SIM Partners (www.simpartners.com), a provider of local and social marketing automation SaaS technology, today announced it has raised $8M in Series A funding led by River Cities Capital Funds, a growth equity firm investing in healthcare and IT companies, and Jump Capital, a growth capital firm focused on high growth technology-enabled companies.

'SIM Partners™ Velocity technology empowers enterprise brands with hundreds or even thousands of locations to create and manage their own strong digital presence in a branded, corporate-approved environment,' says Rob Heimann, Director at River Cities Capital. 'Local digital marketing drives the best ROI for large multi-location brands and SIM provides the most efficient and effective solution for the complex issue of multi-site brand management. It was a clear choice for River Cities to form this investment partnership.'

The growth capital will be used to both enhance the industry leading platform capabilities and greatly expand the team to address growing market demands. The proceeds from the funding will allow SIM to further enhance Velocity to take advantage of the numerous local opportunities across more platforms, devices and media. The Velocity platform delivers quantifiable results utilizing data, context and conversions, allowing large brands to leverage big data to drive actionable results at a local level.

'SIM works with many blue chip clients and has a strong foothold in several industries, including financial services, insurance, healthcare, hospitality and home services,' says Sach Chitnis, Managing Director at Jump Capital. 'We see tremendous opportunity for SIM to go both deeper and wider within numerous verticals.'

According to BIA/Kelsey, local digital ad spending is expected to hit $23.1 billion in the coming year, expanding to $44.5 billion by 2017. 'SIM is well positioned to take advantage of this growing market,' said Jon Schepke, CEO of SIM Partners. 'We are excited that River Cities and Jump Capital share our vision about the local opportunity.'

The Velocity platform is used by thousands of locations to maximize social, search and mobile at a location level through automation and scalability. A social CRM tool and extension of the Velocity local platform, Velocity Social enables brands to effectively manage their social media strategies at a local level and ensures enterprise-level compliance for regulated industries. Learn more about Velocity by visiting: http://www.simpartners.com/velocity.

About SIM Partners

SIM Partners Velocity technology empowers multi-location brands to maximize digital marketing results at a local level by optimizing location-specific content and business information to dominate local, mobile and social search results for hundreds or thousands of local entities. SIM provides a full suite of digital marketing technology, anchored by its SaaS based local marketing solutions: Velocity and Velocity Social. A social CRM tool and extension of the Velocity platform, Velocity Social enables large brands to effectively manage social communities for multiple locations on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and empowers locations to build their businesses with social media while ensuring each post complies with brand standards. SIM Partners has offices in Chicago and San Francisco and authorized resellers in Australia and Germany. For more information, visit www.simpartners.com.