Let’s take advantage of the start of this year to look back at 2023. This retrospective reviews the key events at Webmecanik over the past year, the business and economic context, as well as a contextual approach to our sector of activity, which has inevitably been impacted by national, European, and global economic news.
An evolution in the economic momentum of French SMEs and mid-sized companies
At the beginning of 2023, despite high inflation, the environment was very favorable. However, rising interest rates appear to have put an end to companies’ investment momentum and generated a slowdown in activity and in that momentum. In France, many companies, some of them well known, entered receivership or even liquidation toward the end of the period; the number of proceedings increased by around 34.4% compared with 2022 (for example, major French clothing or furniture brands such as Camaïeu, Kookaï, Gap, Habitat, etc.).
Sustained growth and ever more users of our solutions
Despite this unfavorable economic context, Webmecanik was, as always, able to retain its customers (less than 3% churn), notably thanks to the quality of our customer and user support, which is highly praised by marketing agencies using a constellation of web solutions.
After a strong acquisition of new customers in the first half of the year, followed by a slowdown in activity significantly impacted by the macroeconomic context, Webmecanik ended the year with 13% revenue growth.
Our SaaS software is driving our growth
Webmecanik Automation, our marketing automation software, ever more comprehensive and high-performing (we return to this in a following paragraph), continues to appeal to more and more large enterprises for its robustness and our ability to address the security challenges of IT departments (PRA, PCA, PAS, data location guaranteed in France).
We ended the year with 8% growth in subscriptions to this software.
Regarding Webmecanik Pipeline, our CRM software focused on sales opportunity management, it is on a roll.
Following the intensification of its functional development and the acquisition of the GRC Contact CRM at the end of 2022, subscriptions now account for nearly 17% of Webmecanik’s revenue.
Confirmation of our positioning as an alternative to American giants such as HubSpot and Salesforce Pardot
During our participation in recent sales and marketing events such as Web Summit 2023 in Lisbon, we confirmed the expectation among marketing and sales teams for a strong and credible European offering as an alternative to major American software companies such as HubSpot. The all-in-one CRM & Marketing automation combination, hosted in France (or in Europe), has been very well received and confirms the market shift we have been observing for several months, in which prominent French companies (mid-sized companies and large enterprises) are choosing to migrate away from solutions such as HubSpot, Marketo, Salesforce Pardot, to our Webmecanik solutions, which uncompromisingly meet requirements in terms of security, GDPR compliance, and the location of hosting and processing of our users’ personal data.
Our software is constantly evolving
2023 was also a year rich in functional developments for our marketing automation and CRM software.
Webmecanik Automation
You can find all the new features of 2023 for Webmecanik Automation in this retrospective video: Webmecanik Automation 2023 review.
Webmecanik Pipeline
A new software product in the Webmecanik galaxy in 2022, 2023 was the year of bringing the fundamentals up to standard for our Webmecanik Pipeline CRM. Added during the year were a new opportunity view mode, customization of activity types, adding documents to the history of contacts and opportunities, the addition of filters to list contacts, companies, and activities according to certain criteria (a feature that will become even more customizable during 2024), and finally the arrival of the first default charts and statistics.
Read the full article about Webmecanik Pipeline’s new features in 2023.
2024 Outlook
We can only tell you so much in one article, but many major new features are planned during 2024 for our Sales & Marketing software. These include a WhatsApp integration, a new page builder for Webmecanik Automation, as well as an integration with Google Address, geolocation for sales routes, email history tracking, and a mobile application for our Webmecanik Pipeline CRM.
Stay informed by following our newsletters; an event will soon be offered to present the 2024 roadmap.
Our Open Source contribution and positioning strengthened
Webmecanik, a major contributor
As you now know, Webmecanik is one of the rare French companies that are leading contributors to open-source projects. In this field, we once again affirmed our major role within the Mautic Community by being, for the 5th consecutive year, the leading community contributor to the code of the open-source project.
Acquia exits: a new era and new governance
After Acquia’s acquisition of Mautic in 2019, 2023 marks the beginning of a new era for the Mautic Community. As the American tech industry had to drastically reduce its workforce following the inflation crisis and the need to reassure financial markets about the profitability of their business activities, Acquia made the painful decision to part ways with the Mautic brand and return it to Open Source (through the creation of a Mautic association) so that it would no longer have to carry the project (technically or financially).
In this context, Mautic announced a new governance model that took effect at the end of 2023. On this occasion, Webmecanik was once again endorsed by the community, in recognition of its expertise and major contributions, to hold a seat on the “Community Council” for a term of 3 years (the longest possible) in a group of 7 advisors (elected for terms of 1 to 3 years depending on their respective place in the voting hierarchy). As a result, Norman Pracht, Associate Managing Director of Webmecanik, will represent the interests of the Mautic community as well as the thousands of Webmecanik Automation users in the governance of the Open Source project.
Conclusions
Despite the economic uncertainties of 2023, Webmecanik had a remarkable year, marked by major advances in our new CRM software and the strengthening of our European positioning in marketing automation.
We are proud to make customer satisfaction our guiding principle, and to see this reflected in our functional objectives, the quality of our customer support, and our high standards for security and data privacy.
