Aug 02, 2016
Fuels Growth for Next-Generation Content Marketing Automation Platform Leader
PRINCETON, NJ, August 2, 2016 – Edison Partners proudly announced today leading a $4 million Series A financing of Toronto-based LookBookHQ. LookBookHQ is the leader in next-generation B2B content marketing automation. Hyde Park Venture Partners also participated in the round. The investment will fuel product development and scale sales and marketing.
LookBookHQ’s content marketing automation platform helps B2B marketers capitalize on buyer attention and enables already engaged prospects to binge on relevant content within the same session. Seamlessly integrating with existing marketing systems like Marketo and Oracle Eloqua, LookBookHQ accelerates the path to purchase. In a recent customer analysis, the company found that visitors who consumed multiple assets per session via their platform were 2.4X more likely to be accepted by sales, and move 2.3X faster through the funnel.
“LookBookHQ is a clear leader in the content marketing space and has become a strategic weapon to drive awareness and revenue in the B2B sales cycle,” said Gregg Michaelson, Partner at Edison Partners, who has joined the board of directors. “We’re excited to partner with the talented LookBookHQ team to help them accelerate growth and continue to lead their market in innovation.”
Content marketing is a $200B industry and is expected to climb based on a recent Content Marketing Institute study that also indicated 76% of B2B marketers plan to create more content even though only 30% of respondents believe their content marketing efforts are effective. With LookBookHQ’s proven ability to nurture prospects and accelerate the purchase process, the company has rapidly acquired nearly 100 mid-market and enterprise customers and demonstrated 2.4X ARR growth over the last 12 months.
“We have a big vision for the company and we’re very excited to be working with Edison Partners,” said Mark Opauszky, Co-Founder and CEO at LookBookHQ. “We believe their deep understanding and experience with marketing technology will enable us to accelerate our go-to-market activities and take LookBookHQ to the next level.”
LookBookHQ marks the eleventh investment for Edison’s latest fund, Edison Partners VIII. It is also the firm’s twenty-eighth investment by its Marketing Technology practice, which focuses on marketing and ad technology, digital media, mobile, data services, interactive entertainment and the social media economy. Notable exits include ACT! (Sage), Cadient (Cognizant), Dendrite (Cegedim), Vocus, and NetProspex (Dun & Bradstreet). Current investments include: Arkadium, Fishbowl, iQ media, Jornaya, Magnetic, MediaBrix, Motionsoft, Offerpop, Operative, Pixability, RealMatch, Salsa Labs, Terminus and Triplelift.
About LookbookHQ
Successful B2B marketers move their buyers – both known prospects and anonymous visitors – through a journey of relevant content to educate and influence their purchase decisions. LookBookHQ lets marketers deliver these content journeys faster and more effectively by automating the sequence and delivery of content into highly engaging, personalized experiences that allow buyers to consume multiple assets per session and help marketers cultivate and identify sales-ready prospects.
Seamlessly integrating with existing marketing systems like Oracle Eloqua and Marketo, the LookBookHQ platform is an integral part of a next generation content marketing and demand generation infrastructure. Revenue-focused marketers from nearly 100 mid-market and enterprise companies, including Thomson Reuters, Intel Security, Vodafone, Adobe and Western Union have revolutionized their approach to removing friction from the buying process and keeping buyers engaged with LookBookHQ. Headquartered in Toronto, LookBookHQ has delivered stellar results for its customers since its launch in 2013 and helped them win multiple marketing awards, and was itself a Marketo LaunchPoint Partner of the Year 2016 finalist.
About Edison Partners
For 30 years, Edison Partners has been helping CEOs and their executive teams navigate the entrepreneurial journey and build successful companies. Through the unique combination of expansion capital and the Edison Edge platform, consisting of strategic advisory, the Edison Director Network, and executive education, Edison employs a holistic approach to nurturing invention and creating value for growth stage businesses ($5 to $20 million in revenue) in financial technology, healthcare IT, enterprise IT, and marketing technology industries. Edison investment objectives also include: buyouts, recapitalizations, spinouts and secondary stock purchases.
Edison’s active portfolio has created aggregate market value exceeding $5 billion. Its long-tenured team, based in Princeton, NJ, manages more than $1 billion in assets throughout the eastern United States.
