1Mby1M Deal Radar 2015: SALESmanago, Kraków, Poland

SALESmanago is a Polish cloud-based marketing automation platform. It is Europe’s largest and one of the world’s top ten marketing automation platforms. The main value proposition of SALESmanago is that it is fully integrated with mobile marketing automation platform APPmanago, which enables marketing teams to seamlessly make the switch from desktop to mobile. Also, the platform focuses on B2C marketing, as opposed to B2B, which is the sweetspot of products like Marketo.

SALESmanago was founded in 2011 by Grzegorz Blazewicz, CEO and Konrad Pawlus, Vice-President and Chief Technology Officer. Konrad started his professional career over 10 years ago when he became involved in the development of unique solutions for econometric model-based financial forecasting. Previously, he has worked with OpSource and Sabre. Grzegorz has over 15 years of experience working for marketing firms based in New York, London, and Poland.

When he was working as a CMO in various Polish companies, Grzegorz felt a strong need for a marketing automation platform. Thus was born the idea for SALESmanago. He went on to invent the largest and most effective marketing automation platform in not just Poland but the whole of Europe. At that time, the sector wasn’t well established in Central Europe and though they had to work hard to create the market, they ended up with the first mover advantage.

SALESmanago offers a complete and unique set of modules for marketing and sales teams. Their Next Generation Digital Body Language functionalities and Real Time Decision Engine provide real-time personalized predictive offers in all marketing channels via e-mail marketing, dynamic website content, social media, mobile applications, advertising networks as well as call centers and POS. SALESmanago specializes in automation of processes in B2C and e-commerce but the system has also been successfully implemented in B2B companies.

Their location played a crucial role in gaining early traction. Kraków is a fast growing IT center where world class technical universities and companies like Google, Comarch, Sabre, and Boost Communications have established themselves. Polish bureaucracy and initial logistic problems were some of the challenges, but thanks to a hardworking team and a strong belief in their product and business goals, they were able to reach out to Polish companies, teach them about why they need Marketing Automation, and landed clients.

Today, their system is used by over 2000 companies in 30 countries to help them achieve better results in almost every digital marketing and sales field. Their core target is small and medium businesses, but they also have larger clients. Most of their clients are B2C. Customers include Deloitte, Yves Rocher, Timberland, major banks, retailers and large eCommerce players, as well as hundreds of small to medium sized companies. Altogether, SALESmanago customers use the system to manage over 50 million contacts.

Their pricing is flexible and depends on the number of e-mail addresses that are in the customer’s database on their SALESmanago account. Prices start from $213 per month.

According to their research, the marketing automation industry is now worth approximately $1.62 billion with Hubspot dominating the market with a 49.6% share. Marketo and Pardot have 14.9% and 13.6% share, respectively. Act-On and Eloqua bring up the rear end of the tail with 9.5% and 5% share, respectively. As of 2015, over 142,700 businesses are using marketing automation software. Yet, only 369 of the top 10,000 websites have implemented it.

In March 2014, SALESmanago raised $1.7 million for 20% ownership of the company. The investment was led by Rafal Brzoska, the founder and president of InPost, the world’s largest network of parcel lockers and logistics solutions for etailers. The funding was used for R&D and in increasing sales and marketing efforts to expand internationally. Subsequently, they grew to over 500 active paying customers. They have recently set up business development offices in London and New York and have acquired over 30 reselling partners across Spain, Germany, Portugal, India, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, and Ecuador.

SALESmanago has achieved 100% growth for the third consecutive year with revenue of $2 million and net profit of $0.5 million. In 2015, the company plans to double their revenue and profit and expand further in the European Union and the United States. This move will be supported by another financing round with international VC’s in 2016. They are also visiting various world capitals with their International Marketing Automation Roadshow, which are one-day workshops on marketing automation. At this stage, they plan to be based in Poland, with offices around the world and don’t have an exit strategy.

This segment is a part in the series : 1Mby1M Deal Radar 2015