Yelp Buys Wi-Fi Marketing Company Turnstyle Analytics For $20M

Yelp, the online review company, announced Tuesday (April 4) announced it has acquired Turnstyle Analytics, a Wi-Fi marketing company helping local businesses use free Wi-Fi to connect with their customers.

In a press release Yelp said the acquisition of Turnstyle strengthens Yelp’s position as a customer acquisition platform for local businesses, expanding its offering to include simple, effective tools for customer retention and loyalty. Under the terms of the deal, Yelp is paying $20 million in cash for Turnstyle’s outstanding capital stock.

“We’re excited to expand our product offering for local businesses through this acquisition. Turnstyle helps connect businesses to consumers through free public Wi-Fi and is an effective retention and loyalty program that helps businesses be more successful,” said Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp cofounder and chief executive officer, in the press release.

Based in Toronto, Canada, Turnstyle was founded in 2012 as a location-based marketing and analytics platform that provides Wi-Fi as a digital marketing tool to retain and reward customers. The service currently supports close to 3,500 business locations worldwide. As part of Yelp, Turnstyle’s service offers businesses tools to harness their guest Wi-Fi as an easy way to keep in touch with customers who visit their locations in order to drive repeat visits and in-store sales, Yelp said in the release.

“Since our founding, Turnstyle has focused on building the best Wi-Fi marketing service to help businesses,” said Devon Wright, Turnstyle’s cofounder and chief executive officer, in the same press release. “This is an exciting opportunity to expand and leverage Yelp’s resources and capabilities; together we’ll be able to help even more local businesses improve their customer retention, driving more repeat business.”

The companies said Turnstyle’s technology enables consumers to access free guest Wi-Fi while helping businesses re-engage those customers in the future via email. Businesses can build highly targeted customer contact lists and access powerful analytics that provide insight into visit frequency and duration, Yelp said. Combining this offline data with Yelp’s extensive online and mobile search data will deliver a comprehensive intent-based marketing resource to local businesses, Yelp noted in the release.