Rokt announces largest acquisition: CalReply

Brad Lindenberg, CalReply CEO and Founder and Bruce Buchanan, Rokt CEO

Today, we are excited to announce the acquisition of CalReply, our largest acquisition yet!

Over the last few years, Brad Lindenberg and his team have built CalReply into the world’s leading mobile calendar marketing platform with over 4 million users in 30 languages across the globe. CalReply handles calendar marketing for many of the world’s biggest brands including ESPN, FOX, MLB, NASCAR, ITV and UFC, among others.

Why did CalReply and Rokt join forces?

A key driver for bringing CalReply and Rokt together was the fact that many of Rokt’s partners are e-commerce providers looking to establish new high engagement communication channels. Since 70% of the transactions Rokt processes are for event-based activities, CalReply’s calendar experience will allow Rokt to deliver even greater value by extending customer engagement to the mobile calendar after a transaction. In a similar way to how marketers communicate with customers via email, CalReply enables businesses to communicate with the mobile calendar.

What are the benefits to you?

The Rokt platform will be expanded to enable advertisers to support new campaign types focused around the mobile calendar. Advertisers can present messaging to consumers where they can opt-in to receive reminders for upcoming events and advertisers can then communicate on an ongoing basis via the mobile calendar to their subscriber base.

The benefits of CalReply also extend to partners who will be able to turn on the “add to calendar” feature in the Rokt widget without any internal development effort, then start to build a calendar subscriber base which they can communicate to via the Rokt/CalReply platform.

“…CalReply’s calendar experience will allow Rokt to deliver even greater value by extending customer engagement to the mobile calendar after a transaction.”

How does this work?

For example, when consumers buy concert tickets, they can add the event to their mobile phone calendars. This will enable ticket sellers to place information about related events and other messages into the mobile calendar. The Rokt platform can be used to precisely target audience segments of calendar subscribers with personalized messaging that is not only timely, but relevant. For more on calendaring functionality, visit our recent blog post here.

CalReply will maintain its brand and product and will become an operating unit of Rokt. In addition, Brad Lindenberg, CalReply’s founder and CEO, has been appointed to Rokt’s Board of Directors.

We are thrilled to welcome the CalReply team to Rokt, and we look forward to the months and years ahead of a great partnership!