Booker Software announced today that it has raised $35 Million, which it will use to invest in sales and marketing capabilities and in developing vertical-specific products that “drive more value to merchants,” said CEO Josh McCarter, in a discussion with BIA/Kelsey.

McCarter noted that 9,000 locations are under contract and over 60,000 business users. These are users who are “logging in every day. They are not just signing on once a month” to create a promotion or similar feature. They use Booker’s services as an integral part of their business.

Next steps for the company will further leverage all the trends impacting services-based SMB marketing, including CRM; retention marketing; Point of Sales services; scheduling; and mobile apps via a partnership with Como.

“Last year, we refocused on things that help you grow and operate more efficiently,” said McCarter, noting that the company rebranded from Gramercy One to specifically focus on the SMB space, which now accounts for 80 percent of its revenue. “The data that Booker can aggregate really powers the growth engine,” he said. Services such as email and CRM are only as powerful as the data they can use.

While spas and salons continue to account for a significant portion of the company’s business (dating to its origins as SpaFinder), a number of verticals hold great promise, said McCarter. Pet services, daycare and after-school services (music lessons, art lessons) are doing “very well.” Another area of growth is a JV with The Golf Channel that enables customers to book tee times and other services.

The new round of funding is on top of $40 million previously raised. Several mid-sized funders that specialize in SMB services were included in the round, including Signal Peak (InfusionSoft) and Jump Capital (Swift Pages). The round was led by Medina Capital, a cloud infrastructure specialist.

Other investors included Revolution (Steve Case and Ted Leonsis), Bain Capital, TDF Ventures and Grotech Ventures. In addition, a “strategic investment” was made by First Data, the payment processing giant, who will be announcing details of its relationship with Booker in coming months.

McCarter noted that each investor brings a unique appreciation of Booker’s goals in serving the SMB community, which has been “underserved” by larger VCs, which McCarter called “SMB-averse.” But there is a definite need for SMB services, which focus less on return policies or other ecommerce issues. They are more about everything that a business needs, from scheduling services to POS innovation to equipment rentals. It is a $2.4 trillion space, he argued.

Booker Software CEO Josh McCarter

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Today at BIA/Kelsey’s SMB Digital Marketing conference, Agendize announced a smart watch app for managing appointments on the go. The new online scheduling software brings scheduling and CRM capability to the wrist — particularly fitting (excuse the pun) for service SMBs out in the field.

“Scheduling is a productivity application accessible from anywhere,” Agendize sales & marketing head Davy Bour told us, “so professionals can spend more time doing what they love and what ultimately grows their business: spending time with their customers. The Smartwatch app brings this connectivity, productivity and mobility to a brand new device.”

Look out for a longer conversation and video interview with the Agendize team next week to delve further into implications for watch appointments/alerts.

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Scheduling/booking is coming into its own as a key feature for SMBs, as more and more businesses tie their marketing and promotions to open slots in their schedule.

Key companies in the space include Full Slate (recently acquired by Intuit,) ReachLocal’s ReachCommerce, Groupon Scheduler, Agendize, Moon Valley Software, GenBook, Schedulicity, Maxipage and Hakema (in Europe). Another company, MyTime, was founded by RedBeacon founder Ethan Anderson and is an aggregator of scheduled appointments.

Another major player in the space is Booker, which has raised $42 Million. While focused on the beauty, health and wellness space, it also works with a wide range of national-local players.

Booker announced today a mobile app partnership with Como (formerly Conduit Mobile) to take scheduling beyond the desktop. The app takes less than 15 seconds for SMBs to create.

Mobile apps make a lot of sense in this context. A customer might make 12 appointments per year for cut and color treatments at a salon. For such a customer, a dedicated App — perhaps tied to a loyalty program — coule be especially useful. The same may not always be true for “discovery” segments such as restaurants and retail, which may be better aggregated in directories such as Yelp, Google, OpenTable or YP. Customers may also prefer booking an appointment directly with the SMB, rather than going through a directory site — or at least, this is what Booker is banking on.

Booker CEO Josh McCarter is a featured speaker at BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local: SMB Digital Marketing, which takes place Sept. 22-24 in New Orleans. You may register here.

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Online scheduling vendor Agendize has bolstered its fleet of local media partners through a deal with weblocal.ca, a leading Canadian local search site. Weblocal.ca will utilize Agendize’s Online Scheduling as an implementable feature for clients that are using its business search platform. The ultimate goal: to “bring users and businesses together” through the search portal in order to convert traffic into transactions.

Businesses listed on weblocal.ca can simply integrate a “book an appointment” button. Customers can access the scheduling function anytime to book directly, and subsequently receive confirmations and notifications. Agendize outfits participating advertisers with a dashboard that manages all customer conversations and appointments and provides a history of these interactions.

BIA/Kelsey’s Peter Krasilovsky has extensively researched the amplified role that online scheduling is beginning to play in SMB marketing. Companies such as Agendize are ideally suited to service businesses that rely heavily on appointment booking, and many local business categories — medical, health and beauty, recreation, repair — fall into relevant scheduling verticals.

With online scheduling as an assumed “next step” for many SMBs, competition for local merchants and the requisite partners to deliver them is ramping up. Maxipage, Full Slate and BookFresh are among a host of general scheduling sites that compete directly with Agendize. Additionally, several specialists have emerged in specific verticals.

The online scheduling category faces a number of key hurdles. One is motivating new customer adoption, which means clearly articulating a need for these services. Further, technology platforms must integrate quickly and seamlessly with existing SMB systems to be effective.

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Online scheduling appears to be one of the break-out features in the marketplaces space this year. Nineteen percent of respondents to BIA/Kelsey’s most recent User View say they made a non-restaurant online appointment in the past six months.

Major appointment sites include BookFresh, Full Slate, ZocDoc, Agendize and MaxiPage. Each hopes to be the OpenTable of the services world. While they each have different focus points, they tend to provide an online scheduling platform, with additional services, such as enhanced profiles, pricing, etc.

The latest entrant we’ve become aware of is Atlanta-based AppointmentCity. The site launched last September with an effort initially aimed at dentists.

Founder Sherwin Krug, a former CPA, says he is targeting a market in which more than 7 million searches a month are performed for dentists. An online appointment is a more definitive source of leads since you know where and when consumers want to go. The enhanced profile that the site provides makes it more of a Yellow Pages-style considered purchase.

The original model had a monthly fee of $100 and a success fee of $50 per job. But Krug says the monthly fees were eliminated after three months and refunds were provided since the site really wants to build its volume. Looking forward, the site will expand to other media specialities, such as Lasik, Podiatrists, Chiropractors and Plastic Surgeons.

Other verticals are also being eyed by the site. Since they each have different pricing characteristics, AppointmentCity is likely to vary its fee structure for different verticals. Podiatrists, for instance, assign high lifetime values to each account, but individual job fees should be smaller since jobs tend to be lower value.

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