Often times, sales and marketing are seen as a single category in a business plan. Ironically, when creating apps and services to support them, they usually become separate entities, as do the teams that deal with sales and marketing in organizations. Today, however, a startup called Terminus – which builds a platform that looks at sales and marketing more integrated through account-based marketing – announces funding and growth, a sign of how its approach is gaining momentum.
The startup has completed a Series C valued at $ 90 million. The valuation is based on sources of around 400 million US dollars. That is a huge leap from Terminus’ valuation in its latest round, which was $ 96 million after the money in 2018, according to PitchBook data.
Part of the reason for the hike is likely the huge focus digital marketing had, especially over the last year – a time when, due to the pandemic, a lot more legacy and traditional channels are no longer as visible). Account-based marketing alone was estimated to have a market opportunity of $ 458 billion in 2018.
Another reason for the interest in Terminus lies in the customer base in particular. The company has around 1,000 corporate customers, including departments from IBM, Salesforce, Thomson Reuters, and others.
“We are building the new marketing automation,” said CEO Tim Kopp in an interview. “We think account-based marketing is the most important thing that happened in sales software. The teams are moving from lead-based to account-based approaches, and we’ve now looked at all points of engagement, a modern B2B marketing cloud. “
The stock round will be led by Great Hill Partners, in which former investors Atlanta Ventures and Edison Partners and new financier Hallet Capital also participate. The funding brings the total for Terminus, headquartered in Atlanta, GA and Indianapolis, IN, to approximately $ 120 million.
The world of marketing has changed a lot in the past two decades, with the rise in Internet usage and the proliferation of digital services that power a large business in today’s “martech”.
The area that Terminus specifically focuses on is account-based marketing. In short, this is a way for B2B sales and marketing teams to conceptualize potential goals for a business not as individual units but as collective groups. This means working closer together to work company-wide, providing a way to market something to more than one person, and increasing the chances of connecting with someone and then closing the sale.
Terminus’ platform and approach, according to CEO Kopp, essentially bring the functions of sales and marketing together rather than transferring the work from one to the other (eliminating the administrator and the cost of working with different software programs within these groups) The).
“We see an overwhelming opportunity in bringing marketing and sales together,” he said in an interview. “Marketing attends sales meetings, and sales has become a part of customer success where you market to your own customers. It’s an area that customers stink in because they usually get it from the sales or marketing side. “
Terminus’ platform today consists of a “data studio” that brings together sales information, account information, and other data sources to create a list of potential targets. In addition, a marketing engine has been developed that offers the possibility of creating advertising, email and web campaigns and chatbot management. Part of it was built in-house, another part was brought into the company through acquisitions (for example, through the acquisition of Ramble last April).
Terminus is far from the only company active in this field. Others are Marketo (part of Adobe), 6sense, Sendoso, and many others. Terminus’ approach is to bring various aspects of the marketing and sales process (analysis, orchestration, automation and execution) together on one platform.
Fittingly, the startup’s name was based on an early nickname for Atlanta and was used as a reference to its goal of being the single for its clients’ various marketing and sales activities.
This is one reason why investors have knocked.
“Terminus continues to redefine how teams go to market and innovate how businesses generate revenue in a digital-first environment,” said Derek Schoettle, growth partner at Great Hill. “We have been so impressed with this team, the significant growth the company has seen over the past year, their continued product innovation and the huge market opportunities that lie ahead.”