E-mail marketing leader Constant Contact announced that it has put the finishing touches on an acquisition of Bantam Live, a leading contact management and social CRM provider.
The purchase should substantially add to the email marketing capabilities that Constant Contact provides already to more than 400,000 businesses and small organizations. Bantam Live, based in New York, was owned and operated by privately-held Bantam Networks, LLC.
The final price tag on the deal is $15 million, subject to post-closing adjustments.
“Building highly-engaged customer relationships is the number one pain point for small organizations. To do this, they need a unified view of their contacts across all channels, from email addresses to social media connections, to event registrations,” said Gail Goodman, Constant Contact CEO. “With the Bantam Live acquisition and our internal development initiatives, we are building a platform that delivers a targeted approach to building stronger customer relationships and cultivating new ones – the number one business driver for small organizations. Armed with better, targeted insight, small organizations can more easily turn prospects into customers or members, and fans into advocates.”
Bringing on Bantam will primarily help Constant Contact expand and offer their services over multiple channels.
Bantam Live boasts a robust social CRM platform that will create a unified repository of data across several different channels including email opens, survey responses, clicks, event participation and social media interactions. The acquisition will substantially affect how data is captured, reported and analyzed for Constant Contact’s small business clients and will help them better track and measure customer engagement.
Constant Contact will eventually incorporate the social CRM functionality into all of its products and offerings, including a paid social media marketing package which should become available later this year.
As we’ve said time and time again, email marketing is a crucial component of an effective retail and e-commerce communications strategy. There are quite a few companies out there offering suites of software to help you tailor your email marketing and Constant Contact is definitely one of the best. If you still haven’t seriously embarked on email marketing campaigns, this deal may be exactly what you need to go look into Constant Contact.
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