E-mail Marketer e2 Communications Acquires Wireless Tech Firm

E-mail marketing firm e2 Communications plans to expand into wireless marketing, with the acquisition of a local Dallas neighbor, Infoinmotion.

Spokespeople from e2 Communications said that adding Infoinmotion’s technology will allow it to roll out a wireless component of its e2Mail Center service, which runs ASP-based e-mail campaigns.

“Personalized, targeted and timely information delivery — whether it’s for the purpose of marketing, customer service, or just getting a critical bit of information, precisely when needed — is a strong value proposition for business communicators,” said Jeff Farris, president and chief executive officer of e2 Communications. “Many of our clients and partners have voiced their interest in wireless, and we’re very pleased to be able to accelerate our time to market with this acquisition.”

e2Mail Center’s biggest selling point is its integration with clients’ profile databases to deliver personalized messages, and an optimization technique that generates new messages based on prior responses. Now, the company aims to bring that technology to WAP devices.

“Integrating Infoinmotion’s technology with e2Mail Center will combine leading-edge marketing personalization technology with a leading-edge delivery vehicle — wireless,” said e2’s wireless technical director John Rosta, who formerly served as Infoinmotion’s vice president of development. “Wireless will enable e2’s clients to tap into personalization efforts on a whole new level.”

e2, which counts CNN and Sports Illustrated Interactive, J.C. Penney and Thomas Cook among its customers, said the addition of Infoinmotion should help it roll out a wireless add-on to e2Mail Center sometime in the second quarter.

Not only is e2 Communications planning to benefit from its new acquisition, but it might be joined by Avenue A, which has an equity stake in the firm.

Avenue A hasn’t said whether it intends to use e2 Communication’s new wireless messaging technology, but it already uses e2Mail Center as a portion of its Atlas suite of online marketing tools. Additionally, the Seattle-based ad network has a deal with wireless tech firm 2Roam to serve ads on its affiliated WAP publishing partners — but so far lacks a wireless messaging component.