The Great LeadPages-Drip Buyout Freakout

My first reaction when I learned that LeadPages had acquired Drip was:

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

After all, Drip is one of my 2 favorite marketing tools.

And LeadPages? Well, let’s just say that we have a checkered past that sent me running straight into the arms of Thrive.

So I was NOT a happy camper when I heard the news last Thursday.

Because while it’s true that Drip’s workflows and other automation features are insanely useful, that’s not why I love Drip so much.

In fact, I was a happy Drip user before since before they’d ever created workflows.

The real reason I’m with Drip is because of the Drip team.

Starting with the Drip top dog, Mr. Rob Walling.

Rob *cares* what his customers want, to the point where he tunes in regularly to listen to me and 3 other Drip users ramble about our businesses for 2 hours ever week on the Entreprogrammers Podcast—and often follows up with us via email to respond to our comments and feature requests.

Then there’s Derrick and Ian, the developers who spent hours pumping me for feedback and suggestions at MicroConf in February—and who have actually built many of the bells and whistles I’ve asked for.

And Andy and Anna from the support team, who have fielded dozens of questions and feature requests from me over the last 2 years.

Everyone I’ve met from the Drip team has been high class, friendly and clearly committed to giving me the tools I need to run my business.

With any acquisition like this, the biggest concern is that the founder and his team walk away, leaving the product to die a slow and tortured death.

But from what I understand from talking to Rob, that’s not the plan here.

Rob says he made this decision after realizing that he’d hit a crossroads with Drip:

The company needed funding to continue to improve the product, which meant either taking on investors or finding a buyer.

LeadPages has the resources Drip needs—they recently received $27 million in investor funding.

For right now anyway, the plan is that LeadPages will pour some of that capital into Drip while Rob continues to steer the ship.

(He’s so serious about this that he’s voluntarily moving to Minneapolis, where LeadPages is headquartered.)

And it sounds like the entire Drip team is staying on as well.

Those are all good signs.

So while nothing’s ever certain with buyouts like these, I’m optimistic.

I’ll continue to use Drip both here and at Simple Programmer.

I’ll continue to recommend it as the most best email marketing automation tool for most entrepreneurs in my audience.

And if that ever changes—well, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Related posts:

  1. The MailChimp monkey gets a run for his money I got seduced by the friendly monkey and the pretty UI. It didn’t take long for the ugly cracks to start showing through that fresh coat of paint. “Oh, you want to send a welcome email with lead magnet A to these subscribers, and a different message with lead magnet...
  2. What’s the Fastest Way to Become A Great Copywriter? A business owner named Jeff asked a question on a forum I frequent: On the form earlier this week, I submitted a sample of a landing page I wrote. There was someone who took a look at it and suggested that I consider hiring a professional copywriter. Thing is, I’d...
  3. How to jump off the broadcast email “hamster wheel” Email autoresponders are a great “hack.” You write the messages once, queue them up… And now anyone who joins your list hears from you regularly. No more “Dang I haven’t emailed my list in two weeks” hamster wheel guilt. This is autopilot marketing at its best. Sometimes making the transition...
  4. Grow your email list (and sales) by avoiding this common mistake A few weeks ago, I was talking with another self-published author, comparing notes about how we market our books. His sales had slowed recently, and his email signups had dropped off as well. He wasn’t sure what was causing the issue, but as we talked, one root cause became apparent....