Indimi Broadens Marketing Offerings

In a move that adds another direct marketing product to its list of capabilities, online direct/viral marketer Indimi, a majority-owned company of Sony Music Entertainment, has acquired North Carolina-based e-mail messenger DailyRating.com.

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Basically, DailyRating allows users to track and graph aspects of their lives — say, exercise habits, or smoking — by responding to daily e-mails. DailyRating creates graphs based on the user’s responses. Graphs can be shared anonymously or combined with other DailyRating users.

The value of the acquisition, from a marketer’s perspective, resides in the opportunity to insert opt-in marketing messages from advertisers, and to place on-site and in-mail banner ads.

“We want to offer our consumers an ever-evolving complement of interactive online entertainment, information and useful services,” said Indimi chief executive officer Mark Wachen. “At the same time, any consumer service we add or offer can be added to our innovative online direct marketing package for corporate marketers. There is a great synergy between our business-to-business and consumer services.”

Indimi, through its AdTools unit, already offers a series of e-mail and desktop entertainment services geared for marketing opportunities. These include news-aggregating e-mail newsletters from InfoBeat and animated desktop messages from MessageMates.com and ScreenMates.com. The company, which itself had been named InfoBeat, acquired AdTools in June.

DailyRating’s founders, chief executive officer Calvin Tarlton and chief technology officer Lance Lovette will remain at the company, overseeing its services for Indimi, which will the new service throughout its network.

“We feel that integrating DailyRating within Indimi offers a perfect fit for us,” Tarlton said. “Indimi can quickly introduce our service to a broad, Web-savvy user pool and demographic.”