We’ve all read the headlines.
“So far, 2023 is on track to turn in the lowest total investment at this stage in years,” (Crunchbase).
“U.S. venture funding is down 35% year-over-year in deal volume and 49% in deal value,” (InvestmentNews).
Let’s face it. Raising funding in this economy is hard. Raising funding in a crowded market is hard. Raising funding of this magnitude is extremely hard.
And that’s what makes today’s announcement so much sweeter.
As Mark Buffington, Managing Partner of BIP Ventures eloquently put it:
“In this environment, companies have to clear a high bar to raise money. Our investment is a resounding statement about how critical revenue enablement is and how well-positioned Mediafly is to lead the sector. They are the only company that has combined revenue enablement and intelligence — a game-changer for complex enterprise companies.”
Celebrating $80M in Funding: The Time is Now
Today, we are proud to announce an $80 million round to fund the next stage of Mediafly’s innovation and growth.
How did we get here? Let’s delve in.
Together we have more than two decades of experience and expertise in the enablement field — Carson as a founder and entrepreneur and Mary as a tech executive, analyst, researcher, and consultant. Since the birth of the sales technology marketplace circa 2015 to today, we have seen the space mature, evolve, shift, and consolidate. We’ve watched new entrants join and others depart. We’ve witnessed the impact embedded automation and artificial intelligence have had on our and others’ solutions. We’ve experienced the highs and lows of boom and bust markets — and where others retrenched, we found new opportunities.
And here we are again at another watershed moment.
Here’s why:
- B2B selling and buying are transformed. Between digitally oriented buyers, the oversaturation of information, and buyer group expansion — including vocal finance and procurement professionals — sellers face new challenges. Today, 60% of business buyers are Millennials and GenZs.1 Status quo approaches don’t cut it with these buyers who demand immersive and personalized experiences.
- Tech consolidation is surging. In 2020, sales tech vendors evolved from delivering point solutions to multi-products. Shortly thereafter, external market forces created a cost-reduction environment where companies contained costs by reducing the number of vendors in their stack. While there will always be market ebbs and flows, the desire for a unified data set is a much more lasting driver for consolidation. In a recent study, 70% of business leader respondents said they prioritize vendors that offer a single source of data truth.2
- Content influence is skyrocketing. As buyers do more on their own, sellers have less time to impact and influence the sale. As a result, digital content plays a more critical role in “selling” and advancing the cycle, particularly when sellers aren’t in the “room”. When choosing vendors, Forrester found that 89% of B2B buyers say it’s important or very important to receive relevant content at each buying stage. Today, “content” goes far beyond ebooks, solution briefs, and case studies, to include call recordings, business value assessments, videos, proposals, interactive presentations, and more.
These shifts necessitate a modern approach to enablement where delivering connected, immersive experiences that make a lasting impact on buyers, sellers, customers, and partners — are required.
And that’s exactly what you get with Mediafly.
Advancing Enterprise-Centric, Revenue Enablement
There are a number of vendors in our space, but most of them focus on serving startups and small-to-medium-sized businesses — tech selling to tech. While this is a viable approach, it fails to meet the needs of complex enterprise organizations.
At Mediafly, we have spent more than a decade working with the world’s largest brands. We help our customers solve complex go-to-market challenges by delivering flexible, customizable solutions that are used every day by sales, marketing, customer success, enablement, and operations professionals. We help these teams successfully navigate the modern buyer journey.
Selling to the enterprise requires different tools and skills and these differences become even more apparent when deploying technology.
Carson built the company from the ground up to serve the unique needs of the enterprise segment. As such our sweet spot allows us to solve for the following challenges:
- Distributed Teams: Manage content organization, access, and distribution strategies across divisions, teams, regions, and business units.
- Communication Overload: Coordinate strategies, messaging, and updates globally to ensure a unified direction.
- Technology Integration at Scale: Provide resource support to seamlessly integrate with multiple existing systems and tools.
- Data Management, Accuracy, and Scale: Support tens of thousands of sellers, large volumes of transactions, extraction of data, consistency across various systems, reliability, and more.
- Change Management: Consult on best practices to get buy-in from large numbers of stakeholders to overcome resistance to change.
- Content Personalization: Customize sales collateral, microsites, and content for various product lines, regions, and customer segments and scale with the organization as its size and complexity increase.
- Brand Governance: Ensure a consistent brand message while accommodating personalization needs.
- Training Scalability — Support diverse training needs across divisions, varying skill levels, product knowledge, and customer bases.
And we do it all with:
- Best-in-class analytics and insights → so you know what content moves the needle
- Best-in-class video and animation → so your sellers deliver memorable experiences
- Best-in-class UX → to drive organic user adoption
- The most comprehensive platform → one vendor; one data set that addresses a range of use cases
- White glove implementation → ongoing commitment to our partnership and elevated support
We’re proud to be the only provider to combine revenue enablement and revenue intelligence. This round of funding will enable us to continue to innovate — both internally and through M&A — to lead our category and to deliver more value to our customers every day.
What’s Ahead for YOU!
Today we’re celebrating, but we know there’s plenty more work to do. With this new investment, we plan to:
- Accelerate the pace of innovation.
- Elevate customer experiences.
- Make investments in complementary, integrated tech.
- Deliver new services and support offerings.
This funding isn’t an endpoint; it’s a milestone and a catalyst for becoming the leading revenue enablement provider in the category.
We’re ushering in a new era and we’re excited for you to be part of our journey.
Carson & Mary
Endnotes
- Source: Mediafly’s 2023 State of Revenue Enablement Survey
Base: 300 revenue team members from US enterprise enterprise organizations.
- Source: Mediafly’s 2023 State of Revenue Enablement Survey
Base: 300 revenue team members from US enterprise enterprise organizations.
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