Litmus scores $49 mln from Spectrum Equity

Spectrum Equity has provided $49 million in funding to
Litmus. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Litmus is a provider of email creation services.

PRESS RELEASE

Cambridge, MA – Litmus, the leading web-based email creation, testing, and analytics company, today announced that it has received a $49 million investment from Spectrum Equity, a leading growth equity firm whose previous investments have included successful online subscription businesses such as Ancestry.com, SurveyMonkey, Prezi, and Lynda.com.

Litmus was founded in the U.K. by Paul Farnell (CEO), Matthew Brindley (CTO), and David Smalley (Managing Director, International) – childhood friends and freelance web designers – to help digital marketers ensure their emails render perfectly in every inbox. Now, after six years of bootstrapped growth and relocation to Cambridge, Massachusetts, Litmus has become the clear leader in its market. The company is now at the center of the email design community and powers more than one million email preview tests per day and tracks more than one billion email opens per month.

Litmus announced a major update to its product in October 2015. The redesign added a new feature called instant previews that shaves hours off the email creation process. In addition, a new interactive checklist tool ensures common problems like broken links and missing images don’t make their way to subscribers’ inboxes. With more than 250,000 marketers and 250 API and agency partners interacting with Litmus every month, the updated product is set to improve the email experience for millions of email subscribers.

Email is the principal channel for digital marketers, and shows an estimated 38-to-1 return on every dollar invested. This strong ROI and the fact that it is consumers’ preferred way to communicate with brands are just a few factors that will lead to attractive growth in email marketing during the coming years. The investment from Spectrum Equity will allow Litmus to continue to lead the industry and bring the next generation of email design and analytics tools to marketers. In addition to product innovation, the funding will support international expansion, a new focus on training and education, and accelerate the company’s engineering and sales hiring to help fulfill the company’s vision to give every commercial email marketer the ability to send beautiful email, everywhere, every time.

“We are, and always have been, a product-led company. When I look at the talent on our team, and add in this funding, the most exciting thing to me is that it gives us the opportunity to touch the edges of what is possible in our market,” said Paul Farnell, CEO of Litmus. “And in that investment, we couldn’t ask for a better partner than Spectrum. They bring the experience and portfolio to support our next stage of scale.”

“Through a laser focus on product, Litmus has established itself as the clear leader in the email creation and testing space and as the central hub of the email design community,” said Pete Jensen, managing director of Spectrum Equity. “To have done this as a bootstrapped, profitable company is even more impressive. We look forward to working with them to continue to do great things.”

About Litmus Software Inc.
Litmus helps more than 250,000 marketers make email better. The web-based email creation, testing and analytics platform empowers marketers, designers and agencies to confidently deliver a superior subscriber experience. Litmus provides instant email previews and quality assurance tools across all major inbox providers, browsers, and devices, and features comprehensive analytics to help users quickly and easily build, test, troubleshoot and optimize every campaign. Headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., with additional offices in London, Litmus has partnered with more than 250 major email service providers and agencies, including MailChimp, IBM Silverpop and BrightWave Marketing. For more information about Litmus and the latest email news and trends, visit www.litmus.com.

About Spectrum Equity
Founded in 1994 with offices in Boston and San Francisco, Spectrum Equity is a leading growth equity firm providing capital and strategic support to innovative Internet, software and information services companies. Representative investments include Ancestry.com, BATS, GrubHub, lynda.com, Passport Health, PicMonkey, SurveyMonkey, Teachers Pay Teachers, Verafin and WeddingWire. For more information, including a complete list of investments, visit www.spectrumequity.com.