The deal

FRP Corporate Finance supports Fresh Relevance on sale to Dotdigital

Our Corporate Finance team has advised management and leading private equity investment manager Foresight Group (“Foresight”) on their sale of eCommerce Personalisation Platform, Fresh Relevance for £25 million.

Headquartered in Southampton, Fresh Relevance is a SaaS-based personalisation and decision engine for online businesses and was co-founded in 2013. Their versatile personalisation solution empowers commerce-driven businesses to create customised cross-channel experiences with ease. For customers, the platform saves time, integrates with their tech stack, and empowers them to deliver AI-optimised customer experiences across their website, app, emails, SMS and paid social.

Headquartered in London and established in 1999, Dotdigital is the leading SaaS provider of an all-in-one customer experience and data platform. They have partnered with the Fresh Relevance team for years, and the two businesses have similar values when it comes to how they innovate and how they take care of their people and customers. The acquisition accelerates Dotdigital’s CXDP roadmap, bringing highly complementary cross-channel personalisation and website technology together with technical expertise.

Foresight’s exit to Dotdigital has generated a cash-on-cash return of 4.0x to Foresight-managed funds and follows the growth of the business since the original investment in 2017, with follow-on investment provided by Foresight in 2021.

Led by Partner Mark Farlow, along with Associate Director Ed Shurville-Darlington and Manager Nick Wright, our team negotiated the transaction on behalf of the shareholders and managed the due diligence process ensuring an efficient closed process.

This transaction marks Foresight’s sixth successful exit in 2023, three of which were advised by FRP Corporate Finance including Fresh Relevance, GovGrant, and Camloc Motion Control.

Mark Farlow, partner at FRP Corporate Finance, said: “This transaction marks another exciting deal for FRP Corporate Finance in the eCommerce software space. It is the perfect tie-up of Fresh Relevance and Dot Digital, two businesses that have a long-standing relationship having been partners in the market for several years. It was a pleasure working with Management and Foresight on this sale”

Tavia Sparks, Senior Investment Manager at Foresight, added: “The FRP Corporate Finance team of Mark, Ed and Nick worked tirelessly to drive the deal forward and their advice was instrumental in delivering a great result for all parties.”

Mike Austin, CEO at Fresh Relevance, said: “The experience, energy and judgment the FRP Corporate Finance team brought to the process was invaluable, and I have no doubt it helped us to achieve a better outcome than we could have on our own.”