytics. 

Email and SEO: a logical pairing for small and mid-sized businesses

In spite of the dilemma Moz faced with its acquisition of a non-SEO product, the company seems optimistic about partnering with an email marketing vendor.

“The shared focus on delivering powerful digital marketing solutions is a perfect fit for our brand, staff and community,” Moz CEO Sarah Bird shared in the announcement of the acquisition. “We are excited to begin collaborating on new solutions for our collective customers.”

At first glance, a partnership between email marketing and SEO may seem out of the ordinary. Email marketing software and SEO tools are generally viewed as separate, but both technologies are undoubtedly necessary for digital marketing at small- to mid-sized businesses. In fact, G2 data reveals that more than 90% of reviews for email marketing, SEO, and local SEO products come from small businesses and mid-market companies.

While email marketing focuses on delivering a brand’s offerings to customers’ inboxes, SEO prioritizes improving a business’s ranking in search engine results. Both email and SEO are powerful strategies for driving traffic and conversions.

Unsurprisingly, then, one of the reasons behind iContact’s acquisition of Moz was customer demand for SEO tools. In a conversation with Bird on the Moz blog, Michael Pepe, president of iContact Marketing Corp, said: “If we ask our customers, which we do routinely, what the number one tool that they need, beyond email, it’s undoubtedly SEO. So there’s a great pairing of SEO and email marketing.”

Moz will retain its brand and says it remains committed to improving its SEO tools and data accuracy. What remains to be seen is how both companies plan to integrate or package their solutions together.