Merkle Subsidiary Acquires Catalog Marketing Firm

CognitiveData will acquire catalog marketing services firm CMS Direct. Financial details of the transaction, which is expected to close on July 31, were not released.

CognitiveData is a subsidiary of database marketing agency Merkle.

CMS Direct employs approximately 50 at its Minneapolis office, which will remain the operational center of CognitiveDATA’s catalog marketing service offerings.

CognitiveData and CMS Direct have had a strategic partnership since 2006, under which they have developed a combined address-hygiene and data merge-purge system. The acquisition will allow CognitiveData to expand and include data quality, list processing and marketing database services.