January 16, 2014
By Maria Minsker, contributing writer

Salesfusion Secures $8.25 Million in Series B Funding from Noro-Moseley Partners, Other Investors

Marketing automation software provider Salesfusion has raised $8.25 million in Series B funding from a group of cloud software investors, including a major investment from Noro-Moseley Partners. Over the past year, Salesfusion has doubled its revenue and gross profit, attributing its growth to changes in the marketing automation space, including new interest from midmarket clients and growing adoption rates among clients outside of the technology realm. With the additional contribution, the company is now working with about $10 million in total funding, and is "ready to accelerate in 2014," according to CEO Christian Nahas.

In the coming year, Nahas hopes the company will be able to take advantage of the growth occurring in the marketing automation field in general, which is expected to reach about $4.8 billion by 2015, IDC predicts. According to Nahas, the company is prepared to make inorganic investments through acquisitions and invest organically by allocating more funds to its own internal marketing.

"There are a lot of acquisitions going on in the space right now, and there is a place for that, but we're also looking to spend on getting our name out there," Nahas says. Salesfusion is investing heavily in product improvement and innovation as well, creating complementary solutions for its marketing automation software, and making its existing tool better and easier to use with smoother integrations and more intuitive design.

"While a lot of companies promise integrations, very often these integrations still push people back and forth [between two different solutions], and this doesn't deliver a very smooth experience. We're trying to eliminate these disruptions to deliver [a] more seamless user experience," Nahas says. Products that present marketing automation as a series of "checkboxes" deliver a disjunctive experience and are becoming obsolete, he explains. What businesses are looking for now are solutions that are organized in the way that marketers think. For example, Salesfusion is developing tools that offer better predictive capabilities, such as automated lead scoring models.

"We're working on introducing a concept that can determine the best leads without having a marketer do all that work. If we can make marketers' jobs a little easier for them, then we're doing our job," Nahas says."But, ultimately, what's most important is that we develop solutions that [are] also helping them drive bottom line results."

In addition to growth and development geared toward its solutions, the company has been physically expanding as well. Salesfusion tripled its staff last year and had to move out of its Atlanta headquarters facility into a bigger space. Nahas says he's excited about the direction in which Salesfusion is currently heading, and the company's newest investors are optimistic as well. "Salesfusion is on a fantastic trajectory and has all the qualities we look for in an investment. They have a unique product in a hot market," Alan Taetle, general partner at Noro-Moseley Partners, said in a statement.