UPTHRUST and The House of Marketing welcome Grava and reinforce their market leadership position in digital performance marketing and growth marketing

Upthrust
Upthrust

UPTHRUST and The House of Marketing welcome Grava and reinforce their market leadership position in digital performance marketing and growth marketing

Mechelen, Diegem, November 23rd, 2020 – Digital acceleration agency UPTHRUST, sister company of The House of Marketing, is joining forces with digital performance marketing agency Grava. This sees UPTHRUST further expand its growth and performance marketing offering on the European market. This new partnership will enable UPTHRUST and Grava to jointly offer a broader range of digital performance marketing services to customers to achieve profitable growth.

UPTHRUST took over digital product studio Gafas in June. Today, the company announces a new partnership: digital performance marketing agency Grava is joining UPTHRUST and The House of Marketing in order to further accelerate the group’s growth. “While working on joint projects, we found we shared a similar mindset and were complementary in a lot of areas. Joining forces will enable us to secure growth for our Belgian and international customers in the short term by way of growth acceleration sprints, but equally in the long term through performance marketing strategies”, UPTHRUST founder and Managing Partner Dennis De Cat comments.

Baseline performance marketing + experiments = profitable growth

Dennis De Cat goes on to explain: “We believe in rapid experimentation and performance marketing as a long-term growth strategy. Our digital experts help businesses implement an experimentation culture (including setting up new channels, adopting different tactics and fresh angles) which yields new customers and/or a boost in business in the short term. By converting experiments into a sustainable performance marketing process we are extending UPTHRUST’s customer service. Performance marketing is a crucial element in maintaining growth on a sustainable basis. In recent years, Grava built a strong reputation for itself in ‘baseline’ performance marketing. The combination of UPTHRUST and Grava gives us a competitive edge to approach the market. In doing so, we accelerate hyper growth in the short term and industrialize profitable growth in the long term.”

“Over the past few years, Grava has been focusing on long-term partnerships whereby we use digital performance marketing to pursue sustainable growth for customers such as Krëfel, ZEB, Leen Bakker, Whirlpool and Isabel Group. We have set ourselves up as marathon runners, whereas UPTHRUST are the sprinters”, Grava founder and Managing Partner Dennis Kenis adds. 

“We are set to leverage our complementarity to serve our joint customers even better. In addition, we will be drawing on our unique proposition to attract new customers”, Dennis De Cat fills in.

Strong network packs greater punch

Including Grava’s 18 staff members, the group now consists of a strong team of +150 exclusive digital marketing & sales professionals. Grava brings in a strong customer network, a series of awards and unique partnerships on the Belgian market, which include Google, Facebook and Adform to name just a few. 

For now, the three entities will continue to exist alongside one another, with each company retaining its own DNA. Together however, the players very much make up one squad: for each customer and project, the best tailored team will be put together, made up of the best experts

Expansion at home and abroad 

The group is now raising the bar for their international ambitions. Managing Partner Expansions at The House of Marketing & UPTHRUST Grégory Delens confirms: “We see expansion as a dual endeavour: we aspire to widen and strengthen our areas of expertise through a buy & build strategy while also focusing on territorial expansion. UPTHRUST and Grava currently manage digital campaigns in over 30 countries, with offices in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.”

This growth is also made possible by strong main shareholders Down2Earth Capital and Quanteus Group, which came on board at The House of Marketing in 2014.

***End of press release***

What is digital performance marketing?

Digital performance marketing is a collective term for digital marketing activities that are aimed at landing measurable results. These results include anything from leads, sales, new customers across higher turnover and profits all the way up to amplified store footfall. The areas of expertise fielded cover the entire digital spectrum: SEO, SEA, social media, display & video advertising, affiliate marketing, digital audio, Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH), addressable TV… The customer decides exactly what the ‘performance’ entails, as long as it is measurable. We then set to work according to the ‘Marketing as Cost of Sales’ principle, whereby every euro invested is offset against the predefined result. Online and offline are increasingly cross-linked. Just one apt example is store footfall prompted by online campaigns.

Press contact details

Grégory Delens 
Managing Partner Expansions The House of Marketing & UPTHRUST
gregory.delens@thom.eu   
+32 479 74 97 46 

Dennis De Cat 
Managing Partner UPTHRUST
dennis.de.cat@dev-wordpress-2e562c3ae400.hyperlane.co  
+32 499 12 97 52

Dennis Kenis
Managing Partner Grava
dennis@grava.be  
+32 479 99 37 36 


About Grava:

Grava is a digital performance marketing agency that puts brands, businesses and products on the digital rails to deliver more leads, more turnover and more business. With over 10 years of hands-on experience, their spirited team of digital experts knows exactly which things work and which things don’t. Data speaks louder than words! For further details, go to www.grava.be.  

About UPTHRUST:
Upthrust is a #1 international growth office that focuses on full-funnel growth marketing and building better digital experiences that actually convert. We work from different locations in Europe for both larger SMEs and corporates. Our team works on-site and actively transfers knowledge to your team. Upthrust is an initiative by The House of Marketing, a leading international consultancy office for marketing & sales. For further details, go to www.upthrust.eu.

About The House of Marketing:
For years, companies have been calling on The House of Marketing for strategic marketing consulting and interim management. Bringing in consultants from The House of Marketing means bringing in a connected hub of more than 100 dedicated marketing experts and a network of independent consultants who look at opportunities beyond the job. Our entrepreneurial spirit and future-proof vision on marketing enable us to inspire, stimulate innovation and help our clients transition towards profitable, sustainable growth by unlocking business opportunities through marketing. For further details, go to www.thom.eu

About Down2Earth Capital:
Down2Earth Capital is an independent private equity fund, set up in 2013, focusing on small and medium-sized transactions in Belgium. Down2Earth Capital combines years of successful private equity experience with top-level industrial expertise. For further details, go to www.d2e.be

About Quanteus Group:
Quanteus Group was created in 2004 and has been growing its scope ever since with the creation and acquisition of different companies. With a positioning to further bridge the gap between strategy and implementation, Quanteus Group ensures a full coverage of the business transformation spectrum and beyond. The group consists of The House of Marketing, Upthrust, BrightWolves, HighMind, QuantIM and RSQ Investors. With those 6 focused, complementary entities, which combine business sense and generalist knowledge with specific expertise and solutions building capabilities, the Quanteus Group helps companies to have more impact and to transform themselves into industry leaders. For further details, go to www.quanteus.eu.

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