Direct Response Sells to Digital River
January 31, 2006 | 5 Comments
In a $15 million dollar deal, Direct Response Technologies sold off a majority of it’s company to Digital River. According to the press release, the main reason for the purchase was to acquire Direct Track. Digital River had been using DT for some time now for managing their affiliate network. They clearly saw this as a logical progression. MyCoupons and GiftCards will not be sold in this deal, I assume they will be spun off into their own company, but the details on this are unconfirmed.
I often think of Direct Track as one of my greatest professional achievements so far in my life. In 2002 I started working as a PHP developer with version 1 of the product when many thought it was merely one of CEO Jason Wolfe’s “crazy” ideas. For those who’ve worked for DRT, one of Jason’s greatest skills is his ability to see opportunities in the digital world and jump at them. Often these leaps are failed or partially succesful, but if you don’t try new things you’ll never succeed.
At that time there were only a handful of companies using Direct Track. As the product stabalized and was continually enhanced over the six months that I feverishly responded to client feature requests and bug reports, it started to become obvious that this was going to be a serious contender in the space. More concentration was put towards the product including the expansion of the support and sales teams in Beulah, North Dakota. At the end of January 2003 we launched Direct Track version 3. This was a complete rewrite of the underlying infrastructure. After a few bumps in the road it, the product became very appealing to nearly everyone the sales team showed it to. If you look on the site there is no major press release about this, in fact I’m not sure any of us really believed we had succeeded until months later.
I remember this time in my life fondly in retrospect. Direct Track was getting better every day as the sales team kept heaping on more clients and we kept making the product do more. This was when some of the most proud unique features that are touted by marketing even today were born (Ad Pools, Cross Publication, Direct Coreg, etc.).
After 13 months of satisfying employment at DRT, in the middle of the Summer of 2003, I left Direct Response to return to Plymouth, NH when I was offered a job at Plymouth State University. I do not regret having taken the opportunity to move back close to friends and family, but I’ll always miss Direct Track. I feel a personal attachment to that product which still runs deeply today. I hope I can someday find another project that captures me so completely.
On the other hand, I don’t miss the 60+ hour weeks and sleepless nights…
With this in mind I was absolutely thrilled to hear about this large deal they made. Congratulations Jason and all of the current team that makes his demanding visions a reality.
Tags: adpools, affiliate, affiliate marketing, company, coreg, cross publication, digital, digital river, direct response, direct track, directstuff, directtrack, giftcards, internet, jason wolfe, marketing, mycoupons, php, technology, tracking, wolfe