Just one month after making its very first acquisition, New York-based email marketing company Sailthru has snapped up another. “It’s not been a direct strategy,” CEO Neil Capel told Betabeat over the phone. “At the same time, we’re finding some really talented people and some IP to add to our layer. We keep an active lookout for interesting startps.”
Two weeks ago, Business Insider reported that Sailthru is raising a big round of funding, around $20 million. Mr. Capel dismissed this as “a rumor,” although we wouldn’t have expected any other answer. The company is on track to be cashflow positive by the end of the year, he said. “Our revenue growth has been increasing 15% month-over-month since January!” the company said in a recent blog post.
Sailthru raised $9 million in September, doubled its staff in six months to 68, moved into “some fantastic digs in West Soho,” and recently rolled out a minor redesign. It now serves emails for AOL, the Huffington Post, Fab and Totsy, Mr. Capel said. Its first acquisition, the mobile ecommerce platform Frame, will let Sailthru optimize for HTML on the iPad and other tablets. The second acquisition, Seamless Receipts, will let Sailthru power electronic receipts for its customers with brick-and-mortar stores.
For Sailthru, which tweaks the content of its emails depending on the recipient, the goal is to maximize revenue per user and the lifetime value of the customer behind each email address. “Rather than sending out the same email to everyone on the list, we’re actually sending selected content to each and every user based on their inferred interest,” Mr. Capel said. Electronic receipts are another place for Sailthru to slip coupons and ads into customers’ inboxes.
So who’ll be fed next to Sailthru’s maws? “You never know what we’re looking at on the acquisition side of things,” he said, although there’s nothing coming up. “Not imminently.” There will be another redesign soon, however, he confirmed.
