After Social Analytics Sector Shakeout, Crimson Hexagon Grabs $20M
entrepreneurs care more about what you ate for breakfast this morning than your friends and family do.
the upward thrust of social media has spawned a bunch of device corporations dedicated to tracking and examining what people are pronouncing (and eating) on-line. These firms mine reams of social media posts for nuggets of information and traits that may help brands better have in mind their shoppers—and, in conception, use that info to lift gross sales.
some of the early social media analytics corporations, Boston-based totally Crimson Hexagon, just capped off one among its busiest and perfect years. It signed up 200 more clients, grew its group of workers from seventy three people to 113, and opened new places of work in Chicago and San Francisco. (It additionally has a London workplace.)
Now, the company is poised to develop even sooner, due to $ 20 million in boom fairness financing introduced lately. the cash comes from Sageview Capital, and brings Crimson Hexagon’s total outdoor capital haul to $ 37.5 million, the company says.
“We really feel that our time has come,” CEO Stephanie Newby says in an interview. “We’re getting enormous momentum and pull from shoppers.”
Crimson Hexagon was co-based in 2007 with the aid of Harvard political scientist and government professor Gary King, an skilled in statistical prognosis of public opinion. the company’s basic method was to use statistical ways to watch and analyze social media conversations, essentially for advertising and branding purposes.
The startup was part of a wave of social media analytics corporations that bubbled up at the end of the remaining decade. but it aimed to head beyond keyword-based monitoring technologies and “sentiment prognosis”—which examines how many people are announcing positive or terrible issues about a specific model or entity—to provide deeper, more nuanced insights about folks’s backgrounds and what drives their opinions and moves.
Crimson Hexagon has tried to perform this, partially, by way of gathering a huge library of social media knowledge—over 850 billion posts and counting, the company says. “that permits our buyers to do a lot of historical diagnosis and comparisons from twelve months to the subsequent to see how things are progressing,” Newby says.
information from that library can be integrated with an organization’s gross sales knowledge to extra obviously hint lines between advertising campaigns and client conduct, ultimately improving industry decisions, Newby says. “that you may fast get a variety of [return on investment], somewhat than simply counting plenty of stuff, which was once what early movers in this space had been doing,” she says.
The social media analytics industry continues to grow, and Crimson Hexagon faces competition from the likes of Brandwatch and NetBase. but there was some consolidation—in addition to casualties—prior to now few years as the sector matured. Radian6, visible technologies, and Bluefin Labs were obtained, whereas basic Sentiment reportedly shut down, for instance. And NM Incite, a three way partnership between Nielsen and McKinsey, went thru layoffs and closed down most of its trade, TechCrunch said.
It hasn’t been an instantaneous, easy direction for Crimson Hexagon, both. When Newby took the helm in August 2012, she used to be the company’s fourth CEO in five years.
“We spent some time figuring out what the technique used to be and in a roundabout way what the product vision is,” Newby says. “i feel in the past three years we’ve eventually gotten that right. I wouldn’t take credit score for it myself, however i would take credit for constructing a leadership crew that features … individuals who have worked with all people to get that right.”
The crux of the vision is to “build a shopper insights hub for the endeavor,” Newby says. the company started out via serving basically marketers, nevertheless it has considering that increased to assist departments like product building, customer service, and public relations, she says.
and in contrast to many rivals, Crimson Hexagon doesn’t wish to be a advertising and marketing automation platform, Newby says. the corporate has formed partnerships with Spredfast and Hootsuite, who can offer those forms of capabilities.
“i think that the way device works nowadays is individuals nonetheless need to purchase the best answer for any given job,” Newby says. “What you actually want to do is know what you’re just right at, keep doing that in point of fact smartly, and combine with different things so that you may focus on being perfect in class.”
It’s just hypothesis on our section, but you can actually imagine the corporate drawing acquisition hobby from social media giants (perhaps Twitter or facebook) that need to bolster their ability to investigate their customers, or possibly from undertaking device companies that want to toughen their advertising choices (think IBM or SAP).
however Crimson Hexagon possible needs to proceed gaining traction out there. the corporate’s clients include General Mills, Starbucks, Paramount photos, Microsoft, and Twitter, in addition to massive advertising and promotion businesses like Saatchi & Saatchi, Ogilvy & Mather, Edelman, and DigitasLBi. Crimson Hexagon has been growing earnings via forty percent each and every 12 months, Newby says, and she wants to speed up that with the $20 million money infusion.
Crimson Hexagon will use the brand new funding to make bigger its sales efforts around the world and to hire one hundred people this 12 months throughout gross sales and advertising, engineering, customer service, and different departments, Newby says. the company is moving into greater spaces in Boston and London, and is bearing in mind opening extra U.S. places of work, possibly in big apple and Texas, she says.
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