Monday, January 30, 2012

RatePoint closing after quiet Constant Contact partial buy

By Rodney H. Brown

RatePoint Inc. of Needham quietly sold parts of its business to Constant Contact Inc. in November 2011 for an unknown amount. The site will shut down operations as of Feb. 2, according to posting in the customer support part of its website.

In response on Nov. 3, 2011, to a couple of questions from service users on the RatePoint customer support site, the company said “Indeed, as of November 2011, industry leader Constant Contact has acquired RatePoint’s email marketing business,” and in a second response “Indeed, all RatePoint tools and services are completely shutting down Feb. 2. While our assets and technologies may be acquired, RatePoint will not continue to exist.”

Rick Jensen, chief sales and marketing officer at Constant Contact, said that discussions with RatePoint back in November were solely focused on the acquisition of the email marketing business line.

“The only conversation was that they were going in a different strategic direction, and we kept the conversation focused on the email list,” he said. “They contacted us back in October or November saying they were making a strategic decision to not concentrate on the email business. We said it was a perfect fit for us.”

Constant Contact did not get any technology or employees in the deal, Jensen said – just access to a few thousand customers of RatePoint’s. But, as Constant Contact has been expanding its product offerings lately, Jensen said it was a good idea to enhance the central product of the business.

“It was a great opportunity to grow what we think of as a core business,” he said. “It was quite an easy thing for us to move forward.”

The news was first reported Monday by the website SmallBiz Trends. No information about the sale or shutdown can be found on the RatePoint home page, or in the news section of its site, where the most recent announcement is dated Aug. 24, 2011. Constant Contact, for its part, also has no information about the purchase on its site, and has not put out any release regarding buying any parts of RatePoint.

RatePoint had 2010 Mass High Tech All-Star Neal Creighton as its president and CEO until March 2011, when he left to help found startup AffirmTrust. He has since gone on to become CEO of startup CounterTack, a Virginia security company that relocated to Massachusetts.

Earlier this month, Constant Contact acquired CardStar Inc., a Boston-based developer of a mobile app that consolidates multiple brand loyalty cards into one digital bar code, for undisclosed terms.

A call to RatePoint for comment was not immediately returned.