RichRelevance acquires Searchandise Commerce

RichRelevance, a San Francisco-based retail marketing services company, has acquired Searchandise Commerce, a Beverly, Mass.-based retail search marketing services firm. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The acquisition will expand RichRelevance's Shopping Media platform to include search. The platform — used by clients including Colgate, 3M, P&G, AT&T, Verizon, Toyota, Target, Sears and Cisco — serves personalized content to shoppers on retail websites based on their browsing behavior. This will now include targeting content based on a consumer's search behavior on a retail site.

“We are helping brands and retailers target and reach consumers based on their behavior when they are engaged in the shopping process,” said David Selinger, CEO of RichRelevance. “Adding Searchandise allows us to enable brands to connect with consumers through how they search on a retailer's site.”

Selinger said that the two companies have many of the same clients and pointed out that this acquisition will make it easier for these clients to centralize their data.

The Searchandise Commerce brand has been dissolved and the technology will now only exist under the RichRelevance umbrella. However, the company will keep its offices in Massachusetts and there will be no layoffs, Selinger said. In fact, RichRelevance has plans to grow its employee base by 10% in the first quarter of 2012, he said.

This is the second acquisition for RichRelevance this year. In the second quarter, the company purchased CNET's Intelligent Cross-Sell platform to help build its database services. Selinger said that they are considering more acquisitions in the future to support what he anticipates will be significant growth in the e-commerce space in the coming years.

“We see online retail tripling in the next three years,” he said.