Marketing email software provider ExactTarget has secured $70 million in funding led by Battery Ventures, with Scale Venture Partners and Montagu Newhall participating. The company says it will use the money to expand its international presence.
The company says that the $70 million is a similar level of funding it sought to raise in its December 2007 application for an initial public offering. ExactTarget will delay its IPO plane and has withdrawn its application with the SEC to trade on the Nasdaq under the symbol EXTG.
ExactTarget’s software provides enterprises with email marketing platform that powers everything from email coupon offers and automated fraud alerts to e-statements and SMS text messages. ExactTarget’s software provides email marketing tools for a widespread group of big-name clients, including CareerBuilder.com, Expedia.com, the Gannett Co., and The Home DepotThe software is also integrated on Salesforce.com’s AppExchange and Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
Wow! Just wow!
I’m the Founder of a fairly closely related enterprise SaaS marketing app … I know the industry quite well. I’ve raised about $7,5m the last 1,5 years or so … But still – this investment seems off the charts!
Very cool to see that money still floats in enterprise software / online marketing, though
what does this mean
“I’ve raised about $7,5m the last 1,5 years or so”
???
What I was trying to say was that I’ve been involved in VC deals in the Enterprise Marketing SaaS industry (both before and after the credit crunch), I’m following the industry pretty closely, and I’m just extremely impressed (with sugar on top) by what ET have just achieved – especially right now.
my bad, the commas threw me off. i didn’t realize that this post came from Europe. In America, we read “I’ve raised about $7,5m the last 1,5 years or so” as “I’ve raised about $7.5m the last 1.5 years or so”
Congrats Exact Seek. Send your luck our way when we start presenting to the investors. That is a good chunk of change.
Well they already worth about 100mil. if they plan for ipo that is a good move and this business is a lucrative business. 70mil to expand is great and i am sure they will do well. i actually had a chat with them a year ago when they were thinking about integrating texting to their service. Texting is my field not email.
ExactTarget should do 2 main acquisitions with this +expansion and they should dominate the market.
David H
Exact Target is creme of the crop. They need to buy 2-3 firms the expand beyond being just an email player to create a strong CRM story. Experian, Epsilon and lately GSI/e-Dialog are the leading big email players…with Constant Contact owning little joes.
They aren’t on par with the other three you mentioned. They don’t offer the services that those companies do. And there are much stronger ESP’s in the marketplace. Their value proposition is strong because they buy marketshare and are willing to provide very low prices. In the long run, it’s not a sustainable business model and they’ll have to change their approach.
How is it that these email marketing companies aren’t yet profitable? They provide a service that almost every company needs (and uses a lot), and charge handsomely for it. Or are they profitable, and just facing cash flow issues?
I’m surprised at the amount of $ in this economy in the email marketing space. Congrads to them!
Email marketing is the future. Nobody answers the phone anymore (or they use email to set up a phone call!).
Nobody reads pushy emails anymore.
This is not surprising as they recently signed a global deal with Microsoft to handle all of Microsoft’s global marketing emails. A huge win.
Microsoft has been using a very bad home grown email system for many years but they are now in the process of switching to this best of breed permission email marketing platform.
Obviously Exact Target have been able to use this contract with Microsoft to demonstrate their future to raise the money. I think as they are just going through onboarding now both parties have not wanted to comment publicly.
Is this a case of spammer gone good?
Not a spammer, they’re all “opt-in”. All the players are very careful about list acquisition being 100% opt-in.
Let’s hope they spend at least a sliver of that money on some decent documentation (or perhaps better organization of what documentation there is) for their APIs and user interface. Having spent the last year getting ExactTarget working with my employer’s marketing efforts, I can say that such investments would be greatly appreciated.
Here’s a hint: Don’t rely on a “social network” as the formal support instrument for your very complex IT product. It is important to nurture your user base, yes, but not at the expense of some well-tended documentation.
Just wondering how many nurturing emails we all receive everyday.
We must be over-nurtured thus completely obese.
How many of these nurturing mails do you still read?
When methods get used too much and too many times, change is nearby.
I am not sure how does this company work and how is this software different from mailing lists (might be sounding dumb!).
I get mails from career builder and they are no different from some other mailing lists you get from linked or or other sites.
So how does this company does is so differently and what is unique about the business model ?
But anyway that is hell lot of money in this economy.
Good luck
Well done to the team that closed that massive round of funding. I like it when stuff makes no sense to me. Like this deal. If they are making so much money why do they need the money? Is this massive round of funding meant to attract new talent to the company? What Am I missing to warrant this HUGE pile of cash.
Congrats to ET! I met the founder in Toronto at DMA in 2000 when it was just a guy and a business plan.
My company is a partner to ExactTarget and have found them to be great people to work with.
I had a look at Exact Target once, but thought it was a tad expensive for what it did. I couldn’t figure out what it could do that cheaper alternatives couldn’t.
Exact Target should raise enough money to Twitter….It’s not that crazy when you think about, ET is about building relationships, Twitter is all about relationships as well. Good marketing is all about relationships.
Anyway ET’s platform is very good, I wonder what they are planning with extra cash?
That is an amazing figure! HOLY COW! I too work in media marketing, and my team and I have been trying sooo many different ways to get funding. Too bad TalentTrove didn’t that kinda $$
Eh, means they had cashflow issues. Good for them, sucks for anyone who had a stake in the company. diluted value now…
Exactly, good insight John. That’s precisely the point. There are other press releases on this that get into greater detail on their cash position and what they gave up to get the cash.
Look under the covers on this one, the terms were horrible, 2-2.5 times revenue. Money raised is being used to pay off shareholders, and they’re designating the capital to expand their international presence, which they need.
Other ESP’s are profitable on their own and the models for their businesses are stronger than ET’s. They’re the mid-market leader, but they fall short when it comes to meeting the needs of personalization and relevance for enterprise organizations.