Email service provider Options Media Group Inc. will acquire 1Touch Marketing LLC to enter the mobile marketing space.

The deal is expected to close officially by the end of the month. The acquisition comes in the same year that 1Touch Marketing bought Paradise Coast Media, which will also support Options Media Group's direct marketing tactics.

"It's a very strong synergistic relationship and partnership, since Options Media Group has very strong technology and a large customer base for email services, while we provide the mobile expertise," said Dan Lansman, cofounder and president of 1Touch Marketing, Boca Raton, FL.

"Now Options Media will offer full-service marketing, a complete 360 wraparound product to handle everything from A to Z," he said.

1Touch Marketing will continue to operate as its own entity, although the companies will begin offering their combined services immediately.

Early next year, Options Media will move into 1Touch's facility in Boca Raton, which will serve as the headquarters for the combined entity.

"Option Media are savvy marketers that are used to building house lists for email to generate sales, and we will implement the same exact features and strategy through mobile marketing," Mr. Lansman said.

"There is some overlap of clients, and that will increase dramatically over the coming months as we start to introduce each other's clients to our respective platforms," he said.

Options Media was founded last year in Hallandale, FL. Options Media's ESP platform lets clients create, send and track professional email campaigns to subscribers.

1Touch Marketing was founded in 2003 by Mr. Lansman and Anthony Bumbaca , both formerly of Equifax.

1Touch Marketing is a provider of multichannel marketing services, including opt-in email, postal, Web-based lead generation and SMS mobile marketing.

"Combined, the two companies will give clients a full 360-degree marketing solution to contact current customers while also building their database through multichannel prospecting," said Carol Lustig, director of marketing for 1TouchMarketing.

"This broad-reaching service capabilities position Options Media to be one of only a select few to offer full-service, cross-platform customer-contact and new prospect-marketing," she said.

The 1Touch Marketing proprietary database offers mobile and SMS records for approximately 142 million opted-in consumer names and 19 million opted-in business names, the company claims.

"A big part of what we do is to not only drive sales, but also to help customers build their own prospect list and have people opt in to their services," Mr. Lansman said.

1Touch's Internet-based lead generation services offer the ability to place specifically-targeted advertising messages on a universe of consumer, professional and education Web site networks.

Options Media clients will have the ability to cross-sell and upsell to their existing customers.

Additionally, they will now be able to grow their databases with 1Touch's prospecting lists, which offer advanced micro-targeting with more than 700 separate demographic targeting elements and lead generation services, which offer market-specific placement abilities.

The marketing product combination allows Options Media to offer a proprietary scope of services.

Options Media claims to segment specific consumer and prospect audiences for more relevant and responsive advertising messaging.

Options Media provides clients with access to software, hardware, bandwidth and exclusive domains and IP addresses, as well as the ability to upload and manage subscribers and review and upload campaigns and track results.

1Touch Marketing's goal is to help marketers to identify, target, reach and build relationships with both consumers and businesses.

"SMS is what's coming next, and as we've been building for in the last few years, we've found that some of the things that have applied to email also apply to text messaging," Mr. Lansman said. "We're getting the word out about benefits of SMS to clients who haven't dipped their toe into the text messaging pool yet.

"We're helping clients generate resources for research and development to expand their text messaging platform," he said.

"We want to show our customers how to spend dollars effectively to maximize ROI and help them manage and grow their overall marketing strategy in the most-cost effective way possible."