Demandbase Secures Funding, Launches New Services

demandbase screenshotSupporting its efforts to transform the practice of lead generation for sales and marketing professionals, startup Demandbase today is expected to announce an additional $8 million in venture funding.

Sigma Partners led this latest round, while previous investors, including Altos Ventures and Adobe Systems, also participated. Bob Spinner from Sigma Partners will assume a seat on Demandbase's board of directors.

The funding will be used to grow the company as it scales its technology platform, named Demandbase Central, to support its first two on-demand services, which also are debuting today.

The first service, Demandbase Stream is a free downloadable Web application for B2B sales and marketing people to find business prospects visiting their companies' Web sites, view their interests, and contact those prospects.

From a ticker that streams site visitors across the desktop, users can view business traffic information, company details, and find business contacts unique to the product or service being sold. Demandbase aims to help companies convert the 98% of un-monetized Web traffic already paid for with online investments in Web sites, search and email marketing.

"In the world of B2B search, cost-per-leads are hundreds of dollars with Google," said Chris Golec, founder and CEO of Demandbase. "We're helping companies extract the full value of that investment by showing them which real prospects are visiting their site, and how to reach them right away."

Once a user clicks on the link to connect with Direct, he or she can choose to cross reference that company with any contacts within an existing social network, or in the company's CRM system before purchasing a desired contact.

"Web site analytics tools are designed for the webmaster, not sales and marketing people in need of selling opportunities" Golec said. "Our platform and new Stream technology unite Web traffic and B2B marketing efforts together with the sales team."

According to Golec, 10% to 15% of traffic coming to company's sites is targeted, and potential valuable to sales people.

The second service that launches today, Demandbase Direct, offers online access to the Central platform with a simple interface in a pay-as-you-go model free of subscriptions, minimums or trial periods.

The Demandbase Central platform incorporates feeds from information partners, including D&B/Hoovers, Zoom Info, Lexis Nexis Business Information, Data Marketing Solutions, List Orbit, Opt-In Builders, and others, as well as information from across the Web.

The platform only tracks businesses with revenue over $5 million. But, within its network, Demandbase has already catalogues at 6 million business contacts.

During its six month beta period, marketing and sales people from "thousands of B2B companies," including GE, State Farm, and SAS, have tested the platform, according to Golec.

The goal, he added, is essentially to up-sell these companies large contracts, which would replace pay-as-you-go relationships. "We're working on these large contracts, which we hope to announce in the near future."

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