Simple raises $10m to support marketing management platform expansion

Homegrown marketing performance management vendor, Simple, has raised a fresh $10 million off the back of its early successes in Australia and is now looking to expand into the US market.

According to Simple co-founder and CEO, James Charlesworth, the company has more than double in size over the 2016 financial year, building out its growth team and signing several well-known A/NZ businesses including Xero, Tabcorp, AGL and Insurance Australia Group. Other established clients on its books include Commonwealth Bank, Westpac and AMP.

The new cash injection brings its total funding to date to $13 million.

Simple offers a marketing resource management platform aimed at enterprise marketing functions as well as a number of supporting workflow tools including team management, analytics and marketing risk and compliance. The company has already established a sales team in San Francisco, as well as brought on former Boston Consulting principal for Asia-Pacific, Paul McNamara, as its CFO and head of growth.

Investors lining up to support the Brisbane-based company include US venture capital fund, SparkLabs Global Ventures, and Australian VC player, Perle Ventures.

While marketing has been disrupted and redefined over the past few years, Charlesworth claimed we’re just at the beginning of the transformation.

“Big brands have developed strong digital playbooks but are still struggling to move at the pace that digital channels require,” he commented. “And another big wave of marketing disruption is upon us, driven by big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, automation and bots.

“Now is the time for brands to reorganise for the future. Companies that can leverage this next wave to personalise the customer experience at scale will have an unfair advantage over their competitors.”

McNamara positioned Simple’s proposition as “what Salesforce did for sales. “We’re making it easy to mobilise marketing teams and improve performance,” he said.

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