Poppulo serves half of the Fortune 100 companies, making it the leading digital signage provider in the enterprise segment. Today’s brand was formed five years ago through the merger of digital signage solution provider Four Winds Interactive with Poppulo, an employee communications platform. invidis spoke with CEO Ruth Fornell about growth, web composer, and acquisitions.
At the beginning of the year, Poppulo surprised the industry by acquiring its competitor Reach Media Network, a digital signage provider focused on small and mid-sized businesses. While Denver-based Poppulo is known for its enterprise customer base, the company is expanding into the entry-level and mid-market segments under the leadership of the new CEO Ruth Fornell.
Reach serves 9,000 customers with 25,000 licenses, making it a typical SMB provider. In contrast, Poppulo has 4,500 customers, including half of the Fortune 100, with over 550,000 subscription licenses across 80 countries.
The Reach platform and brand will remain, complementing the modular Poppulo platform. Following a buy-and-build strategy, the company now plans further acquisitions to drive revenue growth and expand its user base to the next level.
The enterprise specialist
With the acquisition of Reach, Poppulo has grown into a circa $130 million company with around 600 employees. “2024 was our best year in recent history, with double digit booking growth, record satisfaction ratings (NPS), and customer loyalty (Net Retention Rate),” says Ruth Fornell. Among software providers, the company is one of the world’s largest in the market and considers itself well positioned geographically.
In addition to the FWI headquarters in Denver and the Reach headquarters in Minneapolis, Poppulo also has a large team in Ireland and Bangalore, India, making it a truly global provider.
Following Four Winds Interactive’s acquisition of Poppulo in 2021 and the group’s rebranding, the market took a while to adjust. But recent research shows that the Poppulo brand is now widely recognized and accepted by customers.
Offering includes customer-facing and employee-facing solutions
Poppulo offers more than just digital signage—it positions itself as an enterprise communications company. Its solutions include both customer-facing and employee-facing digital signage, as well as multi-channel employee communications through email, mobile, and Microsoft 365.
Most of Poppulo’s digital signage touchpoints serve customer-facing environments, including airports (FIDS), banks, automotive businesses, hotels, resorts, and retail. “We enable the Poppulo-user to provide frictionless customer journeys in many vertical markets and especially in casinos, where Poppulo is considered the global market leader,” Fornell states.
“Personalized communication at scale”
But the software provider also sees big demand for employee-facing solutions. Communication with staff was disrupted with the outbreak of the pandemic five years ago, making it essential for organizations to align messaging across multiple channels to boost productivity. “It is a very dynamic environment. We are enabling enterprise organisations to provide personalized communication at scale. The right message, at the right time, across the right channel and in the correct language,” says the Poppulo-CEO.
Typical use-cases are digital signage screens in lobbies, corporate HQs, and on the factory floor. “We often integrate with third-party operation systems to visualize employee information.” But Poppulo also powers screens in sales centers and customer contact centers, where the company competes with providers like Appspace and Korbyt.
Poppulo’s employee communications solutions complement the Microsoft ecosystem, which many of its enterprise clients use. Customers often start with implementing Poppulo for a single use-case, but eventually expand into multiple integrations. “Our platform is future-proof and built for any scale, providing security and business-critical uptime.”
Partnerships and Europe in focus
Ruth Fornell also plans to grow business through new partnerships, with Pyramid Computer and Simply NUC being two new European partners. Additionally, Poppulo continues to strengthen its existing partnership with the mediaplayer brand Brightsign. To expedite go to market in Europe, Poppulo can now dropship within the EU from a warehouse in the Netherlands. Currently, 70% of the company’s revenue comes from its US home market.
Poppulo expects an additional boost with the launch of its web-based composer (authoring tool), new product features, and the integration of GenAI for efficient content generation and adoption.
The team is also expanding with new expertise, including the recent hire of John Schweikert from Sagenet. As the new general manager, Schweikert will oversee Poppulo’s global digital signage business.
