What: Account-Based Marketing firm Demandbase has raised a US$65 million in funding led by existing investor Sageview Capital along with new investor Silver Lake Waterman.
Why it matters: The company plans to increase headcount from 250 to more than 300 with a particular focus on data science and engineering roles.
Demandbase
, the Account-Based Marketing (ABM), announced that it has closed US$65 million in funding. The new funding was led by existing investor Sageview Capital along with new investor Silver Lake Waterman, Silver Lake’s late stage growth capital fund. The round also includes existing investors Adobe Systems, Altos Ventures, Greenspring Associates, Scale Venture Partners, Sigma Partners and Split Rock Partners.
The company will use the funds to extend its ABM leadership position, accelerate innovation of its Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine-learning technology, and expand ABM adoption worldwide. Demandbase has received a total of more than US$150 million in funding to date.
ABM has rapidly emerged as one of the most exciting new marketing technology categories. An account-based approach enables B2B companies to identify customers in the market for their products, advertise to them across the Internet, engage them with personalized content, and then turn that engagement into sales activity and ultimately revenue. According to B2B research and advisory firm, SiriusDecisions, ABM adoption doubled in 2016 over 2015, and is slated to grow even more in 2017. As the ABM pioneer and market leader, Demandbase has more than quadrupled in revenue over the past three years.
“As of March 2017, the number of ABM-related inquiries we’ve received has already exceeded the total number of inquiries for 2016. ABM is getting all this attention because of the strong return on investment,” said Todd Berkowitz, a Gartner Research Vice President who focuses on B2B technology marketing and sales, and Julian Poulter, a Gartner Research Director for CRM Sales and Marketing. “ABM has the potential to be one of the most transformative go-to-market strategies that a technology service provider will undertake.”1
“Companies spend more than $40 billion every year marketing themselves digitally to other businesses. ABM provides a much more efficient way to laser-target the right accounts and better align marketing spend with sales activity, said Chris Golec, CEO of Demandbase. “We are at the forefront of the ABM revolution, and this additional financing will allow us to fast-track the innovation behind our AI-powered ABM solutions and make our platform a must-have for all B2B companies.”
At the core of Demandbase’s ABM platform are a set of proprietary B2B databases that grow by billions of B2B interactions every month. AI is applied to this data at scale to bring sophisticated solutions to a range of targeting, marketing and sales solutions. The company acquired data science company Spiderbook in 2016 to extend its AI capabilities. Demandbase pairs the AI and machine learning algorithms with its B2B data to provide ABM solutions that can identify every B2B company in the world, map relationships between companies, generate useful insights, and deliver the right content to the right companies.
Today, some of the world’s largest technology, manufacturing, healthcare and financial services companies rely on Demandbase to help them better attract, engage and sell to existing and future customers.
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