Brand integration after an acquisition

The problem

When an acquisition closes, the announcement is the easy part. The hard part is the next year. The acquired company still has a website, a contact database, a sales team, and a pipeline. The parent has its own versions of all four. For a while, both run.

Most integration plans are written by legal, finance, and product. Marketing gets a list of dates and a logo file. Meanwhile, customers on both sides are still visiting two sites, receiving two sets of email, and talking to two sales teams who may not know what the other is saying.

The work in front of marketing is not mainly a design project. It is an operating problem. What stays? What redirects? Where does a lead go when it arrives at the old address? Who owns the answer when sales asks which brand to use in a proposal? If nobody answers those questions in writing, they get answered a hundred times a day by whoever is closest, and the answers will not match.

To keep this concrete, I’m going to walk through it with a made-up pair of companies. Alder Systems is the parent. It sells security software to mid-size businesses. Fernwood Labs is a smaller company it just acquired, with a loyal base of technical users and a trial-led sales motion. Neither company is real, and nothing below is a result. It is an example of the decisions, in the order I would make them.

The system

A sequence of decisions, in this order.

1. 1Brand structure
2. 2Asset piles
3. 3Lead routing
4. 4An end date

What stays

Start with the brand structure. There are only a few real options. A branded house: the acquired name retires and the parent absorbs it. A house of brands: the acquired name stays as its own brand, with or without a line that says it is part of the parent. Or the two merge into something new. Each has a cost. Retiring a brand people trust throws away equity. Keeping two brands doubles the work of every launch.

1. Branded houseThe acquired name retires. The parent absorbs it.
2. House of brandsThe acquired name stays, with or without an endorsement.
3. Something newThe two names merge.

The choice depends on three things: how much equity the acquired name carries with its buyers, how much the buyers overlap with the parent’s, and whether the products will converge or stay apart.

In our example, Fernwood has real standing with the engineers who use it every day. Alder’s buyers are mostly the managers who approve spend. The overlap is small, and the two products will stay separate for at least a year. So Alder chooses a house of brands, and endorses Fernwood. Fernwood keeps its name and its own site, with a line that says “a part of Alder Systems.” The name that retires later, if it does, retires when the products converge, not on day one.

Make the call early, and make it in writing. Every other decision, from the website to the sales deck, depends on it. An open brand question is the most expensive kind of open question, because pages, emails, and decks get built on assumptions that will later need to be redone.

What moves, and what waits

Sort every asset into three piles. Move now. Move later. Stay until a lawyer says otherwise.

The assets are the website, the domains, the contact database, the marketing automation, the analytics, the social accounts, the customer references, and the content library. For each one, name an owner, a target date, and what depends on it.

At Alder and Fernwood, the pile sorts like this. Move now: the analytics tags, so both sites report into one view, and the social account handles, which only need a bio change. Move later: the contact database, which waits for a data protection review, and the marketing automation, which waits until the lead-routing rule has run for a month. Stay until legal clears it: Fernwood’s customer reference list, because some of the agreements restrict how a name can be used after a change of control.

1. NowAnalytics tags and social handles.
2. LaterThe contact database, then the marketing automation.
3. LegalCustomer references stay until a lawyer clears them.

Some assets will have to wait. Regulatory review, data protection rules, or contracts may limit what you can touch and when. Know which assets are in that pile before you promise a date.

Redirects deserve their own line. Every old page that gets retired needs a place to send people, and the map has to exist before the page goes away. Search engines, customers, and your own sales team all follow the old links for a long time. In the example, Fernwood’s pricing page is retired and replaced by a combined page on Alder’s site. The redirect goes live the same day, and the old URL is checked weekly for the first quarter.

What happens to pipeline during the overlap

This is where the damage happens, and it is mostly mundane.

Leads arrive at one system and get worked in another. Contacts exist in two databases with two sets of permissions. A form on the old site feeds a list that nobody on the new team is watching. A trial that stays on old infrastructure produces leads with the wrong source, so attribution is wrong from the first touch.

Here is how it plays out in the example. Fernwood’s free trial runs on Fernwood’s servers. A person signs up, the lead lands in Fernwood’s database, and Alder’s sales team never sees it. Meanwhile an Alder rep gets a form fill from the same company and calls them cold. Two teams, one account, no knowledge of each other.

• FernwoodThe trial lead lands in Fernwood's database.
• AlderA form fill from the same company. The rep calls cold.

Write the lead-routing rule for the overlap before the close, not after the first complaint. Where does each type of lead go, who works it, and how fast? In our example the rule is short. Trial sign-ups route to the Fernwood team within one business day. Any account that also appears in Alder’s database gets flagged and shared, so the first rep to reach out knows about the other. One named person owns the rule and reviews exceptions every week.

1. RouteTrial sign-ups go to the Fernwood team within one business day.
2. FlagAn account in both databases is shared before the first call.
3. OwnerOne person reviews the exceptions every week.

Check where every form, trial, and domain lives, because that is where leads disappear and where the source gets lost.

Salespeople on both sides also need a short answer to the question customers will ask: what changes for me? Give them one paragraph and keep it current.

The numbers

Every figure in this guide is made up, because the companies are. I am not borrowing a real result and I am not implying one. The point of a number here is to show you what to track.

The first number I would pick is days from close to a single lead-routing rule in force. It is small, it is specific, and it is the first thing that tells you whether the overlap is under control. In the Alder example, call it 45 days. That is a model figure, flagged as illustrative, and it is not a benchmark.

Pick the number before the close and write it down.

What you can take with you

Ten things go wrong. The brand call is the serious one. The next two are the decisions that get made too late. The rest are how the overlap does the damage.

The brand structure is the serious error. Alder flips between a house of brands and a branded house after work has already started. The site, the contacts, and the campaigns were built on the last version of the answer, and they have to be built again.

• 2TrialThe move onto the parent system comes late, and the brand stays confusing.
• 3RoutingThe rule and the integrated system arrive after the start.

The next is moving the trial onto the parent system. In the example, Fernwood’s trial keeps running on Fernwood’s servers while Alder waits to migrate it. The wait costs time. It also perpetuates the confusion, for the team and for customers, about which brand they are dealing with. That confusion lasts as long as the trial sits on the old infrastructure.

Then lead routing. The rule, and the integrated system that runs it, belong at the beginning of the integration. In the example they arrive later. Until they do, a trial sign-up lands in Fernwood’s database and an Alder rep calls the same company cold.

1. 4 · One accountTwo teams work it, and neither knows about the other.
2. 5 · SourceForms, trials, and domains stay put, so the source on the lead is wrong.
3. 6 · OrderThe database moves before a review, or the automation moves before the rule has run.
4. 7 · RedirectsA page retires and the old link goes nowhere.
5. 8 · The questionCustomers ask what changes, and the two sales teams give two answers.
6. 9 · ReferencesA customer name gets used after a change of control, and the agreement does not allow it.
7. 10 · No endThe overlap never closes, and the temporary state becomes the way the company runs.

What I would change is the order. Settle the brand structure first, and do not flip between a house of brands and a branded house. Write the asset list before the close, including when the trial infrastructure moves. Put the lead-routing rule and the integrated routing system in at the beginning. Name an owner for the overlap, and put an end date on it.

1. 1Brand, and do not flip
2. 2Asset list
3. 3Trial move
4. 4Routing system
5. 5Owner and end date

Here is the checklist.

• Name the brand structure before you touch the website: house of brands or branded house, which brand stays, which is endorsed, which retires. Do not flip the call.
• List every asset in three piles: moves now, moves later, and stays until legal clears it.
• Write the lead-routing rule for the overlap, deploy the integrated routing system at the beginning, and name the person who owns it.
• Check where forms, trials, and domains live, because that is where attribution breaks.
• Put an end date on the overlap, and review it on the calendar.

An acquisition is not integrated when the logo changes. It is integrated when a lead from either side lands in the same place and gets the same follow-up.