In recent years, venture capital funds have made a big splash in the marketing software sector, both in terms of number of deals and capital invested.

According to the PitchBook Platform, 146 US companies have received funding from venture capitalists since the beginning of 2009. The sudden spike occurred in 2011, when the number rose from 57 deals in 2010 to 76 in 2011. In the same time period, capital invested soared from $ 351 million to $ 639 million. 2012 saw a slight decrease to 65 deals and invested capital fell to $ 593 million. This year is on track to be another strong year, however, with $ 104 million already invested across 10 deals.

Amplifinity is one of the pioneers in the development of social marketing platforms. Amplifinity's Advocacy Management Platform (AMP) is being used by leading companies to generate social behaviour by mobilising customers, employees and partners to refer new leads, promote products and amplify marketing messages. With AMP, brands are able to acquire customers at a fraction of the cost of traditional channels, thereby increasing revenue, retention and profitability. Received a Series A round of Early stage partners of 2.5 MM$ in December 2011.

Optify

Optify provides an indispensable demand generation solution for sophisticated B2B advertisers. Optify helps you generate higher quality inbound leads, drive more demand from your existing leads, and track the impact of all your marketing programmes in one place.

It received a total of 8.85MM$ in two rounds: the first Series A round of 2.75MM$ by several investors led by Mandrona Venture Group and a second round of 6.1MM$ Triangle Peak Partners.

BRAND RAIN

The sector is also boiling in Spain. During the month of January 2013 ANPRO21 has closed a €290K capital increase by TheCrowdangel. It has been advised by ABRA INVEST in the whole process of finding investors and has also been involved in the enlargement.

Brand Rain has an automated system that captures information from 4 million digital sources, 2,100 print sources, 40TV and more than 20 broadcasters. It is the first product that obtains and analyses data by cross-referencing information from traditional and social media. This system is dynamic, so the number of sources captured is growing every day. All this information is then processed by complex algorithmic, artificial intelligence and statistical systems, which evaluate the content of the messages, their context and tone. This makes it possible to obtain information on the evolution of the reputation of brands, products or people.

We will continue to keep you up to date with the latest news in this sector, which is so crucial for marketing and communication departments.

Diego Gutiérrez Zarza