Facelift acquires socialBench to offer the most comprehensive European solution for social media management
Facelift, the European leader of an integrated all-in-one platform for social media management, acquires 100% of socialBench GmbH. socialBench is a direct competitor to Socialbakers and offers a superior social media benchmarking/analytics solution.
socialBench is based in Hamburg (Germany) and operates a sophisticated SaaS solution, which helps brands and agencies to deeply understand social media along a tremendous selection of KPIs. The four-year-old company serves hundreds of paying customers and is one of the pioneers in its market segment. socialBench, led by founder and CEO Nico Pliquett, along with all employees has been taken over in its entirety by Facelift.
Nico Pliquett: “I have known the founders of Facelift for several years and the future of our industry has always been a topic of our discussions. In the last months we came to the conclusion that we should combine the best of all our products to one integrated platform. Facelift can now deliver the most complete European solution for social media management to brands and agencies alike. This is a truly unique offering and gives our clients the opportunity to take their social media activities to the next level.”
Facelift will fully integrate socialBench’s product into the Facelift Cloud to provide the most complete social media solution of European origin. Facelift Cloud covers all social media disciplines (e.g. community management, customer engagement, social advertising and competitor benchmarking) in a fully integrated approach that has won multiple awards. The whole system is ISO 27001 certified and all data is hosted in Germany to provide maximum security to all clients.
The transaction is part of the on-going market consolidation within the space of “social media technologies”. Many market insiders believe that 90% of all smaller vendors (below 50 employees) will face serious issues in the next 12 months as the larger players begin to harvest their economies of scale. By acquiring socialBench, Facelift underlines its leading role within the European market consolidation.
The parties agreed not to disclose any financial details on the transaction.
ACXIT Capital Partners acted as exclusive financial advisor to FACELIFT brand building technologies GmbH in this transaction.
About Facelift
FACELIFT brand building technologies GmbH was founded in Hamburg, Germany, on February 8, 2011, by Benjamin Schroeter and Teja Töpfer. The Hamburg-based technology company is one of the fastest growing SaaS companies in Europe. Its core offering is the Facelift Cloud, a unique all-in-one solution for professional social media marketing across all relevant platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
Facelift currently has around 200 employees and more than 1,000 paying customers, including many global brands. Facelift is a multiple Facebook Marketing Partner and a global launch partner of Instagram’s Partner Program. (www.facelift-bbt.com)
About ACXIT Capital Partners
ACXIT Capital Partners is a leading international corporate finance and investment advisory firm for mid-market clients and entrepreneurs in Europe and abroad. Since 1998 we offer our clients comprehensive corporate finance advisory services including M&A, capital markets as well as restructuring and strategic advisory. As an independent, privately owned firm we maintain offices in Frankfurt, Berlin, Munich, Zurich, Vienna, Hong Kong as well as strong alliances in China, India and USA.
Until today we have completed almost 300 transactions with a total deal/financing volume of approx. EUR 15bn. Our clients are corporations, family-owned businesses and entrepreneurs, financial sponsors and family offices. While our home market is in the German speaking region, most clients are international and transactions cross-border. (www.acxit.com)
Transaction Team
Klaus Wagner, Executive Director
Mike Schmidt, Senior Associate