Syniverse invests $45 million in mobile marketing firm Vibes

US mobility solutions company Syniverse has entered into a strategic partnership with mobile marketing outfit Vibes, which includes paying $45 million for a minority stake.

Vibes offers mobile marketing tools and services to retailers and brands via its Catapult cloud-based mobile marketing platform. Syniverse wants to augment its enterprise mobility solutions by adding what it claims is the leading ‘mobile-first’ CRM platform in the industry.

“Vibes has helped some of the most successful brands… unlock additional revenue through targeted mobile marketing campaigns,” said Stephen C. Gray, CEO of Syniverse. “Together we are uniquely positioned to help brands around the globe reach more consumers in ways that precisely track the return on their mobile marketing spend and accelerate the shift from lower-ROI email campaigns.

“After a thorough and deliberate process we believe Vibes is the best mobile engagement platform to scale across our global footprint. We are very impressed with Vibes’ management and their technology platform. Our strategic collaboration will improve our product and presence in the enterprise markets as well as propel white-label opportunities and support for mobile network operators.”

“We are really excited to work with Syniverse with its deep mobile expertise and global reach,” said Vibes CEO Jack Philbin. “Our software platform, Catapult, has been extremely successful in the U.S. market, and we’ve experienced strong demand from our customers to access this intuitive, powerful platform on a global scale.”

As with all corporate partnership announcements this is being presented as a win-win, with Syniverse adding a marketing and CRM string to its bow and Vibes getting a leg-up for its international expansion plans. While mobile marketing has been around for years it still seems to have plenty of room for improvement, so it will be interesting to see what this partnership delivers.