Digital Media Solutions Acquires Fosina

Performance marketing agency Digital Media Solutions (DMS) has acquired Fosina Marketing Group Inc., a subscription marketing firm. Terms were not disclosed. 

The purchase is a strategic move that will increase the services available to clients of both firms, according to DMS CEO Joe Marinucci.

“We never had a team specifically focused on business-to-consumer subscription marketing,” Marinucci says. “This is an expansion of our business into that segment of the market.” 

Fosina will be rebranded as the DTC subscription marketing team and will be led by the DMS division head Rachel Schulties. Fosina founder Jim Fosina will stay on for the foreseeable future in a largely advisory capacity. 

With this purchase, DMS has 360 employees, with nine coming from Fosina. 

Among other things, the DMS agency division helps clients with “email retargeting and nurturing coupled with SMS,” Schulties says. The new arrangement will provide Fosina clients with paid search, SEO and social media opportunities.

In the past, Fosina outsourced its email marketing capability, but DMS also is an ESP and can provide those services internally.

In an interview earlier this year, Jim Fosina said there is “a huge demand for replenishment services, especially among millennials -- point, click receive. And it’s for necessary products — needs as opposed to desires. We call it brown bag services.”

Marinucci notes that the DTC subscription market now totals $100 billion a year, and points to major brands in this area such as Dollar Shave Club and services like Switch an Blue Apron.

Fosina services such clients as Harper Collins, Meredith, Highlights for Children and Save the Children.

DMS is headquartered in Clearwater, Florida and has an office in Paramus, New Jersey that will help integrate Fosina into the company. Fosina’s headquarters in Danbury, Connecticut will remain in place. 

DMS, which was founded seven years ago, is privately owned but has a minority investment from Toronto-based Clairvest, a private equity firm. 

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