Emma buys Boomerang, embarks on new era of growth
Emma has bought a digital marketing firm in San Francisco, Boomerang, marking a new era of growth for the Nashville-based email marketing company.
Boomerang brings with it several hundred customers similar to the nearly 50,000 small and medium-sized businesses that use Emma's services to communicate with clients.
The deal comes as Emma expands internationally to Melbourne, Australia, launches a national marketing conference and beefs up its sales team. In the past year the company has increased its staff by 50 percent, growing its ranks to 150 employees, and for the first time in its 12-year history, Emma is pursuing outside capital.
A year ago, Emma would not have been positioned to make the Boomerang deal, said CEO and co-founder Clint Smith.
"A lot of it has to do with how strong our product is at this point," Smith said. "We are starting to get in front of even savvier marketers. ... As we have started to increasingly build our national brand, it's led to things like this opportunity."
That national brand prompted Boomerang CEO Dave Kearney to reach out to Emma. Boomerang had been looking for a partner that could offer more options to its customers. Both companies partner with Salesforce.com, making the match a good fit, Smith said.
The Boomerang customers are "established businesses that have been in the game for a while, understand the benefit of what they are doing on a marketing level, and everyone we looked at wanted to do more," Smith said, declining to share more details of the deal.
Kearney's role at Emma is still undecided, but he will be involved in combining the two companies and will continue to provide services to Boomerang clients, said Grey Garner, vice president of marketing at Emma.
Garner said there are no additional mergers or acquisitions planned beyond Boomerang, but the company is open to other deals — buying and selling.
"It's a huge growth year for us," he said. "Anytime we see an opportunity to grow our customer base or bring more value to the marketplace, those things are going to become increasingly interesting to us."
Emma has long been touted as a Nashville success story among the city's entrepreneurial community, and it has stood out in the tech industry as a company that has resisted outside funding. Smith, who created the company with RoundingWell's Will Weaver in 2003, said the company is looking for investment dollars that will allow for faster growth in sales and product development.
Part of that growth will be overseas. Emma's workers have been based in Nashville; Portland, Ore.; New York; and Denver, and in 2014, the company hired Simon O'Day, a former Responsys executive, to build an international sales team out of Melbourne. Smith said he envisions Emma services expanding in Australia, New Zealand and eventually other countries.
"We are treating it like a startup within the broader organization and really challenging ourselves to prove out one market at a time," he said. "We already have a decent base of customers there to build off of, so it felt like a very natural extension."
Meanwhile, Emma has entered the conference business. On April 29, the company is hosting hundreds of digital marketers at its three-day Marketing United event. Officials with Warby Parker, Life is good, Big Machine Label Group and Eventbrite are among its speakers.
"The timing was right," Smith said. "We are feeling like we can be at the center of a really compelling marketing conversation because of where we are with the product and as a business."
Reach Jamie McGee at 615-2590-8071 and on Twitter @JamieMcGee_.
Marketing United:
Hosted by Emma, the three-day conference brings together leaders from national marketing companies to share their ideas. Executives from Virgin America, Warby Parker, Life is Good, Eventbrite, Third Man Records, Hatch Show Print and Big Machine are among those scheduled to speak, and 500 attendees are expected.
When: April 29- May 1
Where: Emma, at 9 Lea Ave.
Price: $695 with discounts available for group purchases
For more information, visit http://marketingunited.com/