• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, December 11, 2018

Infutor, a consumer identity management company, announced on Tuesday the acquisition of Ruf Strategic Solutions -- a Kansas City-based marketing intelligence and automation provider focused on personalizing the experience for consumers -- for an undisclosed amount.

CEO Gary Walter said Infutor acquired Ruf Strategic’s intellectual property and physical assets. Ruf Strategic has a strong niche in travel and tourism, but over the years it also has begun to support insurance, ecommerce and education.

Walter said Infutor acquired Ruf Strategic to gain access to technology that provides personalization services. When asked why the goal was to acquire rather than build the product, he said “speed to market.”

The two companies have worked together for years. “It just made sense,” Walter said. “We know the products.”

Walter estimates the integration of the technologies will take between 60 and 90 days.

A portion of Ruf Strategic’s technology will roll into Infutor’s identify management suite. The remainder will be sold as stand-alone products.

The company will continue to look for “creative acquisition” where the company may not yet have a name brand, Walter said.

While management declined to disclose the increase in revenue with the integration of Ruf Strategic, Dave Dague, Infutor CMP said it “should be around a 10% increase’ in revenue for the first year.

Dague said “we have our own analytics chops in-house and have unique data access that Ruf doesn’t have access to like property ownership and history.”

Infutor also plans to add identity marketers. The company has an eye on moving more into mobile and finding ways to pull more data into privacy compliant geolocation services and mobile ad IDs as a way to help brands reach more customers.