As of April 24, 2024, we will have changed our name from Sumo to BDOW!™ (pronounced buh–dow, always said in exclamation). 

Go ahead, say it out loud… BDOW!

If you said it right, you probably feel the urge to pump your arm or punch the air.

Or you might feel tempted to leap into an ill-advised jump-kick like a bad guy from the 1960s Batman television series.

Totally normal.

That’s exactly the vibe we’re aiming for with this transition!

BDOW! It’s the sound of conversion.

But let’s get back to the announcement for a minute: The transition to the new brand will likely take a few months to complete, so for now you’ll notice that the app still loads at sumome.com and operates as expected. 

In other words, you don’t have to worry about vast sweeping updates that change the way things work. Over the coming weeks you’ll notice the old Sumo brand being phased out and replaced with the BDOW! brand.

We do, however, have big plans for BDOW!

Why rebrand?

We knew we had to rebrand when we acquired Sumo this past December. The Sumo Group, the company originally behind Sumo, continues to operate AppSumo and KingSumo among other tools. So, you can probably see how keeping the name Sumo would get confusing, right? All parties agreed that a name change was a good idea.

Plus, The Sumo Group wasn’t exactly willing to part ways with a domain name that cost them $1.5 million. 

Sumo is a great name, and it’s earned esteem as a reputable tool for digital marketers over the course of more than a decade. When we began our search for a new name, we knew we wanted to choose a name that lived up to its predecessor. Our hope was that we would settle on a name that was just as fun as Sumo and something that would stand out. Bonus points if we could find another four letter domain that didn’t cost $1.5 million.

The search began… 

We engaged in a heated debate about the merits of choosing something more straightforward like “OptinCrafter” vs. something that means nothing (until it means something) like Google or Apple vs. something more philosophical (like Nvidia). We fervently argued our points until our marketing intern crumbled under exhaustion, muttering another four letter word under his breath.

With a tireless dedication to our pursuit, we scoured the depths of the internet to research our options (i.e. we each spent the better part of a day asking ChatGPT…). We tirelessly fed ChatGPT prompt after prompt, each more complex than the last. We asked for synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, and homophones. We asked for clever wordplay, riddles, poetic lines, and philosophical concepts.

No luck.

Desperate, I asked my two-year-old and five-year-old to share the first words that came to mind when I said “lead generation SAAS tool.” Unfortunately, nuggets.com had already been taken.

Much like the plot in every Batman episode, all seemed to be lost.

Just when we were ready to give up, we stumbled across an interesting domain on a domain auction website: badow.com

“Badow!” Todd exclaimed to a room full of blank faces. “You know… it’s like something you say after you do something cool!”

*Everyone Googles ‘badow’*

Alright, not exactly the vibe we were going for… And just like that, one quick Google search had us eliminating the “a”… 

So, BDOW?

Four letters.

Fairly easy to pronounce.

And had a fun, old-school Batman-comic-book vibe to it…

… But why BDOW!?

Believe it or not, the team didn’t immediately agree on BDOW!

But one of the elements that set BDOW! apart from other options was that it quickly became part of the team’s vocabulary. It would be exclaimed after accomplishing a big task or cheering on a teammate’s progress. And the same thing happened when we shared the name with others. We can’t wait for it to become part of your inner monologue, too.

More engagement on your website? BDOW!

New lead hits your inbox? BDOW!

That new opt-in drives yet another conversion? BDOW!

It’s just fun to say. (You kind of wanna say it right now, don’t you?)

While not everyone liked it, everyone had an opinion about it. The people who loved it, loved it. And the people who didn’t—well, they still had fun saying it. Other potential names like FormBurst or OptinCrafter may have been more straightforward, but also elicited little emotion, whether positive or negative.

And if there’s anything we believe about marketing, it’s that given a choice, we’d rather be controversial than ignored.

Four letter domains aren’t exactly easy to come by these days. We had to purchase bdow.com via private sale, but fortunately we were able to secure it for a little less than 1.5 million dollars (BDOW!).

Having decided on the name, we turned our attention to the brand. We wanted to make sure that the new brand paid homage to Sumo. If you look closely, you’ll notice that the yellow burst resembles something familiar: the Sumo crown.

We’ll be sharing more about our redesign in another post.

What’s next for BDOW!? 

One of the key reasons we settled on BDOW! is that we have plans to become the best online lead generation tool—not just the best form and pop-up tool. 

Don’t get us wrong: We believe the first step is doubling down on our existing functionality. We’re committed to improving the existing tools so they are best-in-class. But we have plans to move beyond forms and pop-ups and provide other tools that make it easy for businesses to generate leads online. 

We believe that integrations are key to creating a seamless workflow. We’re currently fixing what’s broken, enhancing current integrations, and adding more integrations. We also plan on further expanding our available integrations beyond email service providers to CRMs, additional ecommerce platforms, and other business tools.

We are committed to improving our form and pop-up builder. Our users love our form and pop-up builder because of the advanced functionality it offers. We want to continue offering a flexible, advanced form builder while providing a smoother design experience.

We want to make it as easy as possible to turn leads into conversions. We already offer integrations with WooCommerce and Shopify so that you can market offers to your website visitors. We plan on expanding the existing functionality and adding more e-commerce platforms.

And we want to become the go-to tool for online lead generation. As we mentioned, these days there are more ways to generate leads online than ever before. We want to build tools to simplify the lead generation process. We’ll have more to share on this front soon—stay tuned…

We’re excited for the BDOW! era! Want to join us? You can create a free BDOW! account at https://bdow.com. Have feedback, feature requests, or questions? Send us an email at help@bdow.com.

Sincerely,

The BDOW! Team

P.S. We’re sure you already knew this, but B-D-O-W is also the four letter code for the Barred Owl. We’re not exactly sure how we’re going to use that information yet, but we think it’s awesome. Who doesn’t love owls?