Emma announces acquisition of email, social, event marketing provider, Boomerang

Emma, a provider of email marketing software and services, today announced its acquisition of digital marketing solution provider Boomerang.

The move was part of a record growth year for Emma — which has been expanding rapidly. The company has grown employees by 50 percent, has opened an international office, and has recently launched a new suite of enhanced marketing automation products. They’re privately owned and compete with the likes of Oracle Responsys and IBM Silverpop, as well as broad point solutions like MailChimp.

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A big component of the acquisition centered on Boomerang’s long-standing, strong relationship and integration with Salesforce.com CRM.

“Part of the reason this deal made a lot of sense was the similarity and Salesforce integration,” Emma CEO and cofounder Clint Smith told VentureBeat in an interview. “The other part was the service component. [Boomerang CEO] David Kearney has felt strongly about customer service from the beginning. That’s something we’re increasingly leveraging in a marketplace where there are tons of products. It’s a much easier and more complete experience for marketers when you’ve got a team working for you.”

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“Many of Boomerang’s customers were looking to graduate to a service with more advanced features,” Clint said. “The Salesforce CRM integration is an indicator and a motivator for their customers. Anyone integrating CRM with email marketing says what their intent is. They want their customer data and marketing to be in sync, and they want to drive messaging based on that. They’re as interested in their customer’s data as we are, and they want to use it.”

Emma is part of a growing crop of email marketing service providers aimed at small and medium-sized businesses – but still delivering on similar types of campaign management, personalization, and automation features previously only available to large enterprises with multi-million dollar marketing technology integrations.

“There’s tons of new businesses just starting out that require sophisticated tools to reach their customers. There’s a particularly high demand for marketing tools,” Clint said.