ReachForce Secures $4.6 Million In Funding
- Written by Demand Gen Report Team
- Published in Industry News
The marketing automation momentum continues. ReachForce recently announced the closing of $4.6 million in growth financing. MK Capital, which successfully financed marketing automation vendor Aprimo, and master data management leader, Initiate Systems, led the round with participation from current ReachForce investor, GSA Venture Partners. In conjunction with the financing, Mark Koulogeorge, Managing General Partner of MK Capital, will join the ReachForce Board of Directors.
ReachForce significantly expanded its customer base in 2010, adding over 100 new customers. The company also said its Information-as-a-Service solutions saw 100% annual growth. Major customer wins included Citrix Online, Juniper Networks and Research in Motion (RIM), as well as new channel partners including Televerde, The Pedowitz Group and Ziff Davis Enterprises.
"Marketing executives are under tremendous pressure to improve results,” said Bob Riazzi, CEO of ReachForce, in a company press release. “New customer acquisition is critical to our customers and that is where we focus our value. High performing demand generation initiatives require high quality information. Reachforce customers quickly realize value because we deliver cleaner, more complete and accurate information about their targets, prospects and customers than they previously had, and we deliver it directly to the systems and people that need it. Our customers often realize 100% improvement in results, so they don't begin a new marketing campaign without ReachForce. "
According to Marketing Sherpa's 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, 78% of respondents said that generating high quality leads was their top priority for 2011. According to BtoB Magazine, "The top marketing goal cited by respondents for this year is customer acquisition (69.1%)" and this is a major shift after two years of cost cutting and focus on customer retention during the recession. As a result, marketing automation is experiencing a huge inflection point in adoption. The emerging trend to combine high quality marketing information with powerful marketing automation platforms such as Marketo, Eloqua, IBM/ Unica, Silverpop and Teradata/Aprimo will drive significant improvements in marketing ROI.
"I am excited about our partnership with MK Capital and what their domain expertise in our market will mean to our company, customers and partners," Riazzi said. "We now have the requisite resources to continue to deliver increasing value to our customers and scale our business. We have solid momentum coming out of 2010 and the ReachForce Team is very excited about our prospects in 2011 and beyond."