Fresno startup, Drip, acquired by national software company

A Fresno software startup has been acquired by Leadpages, a national landing page and lead generator company, for an undisclosed amount, the company announced Thursday.

Drip, which has an office at Bitwise Industries in downtown Fresno, has been developing email marketing and automation software since 2012, said former Drip CEO Rob Walling, vice president of product at Leadpages.

“It’s a bit surreal,” Walling said. “We didn’t start working on it thinking that it’d get picked up like this.”

The acquisition of Drip by Leadpages is an exciting opportunity for the startup and its 10 employees to continue growing on a broader stage with more resources, Walling said.

However, the acquisition is not a merger, according to Walling. Drip is expected to continue to exist as its own individual product under the umbrella of Leadpages.

Drip can be used to send series of emails to people who have opted into an email list. It also collects marketing data to help users understand the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, in addition to other functions.

Leadpages provides users a way to build custom landing pages, create pop-ups to capture email addresses and use social media, text messaging and email to gather and communicate with leads – or potential customers.

By adding the Fresno startup to its services, Leadpages’ users will have a more seamless integration of the two products and have access to other services provided by Drip, Walling said.

Businesses can use Leadpages to gather the email addresses of potential customers and sign them up for webinars or updates. That contact information can then be funneled into a service such as Drip. From there, users can send emails, updates and marketing material to the people on their lists.

Prior to the acquisition, the email marketing tool was already integrated to be used with Leadpages’ platform, according to a post on the company’s blog. Walling confirmed that although there was some level of integration available before, a more user-friendly integration was launched in the past month.

“The idea is that over the next few months, since we are now on the same team, we can give users so much more data back on what their leads are doing,” Walling said. “We have data on who is opening the emails, who’s visiting the pages, and they can use that to help them with marketing.”

The entire Drip team is staying on for the transition, and a Fresno office will remain open, Walling said. With the acquisition, Drip has the ability to hire a few more developers, either in Fresno or at Leadpages’ headquarters in Minneapolis.

Walling said working with Leadpages will allow Drip to reach goals and advance faster with more support. Existing users will not experience much of a change, he said.

“This acquisition will help our customers convert more leads into customers,” said Clay Collins, Leadpages CEO and co-founder, in a news release. “Some of the best marketers I know have been asking Leadpages to integrate with Drip, so we started digging into the product.”

This story was originally published July 7, 2016 at 3:00 AM with the headline "Fresno startup, Drip, acquired by national software company."