Leadpages makes its first deal, adding e-mail automation provider Drip

Leadpages, a fast-growing marketing technology company in Minneapolis, is buying Drip Inc., a California company that helps small and midsize businesses automate their marketing.

The deal, being announced Thursday, marks the first acquisition by Leadpages. Terms weren't disclosed.

It's also the first of two steps this month that will expand Leadpages' product base to three from one. The company next week will unveil a web-based service called Center that lets businesses create a marketing "stack" using various tools, such as blast e-mail services, scheduling software and payment services.

"We're dead serious about building a $1 billion-plus marketing technology company here in the Twin Cities," said Clay Collins, founder and chief executive of Leadpages.

The company's main product is an online tool for building a website that generates sales and sales leads. With hundreds of templates, the product is now used by about 40,000 businesses as the front door to their websites.

In recent months, some Leadpages customers prodded its developers to make its product work with the automation tools developed by Drip.

Drip's products make it simple for a company to reach out to someone who has visited its website. It maps out how a person uses a website, rates the person as a potential customer and triggers e-mails and other types of outreach. It also helps businesses prune their lists of potential customers who aren't responding to marketing efforts.

"Acquisition, for us, is not a core strategy," Collins said. "But when our customers come to us and ask us to integrate with a solution we haven't heard of and we check it out and it blows us away, we're going to take notice."

Collins said the usage and endorsement of Drip's products by two other Minnesota companies, When I Work Inc. and StickyAlbums Inc., both of St. Paul, also got his attention.

Drip chief executive Rob Walling, who is also known as host of a podcast about software start-ups, and many of its key software developers will move to Minneapolis from the firm's office in Fresno, Calif. Walling said in a statement that, with Leadpages' "extensive resources," Drip can develop in a way that it couldn't on its own. Leadpages raised $27 million from investors last year.

Collins said Leadpages' main product will continue to work with other e-mail automation services, including those that are rivals of Drip. He said the development of Center, which allows customers to choose from a variety of marketing products and technology vendors, demonstrates the company is committed to technological openness.