iContact raises $40 million in Series B

JMI Equity backs email-marketing company, bringing total funds to $53 million

Email marketing just got a big boost of confidence -- a $40-million boost, to be specific. IContact, a company that provides services for creating and tracking email marketing campaigns, announced Monday that it has raised $40 million in series B funding from JMI Equity, bringing the company’s total funding to $53 million. Previous investors included IDEA Fund Partners, Updata Partners, and North Atlantic Capital.

“We are very excited to be working with JMI.  They have a strong track record of helping entrepreneurs build online marketing companies to their full potential," wrote iContact co-founder Aaron Houghton, in an email.

Founded in 2003, the Durham, NC-based company offers email marketing solutions to small- and mid-sized businesses, as well as non-profit organizations.  Features include customizable email templates so that businesses can craft professional email marketing campaigns, drag and drop message building, SpamCheck, which checks email messages against popular spam filters, integrated survey tools, and a newsletter editor, among others. 

The service also offers a campaign tracking feature that allows customers to see how contacts are responding to emails.  Message reports include information on how many contacts open, click, forward, or unsubscribe, and even include information on the behavior of individual contacts to determine how they are responding to emails. 

What does this funding mean for iContact? 

“We will continue to fulfill our vision of building iContact into a great global technology company based in North Carolina,” Houghton said to me. “These new funds give us the ability to choose the best option for continued growth in the future.”

According to the company’s blog: “We’ll be using these new funds to make significant investments in sales and marketing, back-end technology, our product features and usability, global expansion, and of course, our people that drive all of our success.”

For-profit and socially conscious

The announcement of iContact’s series B success comes two weeks after the company’s acceptance as a B Corporation.  Certified B Corporations are companies that harness their power as a business to address social and environmental concerns through performance standards and the cultivation of organized goals and actions. 

IContact participates in the “conscious capitalism movement” through its 4-1s program, which donates 1 percent of employee time, product, payroll, and equity to social and environmental causes.  Among their 4-1s contributions are 2.5 paid workdays that employees can spend volunteering, and free email marketing solutions to qualified organizations in North Carolina.  As a B Corportation, iContact is reviewed, assessed, and scored in the B Impact Report, which quantifies the progressive impact that a B certified business has on major social and environmental issues.  

In addressing how iContact’s funding will impact their social and environmental goals, Houghton commented: “We continue our commitment to being a socially responsible venture-backed technology company. We have confirmed our commitment to these ideals through our 4-1s Community Social Responsibility program and our recent acceptance as a B Corporation. We will continue these programs and more going forward.”

Image source: Bcorporation.net