Outsourced messaging services company Premiere Global Services Inc. acquired Accucast Inc., an e-mail marketing services firm in Atlanta with clients like Nascar.com, CNET, Ebates, Brown Forman, Delta Air Lines, Travelocity and Ace Hardware.
Accucast employees and an angel investor sold the entire company Jan. 31 for an undisclosed sum. The deal consigns the Accucast name to history in favor of Premiere Marketing Automation Solutions, a new division within Premiere Global.
“It was the right time to grow and accomplish the things we wanted to accomplish,” said Tricia Robinson, formerly chief marketing officer at Accucast and now vice president of marketing services at Premiere Global. “Quite honestly, there’s been so much acquisition in the e-mail marketing space, and Premiere Global’s core values fit with Accucast.”
All 30 Accucast employees keep their jobs in their current office building. CEO Michael Pridemore becomes executive vice president at Premiere Marketing Solutions. But the well-known Accucast corporate shade of lime green is gone.
“Now we’re going to be a cool shade of gold,” Robinson said.
Accucast’s sale confirms investment bank AdMedia Partners’ projections of increased mergers and acquisitions (DM News, Feb. 6) within the Internet marketing space.
The deal comes within a two-year period when information services giant Experian — itself a takeover target — bought CheetahMail, Acxiom purchased Digital Impact and Epsilon swallowed Bigfoot Interactive. Accucast was approached by several suitors, but opted for a messaging services firm.
Accucast offers a complete suite of hosted and premise-based campaign management tools and user interface to let enterprise clients send e-mail marketing campaigns. Clients can deliver dynamic content tailored to the individual, with trigger-based e-mails at all stages of the customer lifecycle.
The Accucast tools complement Premiere Global’s database management, reporting and content creation offerings. In essence, Accucast’s software-based e-mail marketing tools combined with Premiere’s voice, fax and SMS messaging capabilities will help corporate customers in areas like collections, renewals and online bill paying. Premiere Global also plans to integrate Accucast’s tools into its Alerts & Notifications business practice later this year.
Like Accucast, Premiere is based in Atlanta. The company has four main business practices: conferencing, document services, marketing automation and Alerts & Notifications. The company serves more than 60,000 clients, including Ariba and Sky Rock Communications, and has a presence in 19 countries.
“What few people know is that Premiere is one of the world’s largest senders of permission-based e-mails — transactional or operational messages,” Robinson said.
Mickey Alam Khan covers Internet marketing campaigns and e-commerce, agency news as well as circulation for DM News and DMNews.com. To keep up with the latest developments in these areas, subscribe to our daily and weekly e-mail newsletters by visiting www.dmnews.com/newsletters
