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Marketbright Facing Liquidation Of Assets As Funding For New Version Runs Out


According to industry sources, marketing automation vendor Marketbright, Inc. has assigned all of its operating assets to Credit Management Association (“CMA”) for “liquidation through a general assignment for the benefit of Marketbright’s creditors.”

Marketbright’s former CEO Erik Bower has been engaged to solicit bids for the purchase of rights to Marketbright’s proprietary software (version 1 and version 2) as well as the right to negotiate new contracts with Marketbright customers. The other assets listed included marketing materials, including domain name, web site, contact/lead database, blog and web site content. CMA expressed a willingness to sell the assets individually or in bulk, depending on the best bid.

The notice distributed to potential buyers pointed out that the sale of version 2 was “time sensitive” as the servers hosting it were scheduled to go down June 1. The legal notice also noted that there were “over 150 accounts” that had signed up for the beta of version 2.

While many Marketbright customers were reportedly considering other solutions, industry insiders said they had been told that a deal has been negotiated with Rackspace so that customers would have support for at least three months.

Back in February of this year, Marketbright had announced the release of a beta email marketing system (version 2), offering the first 100 customers who signed up to six months of free service. In April, the company announced on its blog that it was moving to a Freemium model for the email marketing tool.

In May of last year, Hong Kong-based CDC Software completed an investment in Marketbright. As part of the investment, the firms formed a strategic relationship, where CDC Software would serve as an OEM, reseller or referral partner for Marketbright's SaaS marketing automation solutions in the U.S., Canada, EMEA, Asia/Pacific and the rest of world.  In turn, Marketbright was expected to serve as an OEM, reseller or referral partner for CDC Pivotal CRM solutions in the U.S. and Canada. 

Marketbright’s other investors include VC firm Greycroft Partners and Knight’s Bridge Capital Partners, a private equity fund.