Deluxe Buys Vertical Response For $27 Million

Deluxe announced this week during its latest earnings report that it’s bought Vertical Response, an e-mail and social media marketing provider. The acquisition happened in June with a cash price of $27 million.

You may know Deluxe for check printing, but it offers a wide variety of online marketing services aimed primarily at small businesses, including web hosting, website design and search marketing. Deluxe CEO Lee Schram said that the acquisition “accelerates our web-based growth efforts with small businesses, adding valuable online promotional and internet marketing services capabilities. This is a great opportunity for us to strengthen our offerings to small businesses and add a seasoned management team.”

Vertical Response CEO and founder, Janine Popick, talked about the deal on the company blog:

What’s going to change? A lot, but for the better. Soon you’ll see a new version of our email marketing and social media product roll out, and it’ll be faster and better than ever! You’ll see features flying out the door quicker than you did before (cheers to our product and engineering teams) and you’ll see a whole new look that we’ve been working on before this deal was in motion.

Deluxe says the 110 Vertical Response employees will continue to be based in San Francisco.