Terminus talks about its BrightFunnel acquisition and the marrying of ABM with measurement

The executive leadership team of account-based marketing software firm Terminus says its acquisition of BrightFunnel will bring deeper analytics and multi-touch attribution to its combined base of B2B customers.

Terminus, based in Atlanta, announced its purchase of San Francisco-based BrightFunnel — which makes a revenue intelligence suite among other offerings — on Wednesday. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. In a blog post, Terminus said the acquisition would effectively tie together its marketing execution capabilities with effective measurement based on artificial intelligence (AI) technology. The addition of approximately 40 BrightFunnel employees will raise the size of the team to 150, Terminus said.

Terminus CEO and co-founder Eric Sprett shared the news in a video on Wednesday:

Bryan Brown, Terminus chief product officer, answered questions from B2B News Network about the potential long-term impact on the company and ABM in general following the acquisition.

You’ve noted that the acquisition accelerates Terminus’ product vision by two years. What might be the first features or benefits customers see through the combined entity?

There are two major highlights among some of the earliest features we will release now that BrightFunnel is part of the Terminus ABM solution. First, we are going to close the measurement gap that B2B marketers face when demonstrating the impact digital advertising campaigns have on revenue by making account-level data available for attribution and analytics. Secondly, all that previously unattributable pre-form fill web traffic coming from target accounts will now be available for attribution and analytics in BrightFunnel via Terminus’ Account-Based Visitor ID solution. BrightFunnel returns the favor by adding “known” visitors (or contacts already in your CRM) to Terminus Account-Based Visitor ID solution, giving sales and marketing teams access to both named and anonymous web engagement data in one place.

Given that Terminus has significantly more customers, what will be the key ways you introduce the value of BrightFunnel’s capabilities to the wider market?

If you think about an organization’s ability to measure ABM in terms of “crawl, walk, run” then attribution is like starting at “run.” One of the most exciting things about the acquisition of BrightFunnel is that it accelerates our vision of making it easier to measure ABM efforts and therefore more accessible to all marketers — even those still at “crawl” or “walk.”

Might there be any sectors, verticals or sizes of customers Terminus might be better able to target as a result of this combination, or is this just more about bringing more value/ROI to CMOs’ MarTech investments?

A: While the Terminus ABM platform today can be used by companies of all sizes, the addition of powerful attribution and analytics capabilities will strengthen our ability to meet the complex needs of enterprise organizations. Large enterprises are known to have lengthy, complex sales cycles, and this is where an ABM solution like Terminus helps to surround contacts at those target accounts with advertising as they go through the buyer’s journey. BrightFunnel helps to demonstrate the impact those ads and other marketing activities (like webinars, content, events, and so on) have on new business, marketing-sourced pipeline, and closed-won revenue. As a MarTech creator, my goal has always been to empower marketers with the tools to accomplish their own goals. The challenge of demonstrating the value of account-based tactics and the ROI of marketing programs is a problem that I’m passionate about solving.

Do you expect any scenarios where the two pieces of the stack might continue to be marketed or sold separately?

We will continue to make both products available in addition to offering new combined offerings and feature sets. There are big plans for where our account-based marketing technology is going. Our product and engineering teams at both Terminus and BrightFunnel are dedicated to solving big problems.

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Shane Schick

Shane Schick is the Editor-in-Chief of B2B News Network. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of Marketing magazine and has also been Vice-President, Content & Community (Editor-in-Chief), at IT World Canada, a technology columnist with the Globe and Mail and was the founding editor of ITBusiness.ca. Shane has been recognized for journalistic excellence by the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance and the Canadian Online Publishing Awards.

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