Atlanta ABM Company Terminus Acquires Email Marketing Platform Sigstr, Welcomes New CEO

Terminus executives

Shortly after welcoming new CEO Tim Kopp at the beginning of December, Atlanta-based marketing startup Terminus has announced its acquisition of employee email engagement marketing platform Sigstr.

An executive chairman role at Terminus since this past summer, Kopp says his familiarity with the company is part of what makes his new role special. He’s been involved with the five-year-old account-based marketing (ABM) company since its early days; in fact, co-founder Sangram Vajre once served as VP on Kopp’s marketing team when Kopp was CMO at cross-channel marketing automation company ExactTarget.

“There are not many companies that come around like Terminus, in terms of timing the market,” Kopp tells Hypepotamus. “Eric, Sangram and the founding team made something out of nothing, and grew it to hundreds of customers, bringing in tens of millions in revenue. This is the state that I like — coming in when it’s ready to scale and go big making acquisitions, and get ready for the next run.”

As for the synergies between Indiana-based Sigstr and Terminus, Kopp says both companies are built around the “great, giant-growing disruptive markets, and great teams” that he believes all successful companies need to have a good start.

The Sigstr acquisition, according to Kopp, also adds important functionality that Terminus will use to increase and improve sales integration and marketing channels. By placing targeted banner ads segmented by recipients’ email addresses within employee email signatures, Sigstr turns corporate communications into an engagement- and traffic-building marketing platform.

“Combining our solution with the Terminus platform activates a brand new channel that has gone untapped in marketing programs, and completely changes how businesses engage with target accounts,” Sigstr CEO Bryan Wade said in a statement.

The new account intelligence gained from Sigstr should also extend ABM deeper and wider into the marketing funnel, helping companies zero in on preferred accounts and hone marketing messages. Kopp says technology has made it more possible to scale ABM, especially after the successes of Marketo, Pardot and others.

“The world has moved,” Kopp says. “Now, if you walk into a boardroom and you’re talking about leads to the CMO, you should be fired. That’s not where the future is. Every board I’ve been part of as a VC is not as interested in leads as we are toward more of an account-based view. And it’s not just one person that happens to have arrived on your website, and may or may not be in a buying cycle. This is more intelligent understanding at a proactive level. Higher quality, less quantity.”

Kopp says that the proliferation of SaaS companies is part of the reason why ABM is taking off. He also says ABM has gained popularity because marketers can’t get away with the same results they delivered before so much data was available, which has raised the industry bar.

With this acquisition, Kopp says he’s very excited about where Terminus is today, and where it’s going, especially now that Sigstr is part of the company.

“I’m fundamentally convinced that ABM is the next marketing automation,” Kopp says. “The market is just spectacular.”