Two of the nation’s largest caging, data and technology firms serving the nonprofit sector have been joined, with Moore acquiring Merkle Response Management Group from Merkle, Inc. It is a deal long in the making, having been rumored for more than a year.
Merkle Response Management Group will be rebranded as Moore RMG (Moore Response Management Group) and join other Moore caging and data operations — Aegis Processing Solutions in Topeka, Kansas, Washington Intelligence Bureau (WIB) in Chantilly, Virginia, and Teledata in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Merkle RMG is in Hagerstown, Maryland.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Merkle Response Management Group’s management will remain in place. The firm was part of Merkle, Inc., owned by Japanese firm Dentsu. It was reported in trade industry media that the Merkle, Inc., acquisition by Dentsu in 2020 was valued at $2 billion.
Merkle Response Management Group is a processing, data and technology firm with more than 200 clients in the nonprofit, commercial and government sectors and 600 employees. The company provides a single integration response processing solution that include data capture, multi-platform CRM and banking integration.
Moore, now headquartered in Lanham, Maryland but founded in Tulsa, Oklahoma, made the acquisition as it continues expanding processing operations. “Adding Merkle RMG to Moore is fueled by our commitment to being a partner to our clients that can handle large volumes of responses and manage complex data integrations across banking and CRM platforms, all while having our eye on maintaining the highest level of security, compliance and performance levels in the industry,” said Gretchen Littlefield, chief executive officer of Moore.
“In every step of the response data flow, we are continuing to advance how to streamline constituent data for accelerated cleansing and modeling for the most timely and accurate data available for clients,” said Littlefield.
“Becoming a Moore company is a synergistic step that is the best fit for our customers and the Merkle RMG team. This is an exciting new chapter in our 39-year history,” said Kent Grove, president of Merkle RMG. The bottom line is the deal is designed to get the money and modeled data to the nonprofit faster so strategy can quickly be implemented for engaging the donor for another gift.
Merkle, Inc. released a statement on the deal. “Merkle Response Management Group (RMG) has been one of the nation’s largest full-service direct-response processing companies for over three decades. Given Merkle’s strategic focus on holistic customer experience transformation, we made the decision to divest this stand-alone subsidiary of our business and align it with a new parent company whose long-term strategy is a better fit for its unique set of highly specialized services. Moore’s acquisition of Merkle RMG will provide the RMG team with enhanced support of its ongoing expansion in processing operations with a portfolio of diverse capabilities and locations across the nation. We are grateful for 25 years of dedicated service from the team at RMG.”
In an internal memo to staff obtained by The NonProfit Times, managers wrote: “With Merkle’s go-to-market strategy moving in a direction that is increasingly focused on the digital customer experience, and less on direct mail, we have made the decision to divest this stand-alone subsidiary of our business.” The memo continued: “It is important to emphasize that, while we are moving away from the processing of direct-mail donations and fulfillment, Merkle remains soundly dedicated to the future of our Nonprofit Practice – perhaps now more than ever. In keeping with our overall 5.0 strategy, our opportunity in this sector is about helping our clients deliver personalized constituent experiences that are connected across the entire journey and result in long-lasting – and growing – relationships with the causes they support.”
The acquisition brings Moore’s head count to nearly 5,000 employees across 44 locations. Moore has been on a buying spree. Moore this past October acquired Communications Corporation of America, a direct mail printing, data processing, personalization, finishing and mail processing firm with operations in Elkwood, Virginia, and Boston. It has been acquiring brand names in the sector, such as Amergent, Worcester Envelope Company, and Thompson Habib Denison among others.
Merkle began as a data processing company in 1971, before 25-year-old David Williams bought it in 1988 and expanded into digital marketing and constituent relationship management. Williams was chairman and chief executive officer of Merkle Inc., building it to 9,000 employees. Merkle was acquired by Dentsu Aegis Network in 2016 and Williams left the firm in 2020.
