Genius.com Adds $7M, But Competitor ExactTarget Tops It With $70M
VentureWire
By Scott Denne
With its main competitor loading up on capital, Genius.com Inc., a provider of hosted marketing software and services, has secured $7 million in its Series D round.
New investor Deep Fork Capital led the round, which included participation from all the company's existing investors. The company declined to disclose the valuation. Deep Fork Capital could not be reached for comment.
Genius.com offers its customers a range of tools that enable them to track certain activities of sales prospects to help marketing departments better determine when to hand off a prospect to its sales team.
For example, the company's core service, Genius Pro, provides automated emails that are customized to individual sales prospects. It also records whether the prospect opened the email, went to the Web site and what they did there. Results can be reported individually and used together to collect information about a marketing campaign.
Genius.com's primary competitors are Eloqua Corp., which automates the marketing workflow and is backed by Bay Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners and JMI Equity Fund; and ExactTarget Inc., an on-demand provider of email marketing software.
ExactTarget confirmed Thursday that it has raised a new $70 million round from growth equity firm Technology Crossover Ventures. That investment comes after the firm canceled its IPO plans and raised $70 million in May from Scale Venture Partners, Battery Ventures and Montagu Newhall Associates.
Since Genius.com's last round, a $19 million Series C round in December 2007, it has launched two new products, and it plans to use the current round to continue to add additional products and improve its integration with customer relationship management and sales force automation products, said David Thompson, Genius.com's co-founder and chief executive.
Last month it launched Genius URLs, a URL shortening service that enables companies to advertise on social media sites and track information about marketing campaigns. This spring, the company released Genius Enterprise, which provides additional features to its earlier offering, such as automated lead nurturing and automatic conversion of prospects from marketing to sales.
The company will also use the capital to add to its sales team and take the company to profitability, Thompson said. The company has more than 500 customers, 120 of which it landed in the last eight months, he said.
Its customers include BT group PLC, Intuit Inc. and Lumension Security Inc.
Prior to this round, the company had raised $34 million from Accel Partners, Emergence Capital Partners, Mohr Davidow Ventures and Walden International.
Genius.com's board includes Mary Coleman of Walden International, Gordon Ritter of Emergence Capital and Nancy Schoendorf of Mohr Davidow Ventures.