Brighton startup Pure360 receives £10.6 million funding boost

pure360_fundingBrighton email and SMS marketing company Pure360 has attracted £10.6 million in investment with Scottish Equity Partners putting in £6.5 million with the balance from Investec and management.

The news follows recent investor and angel interest in Brighton as VCs look outside London for investment opportunities as well as highlighting how important SMS and email marketing is to the digital ecosystem.

Pure360 has doubled its turnover since 2008 (OK, but not particularly impressive) and the £10.6 million will be used to hire 65 new employees and ‘accelerate development of its enterprise-level functionality’, as well as see revenues redouble over the next three years.

The company works with brands such as Virgin and innocent drinks and the press release says that the UK market for email marketing platforms and services in the UK is expected to be worth £513 million this year, although it doesn’t attribute the source for this figure. If that is correct, this is a smart move from SEP and company.

“The investment will enable us to develop our platform’s functionalities, focusing on segmentation, geolocation and automation so that marketers can send messages at the right time, to the right people in the right place – predicting what they need, before they even know it themselves”, said Stuart Dawson, CEO of Pure360.

Influential US publication Mashable recently published a seminal piece on Brighton’s startup scene with a list of 21 Hot Brighton Startups. Pure360 and another influential Brighton company Propellernet were missed out from this list.

Perhaps they should have been included… especially because it was me who wrote the Mashable piece. Oh well, nobody died.

Monty (709 Posts)

Monty Munford has more than 15 years' experience in mobile, digital media, web and journalism. He is the founder of Mob76, a company that helps tech companies raise money and exit. He speaks regularly at global media events with a focus on Africa, writes a weekly column for The Telegraph, is a regular contributor to The Economist, Wired, Mashable and speaks regularly on the BBC World Service.