Comments on: Despite Recession, ExactTarget Raises A Whopping $70 Million For Marketing Software

By: links for 2009-05-07 | iMarketwell

links for 2009-05-07 | iMarketwell — Fri, 22 May 2009 10:18:59 +0000

[...] Despite Recession, ExactTarget Raises A Whopping $70 Million For Marketing Software (tags: industry) [...]

By: RTP

RTP — Wed, 13 May 2009 19:26:08 +0000

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.

By: RTP

RTP — Wed, 13 May 2009 19:22:43 +0000

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.

By: RTP

RTP — Wed, 13 May 2009 19:21:22 +0000

Not a spammer, they’re all “opt-in”. All the players are very careful about list acquisition being 100% opt-in.

By: RTP

RTP — Wed, 13 May 2009 19:20:32 +0000

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.

By: John

John — Mon, 11 May 2009 23:32:11 +0000

Eh, means they had cashflow issues. Good for them, sucks for anyone who had a stake in the company. diluted value now…

By: George

George — Mon, 11 May 2009 21:07:37 +0000

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”

By: stephanie

stephanie — Mon, 11 May 2009 20:42:21 +0000

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 $$

By: RizzoSports

RizzoSports — Fri, 08 May 2009 16:15:22 +0000

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?

By: Internet Marketing, Strategy & Technology Links – May 8, 2009 « Sazbean

Fri, 08 May 2009 12:03:44 +0000

[...] Despite Recession, ExactTarget Raises A Whopping $70 Million For Marketing Software (TechCrunch) [...]

By: Jared

Jared — Fri, 08 May 2009 01:05:26 +0000

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.

By: Derek Scruggs

Derek Scruggs — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:18:21 +0000

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.

By: Wayne Lambright

Thu, 07 May 2009 16:54:07 +0000

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.

By: geekevaluation

geekevaluation — Thu, 07 May 2009 14:42:25 +0000

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

By: Engago team

Engago team — Thu, 07 May 2009 10:29:14 +0000

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.

By: Engago team

Engago team — Thu, 07 May 2009 10:25:37 +0000

Nobody reads pushy emails anymore.

By: Morten E. Wulff

Morten E. Wulff — Thu, 07 May 2009 08:12:22 +0000

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.

By: Evan Wired

Evan Wired — Thu, 07 May 2009 02:55:07 +0000

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.

By: George

George — Thu, 07 May 2009 02:21:36 +0000

what does this mean
“I’ve raised about $7,5m the last 1,5 years or so”
???

By: Conspirama

Conspirama — Thu, 07 May 2009 00:43:14 +0000

Despite Recession, ExactTarget Raises A Whopping $70 Million For ……

Marketing email software provider ExactTarget has secured $70 million in funding led by Battery Ventures, with Scale Venture Partners and Montagu Newhall participating. ……

By: Hmmm

Hmmm — Thu, 07 May 2009 00:34:34 +0000

Is this a case of spammer gone good?

By: DIGIMARK

DIGIMARK — Thu, 07 May 2009 00:27:07 +0000

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.

By: Mark Feldman

Mark Feldman — Thu, 07 May 2009 00:18:14 +0000

Email marketing is the future. Nobody answers the phone anymore (or they use email to set up a phone call!).

By: courtney benson

courtney benson — Thu, 07 May 2009 00:11:43 +0000

I’m surprised at the amount of $ in this economy in the email marketing space. Congrads to them!

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 07 May 2009 00:11:02 +0000

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?