• by Ray Schultz , May 31, 2019

Validity has completed its acquisition of email deliverability firm Return Path barely a month after announcing it, while securing a new strategic investment that will fuel its expansion, the firm announced on Friday. 

The investment is being led by Providence Strategic Growth (PSG), with participation by Silversmith Capital Partners, founding investor in Validity. Financial details were not disclosed. 

Mark Hastings, CEO of PSG, and Tom Reardon, managing director, will join Validity’s board of directors -- a group that also includes Validity CEO Mark Briggs; Jim Quagliaroli and Sri Rao from Silversmith Capital Partners; and Mike Volpe, CEO of Lola.com.

There was no word of any executive changes at deadline.

The Return Path purchase was announced on May 1. Terms were not disclosed.

Return Path had prided itself on being an “independent, third party” that helps digital marketers worldwide with their email and digital marketing campaigns, states Return Path CEO Matt Blumberg.

However, the firm saw the chance to move into “this much broader suite of products so that joint customers could benefit from the expanded services, Blumberg states.

Validity was formed last year with the goal of bringing together “companies that have solved some of the most complex challenges around customer data,” states Briggs.

In addition to Return Path, the company has acquired CRMfusion, provider of an application for enterprise CRM data quality BriteVerify, an email verification platform.

PSG is the growth equity affiliate of Providence Equity Partners. 

PSG’s Reardon states that Validity’s approach of “aggressively pulling together the leading solutions in the market was something we simply had to be part of.”