Infusionsoft has raised $54 million from Goldman Sachs for its small business sales and marketing automation platform. The investment pushes Infusionsoft’s total venture funding to $71 million. The company raised $9 million in 2007 from Mohr Davidow Ventures and another $8 million from vSpring Capital in 2008, with Mohr Davidow participating.
Infusionsoft will use the capital to build out the business and potentially do an IPO if it makes sense in the next few years.
“This is a decision by the board saying let’s go for it,” Founder and CEO Clate Mask told me last week. “We are building a big, independent company to be around for decades to come. We want to be the Inuit for the sales and marketing business of a company.”
The Infusionsoft SaaS platform caters to small businesses that earn more than $100,000 in sales and have fewer than 25 employees. It helps these companies automate the often disparate sales and marketing platforms that they use to make it one single process. For instance, it automates marketing tasks, such as using SMS to get leads, and then sends emails to those leads on a scheduled basis. Often, small businesses may use Salesforce.com and an email marketing service, such as Constant Contact. Infusionsoft replaces those platforms to become a company’s system of record.
Infusionsoft competes with marketing automation companies, such as Marketo and Eloqua, which Oracle acquired last month.