Marketo Founder Raises $10M For Engagio, His B2B Sequel

Jon Miller has already built a solid marketing automation tool in the form of Marketo, which went public in May of 2013 and currently has a market cap of more than $1 billion. So it makes sense for him to tackle the same space with a different product.

Meet Engagio.

The company, which offers account-based marketing for businesses, is not even in beta yet, but that hasn’t stopped FirstMark Capital from leading a $10 million Series A in the company.

So what is ‘account-based marketing’?

Miller describes it “fishing with spears instead of a net.”

For most marketers, especially those marketing consumer products, success is measured by the total number of people reached with a campaign. But when you move into the space of B2B marketing, it’s not as simple as sending out an email to tons people and hoping for a response.

jonmiller“With consumer marketing it doesn’t matter as much which specific fish you catch, just about the total number of fish you can catch,” said Miller. “There is a whole class of marketers and companies out there that are going for big fish, selling six- and seven-figure deals, and fishing with a net just won’t work for them.”

Engagio takes a more targeted and personalized approach, one that understands the hierarchy of the organization to which a user is marketing and offers tools for web personalization, analytics over time, etc. Engagio is able to determine the decision-maker in an organization and tell users about their progress towards reaching that decision-maker directly. The system also maps out identities based on the multiple profiles available for a single person online, such as LinkedIn, personal email, work email, and Twitter.

Engagio can also create and customize web content so that it is personalized to a specific brand or company when someone from that company visits the site, and the platform helps marketers buy very specific Facebook ads that are targeted directly at a specific organization.

So let’s say you’re marketing manager at Pepsico and you’re in charge of selling to the 7/11 account. Engagio maps out the hierarchy of regional managers, branch owners, franchise owners, merchandising managers, and more so that you fully understand the entire team of people to which you’re pitching. You can create web content for a specific pitch or plan some schmoozy dinner with the franchise owners, all the while watching the relationships grow and evolve over time.

Where Marketo focused on the total number of people reached in a campaign, Engagio focuses more on the type of engagement happening within a specific account. Various dashboards show progress based on the hierarchical level of the person with whom you’re communicating, the proximity to the decision maker, visits to a specific website, RSVPs to high-end events, and the list goes on.

Engagio is now accepting sign-ups for the beta program, which will begin in the coming months.