VerticalResponse Adds Social Media Technology Platform To Marketing Tools With Acquisition of Roost

December 21, 2011
Written by
Published in DemandGen Reports

VerticalResponse, a provider of self-service marketing solutions for small businesses, recently announced its acquisition of Roost, a privately held social media marketing technology company based in San Francisco, CA. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

With the acquisition of Roost, VerticalReponse said it intends to centralize the campaign efforts of its customers, which are primarily small businesses and nonprofit organizations. With the acquisition, the company’s customers will now have the ability to streamline initiatives and extend email campaigns to their social networks, as well as publish single posts or full social campaigns, according to VerticalResponse CEO Janine Popick.

“A large number of VerticalResponse customers who are in the B2B space are seeing direct, tangible benefits from engaging with prospects in social media, and it's only going to grow,” Popick told DemandGen Report. “For example, we have one customer that sells servers and IT hardware to other businesses. Thanks to an active blog and YouTube channel, a presence on all the major social networking channels and social sharing features in email marketing campaigns, they've seen consistent growth in both web site traffic and business. Now that we have Roost's technology under our belt, it will be a lot easier for them to manage all their marketing communications, and they'll be able to do a lot more in less time.”

VerticalResponse currently serves about 100,000 customers, while Roost serves about 30,000 organizations.

Roost’s proprietary technology is designed to help organizations develop processes for social media management, enabling users to create, schedule and publish Facebook and Twitter campaigns and choose what to share from free suggested content; create a custom content calendar. Users also can get a unique score based on social engagement to see how well campaigns are resonating with followers.

Following the acquisition, current Roost CEO Alex Chang will serve as Vice President, Social Platform at Vertical Response. Roost employees will fill various positions within the VerticalResponse organization and focus on growing social media marketing for small businesses.