• by Ray Schultz , July 26, 2019

Take 5 Media Group, a provider of email marketing services, has been closed by its owner Advantage Solutions, apparently after the discovery that email results were misreported to clients.

Advantage Solutions decided to “immediately and permanently shut down the Take 5 Media Group business, and refund clients for campaigns run since we acquired the assets of the business,” states an email sent to customers by Ryan McGavran senior vice president/general manager of Take 5.

McGavran and Advantage Solutions had not replied to a request for confirmation at deadline. However, the Take 5 website says, “Take 5 Media Group has ceased operations. If you are a client seeking additional information, contact 561-819-5555 or email solutions@take5mg.org.”

A call to that number led to a recorded announcement requesting that a message be left.

The email from McGavran, which was forwarded to MediaPost, states, “WE recently discovered certain inconsistences in the way Take 5 reported email campaign results to its clients.”

It continues, “In many cases, we found that emails were not delivered at the scale communicated, and that traffic was driven to customer websites through alternative means and that analytics such as open rates and click-through rates were inaccurately reported.”

The email adds, “You are entitled to a reimbursement of $XXXXX, which can be redeemed in cash or applied to another media service in our portfolio that we are confident was not impacted by this incident.”

The potential financial impact to Advantage Solutions was not known at deadline. 

MediaPost could not independently confirm the allegations at deadline.

The McGavran email continues that, as a 32-year-old company, Advantage Solutions strives to “do business in a way that is consistent with our values and ethics, and always aims to be up front with our customers.” 

Petsky Prunier, which advised Boca Raton-based Take 5 on its sale to Advantage Solutions, said in a press announcement  in April 2018 that “Take 5 owns more than 200 million double opt-in consumer email addresses that are continuously updated and manages in excess of 240 million unique postal records, as well as more than 60 million cell phone numbers.”

It  continues that the firm serves such clients as Lexus, Verizon, Princess Cruises, ACT, Neustar, Acxiom, and Meredith.

It is not yet clear what will be done with that data. 

Petsky Prunier executieves were unavailable for comment at deadline. 

Whatever the circumstances, this is one of two recent closures of email service vendors. In March, Verifications.io, a firm identified in the beach of over 800 million email marketing records, including personally identifiable information, was shuttered.