Indy lands another big-time digital marketing headquarters

In a move likely to boost Indiana’s reputation as a hotbed for digital marketing technology, an Austrian company plans to locate its North American headquarters Downtown.

The company, called Emarsys, plans to announce Friday morning it will spend $3.2 million to renovate the thirteenth floor of Market Tower and create up to 167 new jobs here by 2020.

The jobs include a wide range of marketing development, sales, customer support and professional services. The positions will pay between $75,000 and $100,000.

Emarsys’ selling point is analyzing billions of customer records every month. From that data, it creates thousands of personalized campaigns to help customers increase sales.

The company sells digital technology that allows retailers and e-commerce firms to interact with customers using social media, targeted email, push notifications, mobile applications, websites and other tools.

Emarsys said it is expanding and consolidating here in response to “intense demand” from customers for more services. Customers include eBay, Toys R Us, Volvo, Sky and Lufthansa World Shop.

Digital marketing is exploding as retailers are scrambling to capture information about customers’ buying habits and personal data.

Emarsys launched limited operations in Indianapolis in May, and now has about 20 workers here, along with a handful more in California and Texas.

Emarsys decided to settle in Indianapolis after also considering San Francisco and Austin, said Sean Brady, newly appointed president of Emarsys’ North American operations.

“The workforce talent in Indianapolis is fantastic,” Brady said in an interview with The Star. “It’s really a great community, with an ideal location for conducting business.”

Brady formerly worked as vice president of existing business in North America for ExactTarget in Indianapolis, another digital marketing company that was acquired by Salesforce.com for $2.7 billion in 2013. ExactTarget still has hundreds of workers in Indianapolis.

That was the largest digital marketing deal in Central Indiana, but there have been more than a dozen others. In just the last decade, 17 digital marketing firms in the region have either gone public or been acquired, in deals worth a total of about $5 billion, according to TechPoint, Indiana’s technology growth initiative.

In addition to ExactTarget, the companies include Aprimo, bought by Teradata Corp. of Dayton, Ohio; and Compendium, bought by Oracle of Redwood Shores, Calif.

Despite the acquisitions, many of the companies still have sizable operations here, with a combined work force of about 2,000, said Mike Langellier, TechPoint’s president and chief executive.

That puts Indianapolis on par with such digital marketing cities as Austin and Portland, but still behind such giants as San Francisco and New York, he said.

“None of these deals were done to acquire revenue streams and slash costs,” Langellier. “They were all strategic acquisitions, to help companies that are all rushing to get market share.”

Some computer science experts agree that the deal is a boost for Central Indiana’s reputation as an emerging digital hub.

“It certainly does build on companies like ExactTarget, and increase the industry here,” said Geoffrey Fox, professor of computer science and informatics at Indiana University in Bloomington. “I would say Indianapolis is lucky to get this.”

Indianapolis, sometimes called the “Midwest’s Silicon Valley,” is home to other fast-growing tech players, such as Interactive Intelligence, Geofeedia and Tinderbox.

Like many other digital companies, Emarsys is relatively fresh-faced and fast-growing. It was founded in 2000, in Vienna, Austria. Today, it has more than 400 employees in 13 locations, and serves more than 1,200 clients in 140 countries. It remains privately owned.

The Indiana Economic Development Corp. will give the company up to $3.825 million in conditional tax credits and up to $135,000 in training grants, pending approval by its board of directors. The state said the incentives are performance-based, and the company will not be able to claim the incentives until it meets the hiring goals.

Still, state officials are touting the deal as coup, and the latest success story for Indiana’s technology economy.

“We continue to see a surge of tech firms like Emarsys choosing to bring quality, great paying jobs to Indiana,” Gov. Mike Pence said in a statement. “As a regional hub for technical and engineering innovation, Indiana is attracting companies that are looking for the skilled and dedicated workforce needed to grow their businesses.”

Call Star reporter John Russell at (317) 444-6283 and follow him on Twitter @johnrussell99.