January 22, 2013
By Kelly Liyakasa,

Infusionsoft Grows Its Social Business

Sales and marketing automation provider Infusionsoft announced today its acquisition of GroSocial, a Web-based social media marketing software company, for an undisclosed sum.

GroSocial, which builds branded Facebook and Twitter presences with lead capturing and campaign reporting capabilities, will continue to operate as a standalone product team in Utah and each of its 18 employees will join parent company Infusionsoft. The company was founded in 2010 and counts more than 30,000 users.

"Our customers were asking for tools to help them build a professional presence online so that they could do more lead-generation activities in social," comments Greg Head, chief marketing officer at Infusionsoft.

Likewise, GroSocial customers that use social media for lead generation to, ideally, convert those leads to sales, needed a way to "make the most of" the leads they were acquiring. This is where both companies fit each other's needs, Head says.

Infusionsoft, which just banked $54 million in growth capital financing led by investor Goldman Sachs, is putting that money toward expanding its core Infusionsoft product, an all-in-one sales and marketing automation solution with ecommerce solutions for small businesses to link online storefronts to their contact records and campaigns. The money is also being allocated for small-business marketing education initiatives and partner programming.

The social marketing space has been ripe with growth and acquisitions in the past year, particularly by larger enterprise players like Salesforce.com and Oracle, but the market for small business is still relatively untapped. And, many times, it's easier to test or roll out tools in smaller organizations.

"To some extent, social's been a boon and a leveler for small businesses. They don't have to deal with a lot of corporate overhead or legal and they don't have to wait six months for approval," Head remarks. "Small businesses can try things very fast and iterate very fast."

Head says 70 percent of Infusionsoft customers are using Facebook to connect with their customers and they want ways to measure return on social in ways that work practically for their businesses. This is the "primary requirement," Head says, when Infusionsoft makes changes to its software or evaluates partnerships.