Pitney Bowes acquires Digital Cement Inc.
Pitney Bowes Inc. announced the successful completion of the acquisition of Digital Cement Inc. for approximately USD 40 million in cash. Digital Cement is a professional services firm that provides relationship management strategy and services to help companies acquire, retain, manage and grow their customer relationships. In October 2006, Pitney Bowes made an initial investment of USD 12 million in Digital Cement, resulting in a minority ownership position and a strategic partnership to market its services. Digital Cement will become part of the company’s Marketing Services business led by Mark Cattini.
This acquisition is part of the company’s focus on delivering more value to customers through high growth areas within the mailstream according to Murray D. Martin, President and CEO. “Marketing services is one of the fastest growing segments in the mailstream because it helps businesses better manage communications with their customers. We are excited about adding Digital Cement to our growing marketing services platform, which helps our customers leverage the mailstream to grow their business. Digital Cement’s innovative strategies use the mailstream to help large corporations increase the lifetime value of their customers. Their offerings complement our existing direct mail applications, add to our suite of integrated marketing services solutions, and enhance our ability to support the needs of large customers. In fact, since our partnership began last fall, we have combined to deliver high value solutions that help customers enhance the marketing effectiveness and mailstream efficiency of their customer interactions.”
Digital Cement provides Fortune 500 clients in consumer packaged goods, telecom, financial services, retail and health care industries, such as Kraft, FedEx and John Hancock, with a suite of consultative offerings including:
— strategic planning to address business needs,
— customer experience planning to maximize customer lifetime value,
— channel and platform integration to deliver unified customer communications, and
— customer analytics to ensure that marketing programs achieve their desired results
The transaction sets up an innovative combination of services according to David Ceolin, founder and CEO of Digital Cement, “During the period of Pitney Bowes initial investment, we observed the value driven by our unique and differentiated combination of services. Executive decision-makers clearly need and want the capability to transform their existing customer experiences to drive growth, while also delivering cost-efficiencies across the entire mailstream. Together we can drive both growth and cost efficiency as a result of Pitney Bowes’ ability to transform the mailstream, and Digital Cement’s use of the mailstream to transform the customer experience.”
Digital Cement employs 121 people, most of whom are located in its headquarters in Toronto, Canada.
Pitney Bowes is a mailstream technologies company that helps organizations manage the flow of information, mail, documents and packages. Our 35, 000 employees deliver technology, service and innovation to more than two million customers worldwide. The company was founded in 1920 and its annual revenues now total USD 5.8 billion. More information is available at www.pb.com.
