Earnings/results 

• Pipedrive announced that it had experienced record sales in 2022 and had reached more than 100,000 customers globally with its largest markets being in the US, UK, Brazil, and Germany. The firm also stated that its small business customers had, on average, achieved a 40% success rate in closing deals by using Pipedrive CRM, which is double the YoY success rate achieved over the past two years. (March 14, 2023; Company press release )

M&As

• Keap announced the acquisition of Factory, a developer and implementer of marketing automation solutions for SMEs. The former Keap partner’s services will be incorporated into Keap’s existing services while also launching a new “coaching plus service” offering which will be available to small business owners. (March 25, 2023; Company press release )

Partnerships 

• Weave announced a deepening of its multi-year partnership with Stripe, the payment infrastructure platform to integrate Strip Central, an embedded finance option to Weave’s platform. The new solution is expected to benefit Weave’s specialty healthcare customers to improve their patient payment collections. (March 28, 2023; Company press release )

• Weave announced partnerships with several providers of veterinary practice management systems including DVMAX, V-Tech Platinum, Advantage+, and StringSoft to integrate its solutions with the Weave platform. The integrated solution will enhance Weave’s solutions for veterinary practice owners including vaccination reminders, text writebacks, and CallPop. (March 2023; Company press release )

New product 

• Weave added a bulk texting feature to the Weave platform, enabling small businesses to send a single message in bulk from their business phone number. The new solution includes a bulk messaging dashboard, engagement metrics, dynamic fields for message personalization, and scheduled sending features. (March 29, 2023; Company press release )

• Capsule introduced an AI content assistant powered by OpenAI’s Chat GPT to assist with email marketing. Users would gain access to different monthly quotas of AI content assistance based on their Capsule plan. (March 22, 2023; Company press release ) 

• Freshworks introduced a new conversational AI assistant named Freddy. The new solution which is currently being beta tested by its users is powered by OpenAI’s Chat GPT and is expected to assist sales agents and marketers by helping to summarize conversations on Freshchat, generate articles, and write email copy. (March 22, 2023; Company press release ) 

• Teamgate announced the planned launch of a fully mobile sales CRM app to assist sales professionals. Features of the mobile sales solution include a contact and deals management solution with the ability to search, view, and edit contacts and deals. The app is currently available as a 14-day free trial and is expected to launch in 2H 2023 (March 2023; Company press release ) 

Management news

• Act! announced the appointment of Bruce Reading as its CEO. Bruce was previously the CEO of Perceptive Automata, a developer of human behavior prediction software for machines. (March 16, 2023; Company press release )