Fan “relationship management” service FanBridge recently closed a $2 million Series A financing and already completed its first acquisition of Facebook fan management startup Damntheradio. Super angels Jeff Clavier (SoftTech VC), Chris Sacca (Lowercase Capital Capital), and Dave McClure seeded FanBridge with $350,000 in March, 2009. They are all back in this $2 million round via SoftTech VC, Lowercase Capital, and 500 Startups, respectively. Joining them are First Round Capital, Founder Collective, Grape Arbor VC, and Alex Zubillaga.
FanBridge helps bands, artists, sports teams, and even small businesses and brands manage their fan base through opt-in emails and sophisticated analytics. It manages 90 million fans via email alone. With Damntheradio, FanBridge will beef up its Facebook campaign-management capabilities and add the three-person team to its own—bringing the total to 20 employees on both coasts. (FanBridge is based in New York City, while Damntheradio is in San Francisco). Damntheradio, which founder Spencer Richardson discovered through a TechCrunch post, is still in private beta.
The amount of the acquisition is not being disclosed, but it is a combination of cash and stock somewhere in the low seven figures. FanBridge is more of a direct marketing channel via email. With DamntheRadio, it can expand into social channels such as Facebook. Damntheradio helps big acts like LininPark and record labels like EMI create Fan pages on Facebook, and give fans incentives to like and share a band’s music. It offers analytics on the backend to make it easy to manage these social interactions, just like FanBridge does for direct email communications. Both also will charge subscriptions for premium accounts. FanBridge starts at $9 a month and goes up as high as $250 a month. Damntheradio will charge premium customers $30 a month. FanBridge was cashflow positive before it started hiring and acquiring to grow faster.
FanBridge is a leading Fan Audience CRM platform, currently used to manage fan acquisition, retention, and engagement for more than 600 million fan relationships. Clients include the world’s largest brands, premium content producers, influencers from music, sports, film, television, comedy and publishing, and YouTube channel producers - all of whom use FanBridge to grow and profit from building direct relationships with audiences across email, social media, mobile and high engagement destinations.
damntheradio helps you build meaningful relationships with your fans. Create powerful promotions, track their performance over time, and invigorate your influencers with exclusive rewards. It’s loyalty and relationship marketing designed to give your fans something worth talking about.
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