Constant Contact has made a really big bet on presence management with the acquisition today of SinglePlatform, a provider of a one-stop “write once, read everywhere” presence management network that provides parsed searching capabilities and services for 600,000 SMBs, including 10,000 paying customers. The service also has valuable partnerships with a growing roster of major media players, including The New York Times, YP (formerly ATTi.com), Foursquare, Urbanspoon, Tribune, Gannett and Village Voice Media.
It has shaped up to be a big week for presence management solutions, with Yext picking up $27 million from investors to build on its base of 50,000 SMBs. The investor group includes Marker, a new fund, along with CrunchFund and existing Yext investors Sutter Hill Ventures, Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) and WGI Group. The new investment gives Yext a valuation of $270 million.
Constant Contact is paying SinglePlatform $65 million in cash, $5 million in employment retention and has set aside another $30 million for earn-outs. Single Platform, which is based in New York and has about 100 employees, had raised $4.45 million from investors, including DFJ Gotham Ventures, New World Ventures, First Round Capital, RRE Ventures and Seamless Founder Jason Finger. SinglePlatform Founder and CEO Wiley Cerilli becomes GM and VP.
While the acquisition of SinglePlatform is expensive, it certainly makes a nice extension for Constant Contact, which has been evolving from a company that initially provided email newsletter management for SMBs to a broader SMB promotions platform. It now services 500,000 paying SMBs, which are being eyed by everyone from scheduling companies to Yelp, each seeing that social alerts and tagging quickly become substitutes for email. But Constant Contact has really gone on the offensive this year with a number of acquisitions and developments that have greatly diversified the company.
In a conference call this morning, Constant Contact CEO Gail Goodman said to get the full revenue earn-out, the SinglePlatform team would need to bring in $74 million over the next two years.
Constant Contact CEO Gail Goodman is keynoting SMB Digital Marketing in Chicago Sept. 17-19.
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Well done to the Single Platform team!
This is a great achievement.
Its also further proof that if you’re going to be “local” you need to have a whole suite of products and services for SMB’s to choose between. The days of being a stand alone directory are dead.
I think that this is further proof that anyone that plans to be in “local” in 5 years time needs to have a solid platform that can offer a whole suite of digital services.