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VLG Marketing Acquires Atlanta-Based Burner Rocket

VLG’s investment in technology illustrates a commitment to providing mobile, digital, and direct mail services that address ABM challenges.

ADDISON, Texas, Oct. 25, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — VLG Marketing LLC (VLG) announces the acquisition of Atlanta startup Burner Rocket for an undisclosed amount. The Dallas-based digital marketing agency continues to increase the diversity of its proprietary technology offering that addresses shifts in business-to-business marketing strategies with the advent of account-based marketing (ABM) and account-based selling (ABS).
VLG Marketing acquires Burner Rocket

Mail SIM-enable Android Phone, Call, Text, Track, Alert via Slack

The acquisition now gives VLG—known for adventurous mail pieces, unique, personalized websites, and its proprietary DialogEngine platform—the ability to offer its clients a direct mail experience like no other. The agency and its customers will be able to mail SIM-enabled mobile phones to prospects, delivering real-time, trackable content to targets at key accounts.
“We’ve always viewed technology as the key to staying ahead in an industry full of copycat solutions,” said VLG President Michael Simmons, “because it gives us the ability to remain agile and meet the unique needs of our customers in an ever-changing B2B marketing space.”
Burner Rocket developed technology that allows agencies to provision and personalize mobile phones for one-to-one marketing engagement. The startup provided marketing and sales teams with key insights beyond customer engagement through sales team follow-up—a long time challenge for non-digital direct mail programs.
“In VLG, we found a company that will take our vision for Burner Rocket to the next level,” said Daryl Lu, one of the creators of Burner Rocket. “This is a great win for the Atlanta startup scene, but also a win for marketing and sales teams as they continue to engage prospects innovatively and with authenticity.”
“After seeing low efficacy of existing marketing technologies, we leveraged economies of scale allowing us to ship full-service cell phones to key accounts. They open the box, we call the phone — crazy idea but it performed phenomenally to get into conversations instantly,” said SalesWise CTO Jason Parekh. “VLG has a shared commitment to pushing the boundaries of marketing technology making this a natural fit.”
Burner Rocket was spawned by another Atlanta startup, SalesWise, which was founded by Gregg Freishtat and Jason Parekh. SalesWise developed a business relationship intelligence (BRI) platform that unifies information from all silos, including enterprise calendar, email, documents, contacts, and CRM data. The platform circumvents manual data entry by automatically organizing and presenting the data in an elegant product, boosting sales enablement, follow-up and close rates.
Contacts:
VLG Marketing, Angela Shori, 972.792.9550 or hello@wefightboredom.com
SalesWise (Burner Rocket), Daryl Lu, 678.221.4358 or daryl@saleswise.com
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Entrepreneurship Is Full of Hard Work that Is Rarely Sought After

I posted recently about the importance to periodically check how a current role/ position fits into the greater journey – “Before Making Moves Based On Today’s Bad, Chart How All The Dots Align to A Path”. I took this to heart recently by reviewing my resume and updating my skills and experience. It’s made me aware of my career progression and my upcoming path as I head into my mid-30s. In short: optically, I’ve been rather stagnant.
Building a startup is incredibly hard work. Many startups do not come close to the type of success that is read about in the news or even the local startup digest. Entrepreneurship, though intrinsically rewarding, is not well-received professionally.
As I’ve had the great opportunities to lead sales at Body Boss Fitness, SalesWise, and SalesWise’s new product/ brand Burner Rocket, they’ve all been tough experiences to get through. Starting from virtually nothing and fighting to get scraps of the first 10 customers and then the next is rarely seen from the outside. The mind soaks up more information than what any “normal corporate” job may provide. However, it’s, in some ways, specialized. The bruises and cuts that I have felt by leading the charge for what a sales process may look like, what are the pieces of collateral that will help sell, how do we support our customers when we don’t even know the full metrics of what is working and what is not… those lessons are not always visible to the outside world. And yet, I know the incredible value that has been learned. I know the pains and the difficulties to get to where we are. I have good hypotheses for why we may not have grown at a faster clip, but from the outside, there’s little stock. Growing from 0-10 may not be as impressive as being a leader who hit the $2MM ARR quota from last year’s $1.5MM. Should that be?
Again, periodically looking through the portfolios of seemingly little accomplishments for early-stage opportunities, I can sense there’s a strain. There’s a pull and a fight between the desire to hop into a role where the hard work has mostly been done. Perhaps, there’s a need for an optimizer or a player to just “grow more”. It’s a struggle – to be a part of something so early that the chances of success are low. The challenges and rewards are greater. Or, do I take the easier route by following the path others have already trotted on before. In that way, perhaps I can have the requisite bullet points for others to note and say, “yes, he’s had that experience of hitting XX of quota”.
Being an entrepreneur and taking a real fight to creating something special isn’t always lauded. It’s rarely what folks are really looking for. But they’re the opportunities I’m looking for. It looks like I’m still on the right path.
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Which came first – CAC or ASP?

Got a little chicken or the egg situation here. Except in this case, we’re talking about CAC or ASP (cost of acquisition vs. average selling price). More context…
My company’s recent little pivot is called Burner Rocket. We help B2B companies break through the noise to reach key decision makers. Our secret sauce? We send burner phones. Yes, a little like that scene from The Matrix when Neo gets a phone and gets an immediate call from Morpheus.
It’s crazy effective(~65.5% turn-ons and 75.3% conversation rate)
… and fun (you can’t help but feed off the fun energy from “folks recording personalized videos” to “recipients turning on the phones”).
This isn’t the cheap direct mail piece like coffee mugs or keychains. Sometimes, you gotta go big to break through the noise these days.
When I pitched a local entrepreneur recently, he immediately said, “wow, your customers must have a high ASP”. I thought he would, for sure, go with “wow, your customers must have a high CAC”. It’s a chicken or egg situation where you could ask which came first?
In the world of ASP vs. CAC, they both influence each other. My focus on CAC is to isolate the costand difficulty of acquiring a customer. I want to focus on the customer, and her buying cycle. The burner phones really cut out a ton of time, especially, when it comes to breaking through to net-new leads. They also get conversations because of the novelty (prospects may now associate the brand and product to be novel).
ASP should take into account CAC, too. However, ASP does not cover the longer-term revenue that could come from a customer – lifetime value (LTV). ASP may not actually cover cost of servicing a customer. Instead, the lifetime of the customer should take service into account.
Our new business may not influence ASP, or LTV for that matter. Instead, our new business can accelerate the pipeline via the top-of-funnel conversions (cold to conversations, to demos) and likely the mid-funnel with stalled opportunities. Thus, our phones can materially impact CAC.
Then again, I focus on all three metrics with a priority on both CAC and LTV before ASP. Prime B2B companies who have high CAC and LTV are good candidates + our other ideal customer profile (ICP) facets.
What are your thoughts? How are you considering your go-to-market strategy?
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