West Corp. Buys Michigan Startup, Adding Marketing To Portfolio

West Corp.’s latest acquisition is the “fourth leg” of a strategy aimed at giving customers a way for their employees to communicate, collaborate and grow their enterprises, according to CEO John Shlonsky in a statement.

The purchase of Royal Oak, Mich.-based marketing software startup Ambassador marks the sixth buy this year for the acquisitive West Corp., an Omaha, Neb.-based solution provider.

“As we continue to build out our Customer Experience Platform (CXP), which has historically focused on service elements of the customer lifecycle, the Ambassador platform will add customer acquisition, upsell and cross-sell solutions that enable our clients to accelerate the growth of their businesses,” John Shlonsky, CEO and president of West Corp., said in a statement.

The startup’s cloud-based relationship marketing platform, Ambassador, empowers organizations to increase customers, referrals, and revenue by leveraging the power of word-of-mouth, West Corp. said in a statement. Its marketer-friendly software simplifies referral marketing, automating the process of enrolling, tracking, rewarding and managing customers, affiliates, influencers, and partners.

"After our first meeting (with West), we were struck by their passion, camaraderie and laser-focus on the customer,” Ambassador CEO Jeff Epstein told CRN in an email. “Thinking back, it makes sense. West Corporation, and their products and services are connecting the worlds largest businesses to their customers, millions of times a day.”

The purchase price was not disclosed.

Shlonsky said the acquisition is the “fourth leg” of a strategy to deliver a more complete set of products to customers.

West, No. 23 on the 2018 CRN Solution Provider 500, provides high quality voice and data services and engages over 65 million individuals around the world with IVR and SMS/text each month, exceeding more than 7.5 billion multi-channel transactions and 6 billion call minutes annually.

West has been on a shopping spree since it named John Shlonsky CEO in November. In September, West Corp. announced it was buying webcasting and online events provider INXPO.

The week before that, West closed on the acquisition of Flowroute, a cloud-based communications platform that enables communication service providers, value-added resellers and enterprises to quickly and easily migrate premise-based communication systems to voice over internet protocol (VoIP).

In June, West acquired the assets of AVOKE from Waltham, Mass. defense contractor Raytheon Co. AVOKE, it says, provides true end-to-end call experience analytics, enhancing West’s comprehensive portfolio of voice, text and unified communication solutions

In April, the company announced that it had completed the acquisition of Nasdaq’s public relations and digital media for approximately $335 million.

In the deal, West Corp. got, GlobeNewswire: a global press release distribution platform and media contacts database with analytics, Web Hosting, Web Cast, Media Intelligence and Influencers Database.

In January, West acquired PhoneTree, a provider of automated appointment reminder services and patient communication software to physician practices, enterprise healthcare organizations and other niche vertical markets.