• by Jess Nelson , Ray Schultz , August 22, 2017

Sigstr, a cloud platform for employee email personalization, has secured $5 million in Series A funding.

The round was led by Hyde Park Venture Partners, with participation from Battery Ventures, HubSpot, Grand Ventures and High Alpha Capital. This marks HubSpot's third ever investment, following participation in the Series B rounds of Terminus and PandaDoc.

Sigstr will primarily use the funds for research and development, with plans to expand the company's engineering, sales and customer success teams. Sigstr has 30 employees, but plans to double its team size in the next 18 - 24 months. The Indianapolis-based company also plans to move into larger offices next month.

Sigstr's specialty lies in an often overlooked area of email: the email signature. Sigstr's software transforms static employee signatures into dynamic and clickable ads -- effectively creating a new marketing opportunity within the email channel. 

“Every business in the world runs an employee email system," says Bryan Wade, chief executive officer at Sigstr. "The first thing you do as a new employee is get a corporate email. The first thing you do in the morning and the last thing you do at night is check your email. There are a staggering amount of touch points over employee email."

Sigstr’s SaaS product is used by customers such as Angie's List, Invoca, Terminus, United Way, Act-On and the Indiana Pacers, and supports all email clients such as Gmail and Microsoft Outlook. Since the email signatures are dynamic, they re-populate and change upon every open with the latest data available for added personalization. 

"We see the future of marketing as authentic one-to-one communication," explains Wade. "Our goal is to put tools in the hands of marketers to make every employee interaction more authentic."

Sigstr also recently launched Sigstr for Events, a product that that allows event marketers to tap into employee email to drive event registrations and involve speakers. It has also recently introduced an Account-Based Marketing feature, allowing clients to target accounts in specific regions and industries. 

For its part, HubSpot has launched a robust program of investing in startups. In May, the company poured $10.3 million in Series B funding for Terminus, a marketing software firm, and $15 million into a Series B round for PandaDoc, a provider of document management software according to Xconomy.

HubSpot invests in companies that may become its partners—“if they’re not already,” Xconomy adds.

For example, “HubSpot customers have seen impressive returns when using HubSpot and Sigstr together,” states Brad Coffey, chief strategy officer at HubSpot. “Email signature marketing is such a natural way to deliver key content to customers and prospects.”

Xconomy notes that “HubSpot’s decision to enter the corporate VC fray is notable because the company, which has a market valuation of more than $2.5 billion, is a pillar of the Boston-area marketing and sales technology sector.”

HubSpot recently acquired Kemvi, an artificial intelligence and machine learning startup.