GoDaddy Hosting has sealed the deal and acquired the email marketing company named Mad Mimi. The bold move was made to give GoDaddy a better strategy to market itself towards small businesses, and to give it a better foothold in the area of email marketing. Until now this was an area in which the company was lacking any real presence.
Mad Mimi is well known in the area of customer service, which GoDaddy wants to capitalize on and bring to it's own small business clients. GoDaddy's SVP of Business Applications, Steven Aldrich, says they will now incorporate Mad Mimi's technology into the fold, replacing the old "Easy Email Marketing" program which it had in place up to this point. Exact terms of the deal are still not public, but although Mad Mimi was profitable, it was limited in terms of it's funding.
The company was founded by Gary Levitt, a former jazz musician and busboy, who had been trying to build a web app that would help musicians like himself get promoted by putting out online press kits. He says that up to that point in 2008, all email services were identical, so he decided to use content blocks, allowing clients to customize their emails. When the service finally got off the ground, it began to grow, but slowly. It started with him in a coffee shop, and eventually grew to a company with 36 employees. All with no big launching party, or any press releases, or any of the hoopla that bigger companies employ to get the word out. At the time of GoDaddy's acquisition, Mad Mimi had over 250, 000 customers, which included some heavy hitters like Disney, StumbleUpon, Air Canada, Facebook, Jelly Belly and many other big names.
Levitt says the two companies are a natural fit, and that GoDaddy is "the most logical partner in the world", seeing that they shared the same customer base.