E-mail service provider e-Dialog has acquired Adinfonitum, a small Bellevue, WA-based e-mail service provider, for an undisclosed sum.
Adinfonitum’s key client is Alaska Airlines, for which the e-mail service provider helped eliminate paper statements from its frequent-flyer program, said e-Dialog’s chief executive, John Rizzi.
The acquisition gives Lexington, MA-based e-Dialog a presence on the West Coast, which will help the e-Dialog more easily service existing clients and prospect there, he said.
“There is a geographic truth to our industry,” he said. “If you look at, for example, West Coast businesses, such as Responsys and Digital Impact, you’ll see a lot more concentration in the West and less in the east. Logistically, it’s easier for [West Coast businesses] to have people in their own time zone.”
Adinfonitum’s other clients include the American Red Cross, industrial truck and winch manufacturer Paccar, self-storage firm Shurgard and the University of Washington
“The primary thing we bought was a bunch of smart guys on the West Coast,” said Rizzi. “We’ve been looking for a while at how to launch on the West Coast, and it’s always a question of build versus buy.”
But establishing a West Coast office takes more time and involves more risk than acquiring another company, he said.
“We feel we just acquired the team that would have been the guys we would have hired going the alternative way,” Rizzi said.
He added that Adinfonitum’s clients will be switched to e-Dialog’s technology over an unspecified period of time, and that e-Dialog plans to keep all of Adinfonitum’s employees.
