Booker, a New York-based scheduling, customer-management, marketing and payments provider for service-industry small businesses, announced today it has completed its acquisition of Fredrick, an intelligent marketing automation tool for appointment-based businesses. The acquisition strengthens Booker’s product portfolio by adding automated marketing features to its existing suite of functionality.
Booker’s platform has been focused on businesses, such as plumbers, production companies and personal services providers, that deploy staff to customer offices, homes and other places where services may be delivered. Its scheduling and operations management features allow for better use of resources, by booking them in advance, as well as in building repeat business that fills in worker schedules.
Booker customer engagement tools allow for targeted outreach, which are measured and reported by Booker to SMBs through an integrated dashboard. Additionally, the company’s payment system supports both point of sale (POS) and on-site tools to enable both retail and service personnel to complete transactions.
Fredrick’s marketing automation capabilities, which will continue to be offered as a standalone product, can be integrated with Booker’s platform to provide end-to-end automated marketing to SMB customers, an all-in-one offering that combines scheduling, operations, marketing and payments in a single product stack.
The acquisition of Fredrick also places Booker on the growing list of companies offering local on-demand services.
The Fredrick tools automatically sync with a service SMB’s master schedule, determining when open appointment slots are available and generating targeted email and SMS promotions for appointments to fill openings. It uses an SMB’s contact list to automatically target and offer discounts to existing customers to accelerate repeat purchases. The company has focused on salon, spa, fitness, car repair and chiropractic offices.
“Customers who used the Fredrick platform saw 30 percent revenue growth year-over-year,” the company stated. “Customers also reported that the total number of appointment bookings they received was 45 percent higher than the industry average.”
Fredrick features can be expected to become an integral part of Booker’s strategy to extend its services into categories beyond the service SMB market.
