GoDaddy buys e-mail marketing company Mad Mimi

Mad Mimi will be integrated into GoDaddy, and will help it build out its e-mail marketing service

Web-hosting and domain registration giant GoDaddy has purchased  e-mail marketing service Mad Mimi, it was revealed via a blog post from Gary Levitt, founder and CEO of Mad Mimi, on Wednesday. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

Mad Mimi is a way for customers to create, send, share and track email newsletters online. It provides them with social networks, CRMS, integrations, designs, themes, webforms and the ability to track engagement.

This is GoDaddy's second acquisition this year; it previously purchased smart calendar app Canary in July. Unlike with Canary acquisition, which was an acqui-hire, Levitt made it clear that Mad Mimi will continue to operate in the same way it always has. It will still be called Mad Mimi, though it will be fully integrated as a part of GoDaddy, and will be under their name.

"You’ll still see the same Mimi you love and are used to. You’ll still see the same Mimi platform you’re used to, and we’ll continue to listen to your feedback and grow in new ways," he wrote. "GoDaddy appreciates the delightfulness of Mad Mimi, and we appreciate how many more small businesses we’ll be able to help through merging with GoDaddy. We’re absolutely committed to providing the same awesome experience, same great support, for years to come."

Now, with GoDaddy's backing, Mad Mimi will have to chance to scale quicker, and get its services to a wider audience

“We built Mad Mimi with a vision to delight our customers and GoDaddy’s vision to champion small businesses matches Mad Mimi’s,” Levitt said in a statement provided to VatorNews. “Together with GoDaddy, we're incredibly excited to put simple and lovely email marketing in front of a whole new audience and help that audience discover the beauty and efficiency of marketing this way to customers.”

While GoDaddy already has an e-mail marketing service, Mad Mimi will provide the company with a more up to date and effective tool.

“Email marketing is critical. It helps small businesses connect to customers in a low-cost and easy to use way, effectively tapping into existing customer relationships, making the business of business easier,” Steven Aldrich, senior vice president of Business Applications at GoDaddy, told me. 

“Mad Mimi’s email marketing application is a great solution to provide to our growing base of customers who will benefit from Mad Mimi’s high quality product and overall positive customer experience.”

Founded in 2008, Mad Mimi had raised $110,000 in seed funding in 2007, but, according to TechCrunch, has been bootstrapped since then, and is now cash flow positive. 

Scottsdale, Arizona-based GoDaddy is one of the largest domain hosting sites on the Web, with over 57 million domains under management. Founded in 1997 and currently has 12 million customers and employs 4,000 people. In 2011, KKR, Silver Lake and Technology Crossover Ventures purchased the company. Since then, the company has also embarked on international growth, including expansion into India.

GoDaddy also has facilities in Arizona, California, Colorado, Iowa, Toronto, Amsterdam and Singapore and employs more than 3,800 people around the world.

Known for many years for its racy advertising strategy, GoDaddy has recently begun a rebranding campaign that it obviously hopes will help the world take it more seriously. That has also coincided with the hiring of its new CEO, Blake Irving, at the beginning of this year.

The company filed to go public in June, looking to raise $100 million, despite losing over $200 million in 2013.

(Image source: madmimi.com)