Demandbase Closes $15 Million In Funding, Adobe Investor

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Demandbase closed a $15 million round of financing to support growth of the company's online advertising and Web site optimization platform, enabling business to business (B2B) marketers to improve sales and marketing results. Scale Venture Partners led the round, along with Sigma Partners Altos Ventures, Costanoa Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures, and Adobe Systems. Stacey Bishop from Scale Venture Partners will join the board of directors.

Chris Golec, founder and CEO of Demandbase, which supports targeting and the ability to personalize platforms, said the funding will support building out the company's technologies and the rapid adoption by enterprises in the U.S. and Europe. The platform plugs into modules like Site Catalyst, Adobe's measurement platform, but also other personalization, targeting modules, and CRM system.

How do companies serving another business get on a preferred vendor list? For businesses trying to reach buyers at other businesses, keyword targeting alone won't work. It's not effective. "Most B2B companies target 20,000 to 30,000 companies," Golec said. "There are 6 million businesses in the U.S. alone."

Companies selling to other businesses have begun to invest more on their Web sites, integrating marketing automation tools and content management systems. Demandbase's funding will support this trend, along with a move toward using Internet protocol (IP) rather than cookie-based targeting because of the attributes -- such as an industry, revenue and specific company -- required to reach customers.

B2B clients recognize that the buying cycle begins on the Web site long before customers become engaged. Large enterprise clients like Adobe, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell look for leads, but they know 95% of their revenue will come from existing customers, so the focus becomes improving on services to sell more.

Demandbase also somewhat supports social feeds from LinkedIn and Twitter, but Golec said he sees a "more social offering in the next 12 months." The company doesn't have a ton of clients "clamoring for it right now," but the plan is to gain access to data from the social sites, including Facebook.

In 2012, Demandbase grew its customer base by 70% and more than doubled subscription revenue. Golec said the company should more than double revenue this year and next year. Adding new customers in 2013, means they will expand their use of Demandbase's technologies in the following year. The plan is to open international offices later this year.

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