User:Edtank/ExactTarget

ExactTarget is an email marketing and interactive marketing provider headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana. The privately owned company was founded in December 2000 by Scott Dorsey, Chris Baggott, and Peter McCormick, for an initial investment of $200,000.

ExactTarget provides on-demand software for permission-based email marketing, mobile marketing and social media marketing. They provide their software as Software as a Service (SaaS) ; other examples of SaaS are Salesforce, WebEx, and Google Apps. ExactTarget sells their software directly to the end user – typically a corporate marketing department – or through a reseller network.

Company Information
In 2003, CareerBuilder.com selected ExactTarget software to create and deliver their email marketing, the volume of which Online Media Daily estimated at “millions of emails” per month. In the first quarter of 2005, ExactTarget added more than 250 customers, bringing its total number of customers under contract to 3,250. In 2006, ExactTarget was ranked number 56 on the Inc. 500 listing of the fastest growing private companies in the United States, based on revenue growth from 2002 through 2005. In 2007, ExactTarget was ranked number 43 on Entrepreneur Magazine’s Hot 500 Fastest Growing Businesses in America.

The company filed with the Security & Exchange Commission in September 2007 to become publicly traded, but withdrew from the IPO process in May 2009 after determining, according to CEO Dorsey, that their growth “was better served by staying private.” ExactTarget added more than 1,000 customers in 2009 and ended the year with $114 million in booked sales. They also secured $145 million in venture capital in 2009, with $70 million being raised in May 2009 from Battery Ventures, Scale Venture Partners and Montagu Newhall and another $75 million in December 2009 from Technology Crossover Ventures.

The company lists among its customers well-known brands including Expedia.com, Papa John’s, CareerBuilder.com, Gannett Co., The Home Depot, and Wellpoint.

ExactTarget hosts an annual multiday email marketing user conference in their hometown of Indianapolis. The 2009 event, Connections 09, featured keynote presentations from CEO Scott Dorsey, COO Scott McCorkle, author Malcolm Gladwell, and actress Marlee Matlin.

Application
ExactTarget’s software enables companies to engage in one-to-one marketing by providing organizations a single platform to connect with customers through email, integrated text messaging, voice messaging, Internet landing pages and social media. ExactTarget’s technology allows subscribers to determine what content they want from a company, when they want to receive it, and in which format they want to receive it. ExactTarget created and trademarked the slogan Subscribers Rule! to promote their philosophy of serving the email subscriber, delivering value, and honoring subscriber preferences.

In 2009, the Indianapolis Symphony employed ExactTarget software to permit concert-goers to vote for a concert’s encore performance from their cell phones. The software’s Social Forward feature embeds social sharing functionality into marketing emails, allowing the email recipient to forward the email’s content to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or other social networking or bookmarking site, or forward the email to a friend.

In addition to traditional methods of subscribing to email lists, ExactTarget software allows users to subscribe through text messages. The software can also send an automatic update to a company’s Twitter followers when a marketing email is launched.

Acquisitions
In 2009, ExactTarget expanded into the UK and European markets with the acquisition of KeyMail Marketing, a significant reseller of ExactTarget software to European end users.

ExactTarget acquired CoTweet, a business-oriented front-end to Twitter, on March 2, 2010. The acquisition created an enterprise solution to managing social media, email marketing, and mobile marketing within a single software platform. CoTweet powers the Twitter campaigns of major brands including Microsoft, McDonald's, Sprint, Ford, Dell, Pepsi, Whole Foods, Intuit, Salesforce.com, USA Today, and Coca-Cola.

Integrations
Integration with Coremetrics web analytics enables ExactTarget customers to automatically generate personalized emails to website visitors who abandon an online transaction before completing it. The company’s ExactTarget Embedded product provides an API for developers to integrate features such as dynamic content, relational data support, and support for new messaging technologies such as SMS and voice into their applications. ExactTarget provides built-in integration with customer relationship management (CRM) systems including Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Salesforce.com, and with web analytics software from Omniture and WebTrends.

Awards
In 2003, co-founder and CEO Scott Dorsey was named Ernst & Young's Indiana Entrepreneur of the Year. ExactTarget was ranked a “Strong Performer” in the 2004 Forrester Research "Wave" study for the software’s ease of use and capabilities for managing brand consistency and legislative compliance. CFO Traci Dolan was honored in 2009 as a CFO of the Year by the Indianapolis Business Journal in its Private Companies with Revenue under $100 Million category. The ExactTarget Reseller Edition software was selected by ClickZ as the top E-mail Marketing Tool in the 2009 ClickZ Marketing Excellence Awards.

In December of 2009, a Forrester Research "Wave" study listed ExactTarget among its Best of the Email Service Providers. The study evaluated firms with at least $10 million in global billings which send at least 200 million emails a month.