impact.com Fiscal Year H1 2021: $1.5B Valuation, $150M in Funding, BigCommerce Integration, 69% Customer Growth

The leading partnership management platform also closed H1 with two acquisitions, expanded client portfolio with brands like Puma, Swarovski and SkyScanner, and added two new international offices 

impact.com, the leading global partnership management platform supporting more than one million partnerships for more than 1,800 brands, announced the close of a successful H1 in fiscal year 2022. Most notably, the company closed a $150 million round of funding at a $1.5 billion valuation, in preparation for an IPO. In addition, impact.com exceeded $100 million in annual recurring revenue, acquired two companies to expand its offerings, expanded its global footprint by opening new offices in Denmark and Sweden, and launched an integration with BigCommerce—one of the world’s largest ecommerce platforms.

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“In today’s digital world, consumers are in full control. They determine how and when to engage with brands, leaving businesses to navigate a new, complex environment of discovery and permission,” said David A. Yovanno, CEO of impact.com. “It’s in this world that partnerships thrive, and impact.com is enabling clients to forge partnerships with the publishers, creators, businesses, and communities that consumers trust and use daily to learn, get information, interact, and make purchase decisions. Our most mature clients see partnerships driving 28% of revenue and growing 50%, proof that developing effective partnerships is now a key strategy for brands looking to more authentically connect with consumers.”  

With impact.com’s new BigCommerce integration, BigCommerce’s 60,000 merchants around the globe can maximise their partnership potential with the ability to easily and directly launch affiliate and influencer programmes without the use of developers. With this partnership, merchants have the ability to recruit partners, negotiate contracts, automate partner payments, track and attribute performance across devices, and communicate updates. This builds on impact.com’s stable of best-in-class tech partnerships, giving all stakeholders in the partnership economy—brands, publishers, and agencies—access to world-class solutions in a single platform. 

Earlier in the year, impact.com joined Shopify Plus as a certified app partner for influencer and affiliate marketing. With impact.com’s partnership management platform, Shopify Plus merchants can easily and quickly launch and automate affiliate and influencer programmes without developer involvement. Shortly after, impact.com acquired Trackonomics, an SSP for publishers’ partnership programmes that provides page-level revenue attribution and ROI, and Affluent, an analytics and automation platform designed to help agencies manage partnership programs for brands. 

In June, impact.com launched Partnerships Experience 2021, a first-of-its-kind virtual partnership event dedicated to educating marketers on the best practices and trends in every aspect of the burgeoning partnership ecosystem. More than 40 speakers from leading businesses like Canva, Condé Nast, HSBC, Ivory Ella, and more were involved in this educational four-week event covering best practices and thoughtful analysis of the growing industry. Topics like partnerships with purpose, building successful B2B partnerships, strengthening commerce content partnerships, and how small businesses can grow through utilising partnerships drove more than 3,000 registrations globally.

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Also in H1, impact.com added more than 530 new customers globally, increasing its customer count at the end of H1 by 69% over the same period last year—including Big Red Group, OnePlus, OPPO, Parachute Home, Puma, SkyScanner, Swarovski, Tempur Sealy, and Zalora. And in recognition of its innovation and best-in-class partnership management technology, impact.com has been acknowledged by several leading industry organisations, including:

• Most Innovative Use of Martech (Silver) at B2B Martech Awards 
• Best Performance Marketing Technology at Performance Marketing Awards (PMAs)
• Best Travel, Leisure, and Lifestyle Campaign with TUI at PMAs
• Best Influencer Marketing Platform (Bronze) at the Influencer Marketing Awards

impact.com was also just announced as a shortlist contender for nine additional awards at the International Performance Awards (IPMAs) and for Marketing Tech Company of the Year at the B&T Awards in Australia.

The second half of the year promises to be as dynamic as the first, with impact.com introducing The Partnership Economy podcast, featuring Yovanno alongside the company’s co-founder Todd Crawford. In this biweekly series, they will speak with other industry leaders to unpack the future of partnerships as a lever for scale and an opportunity to put the consumer first.

In August, impact.com debuted a free online academy that educates learners about how to drive growth through affiliate marketing and partnerships. As partnerships increasingly support the marketer’s customer acquisition strategy, the Partnership Experience Academy (PXA) aims to help inspire people to utilise partnerships to provide maximum value to their businesses. Designed for anyone looking to gain knowledge on the partnerships space, PXA offers beginner courses to in-depth strategic guidance with content created by leading experts in the Partnership Economy. 

The company wasted no time in its plans to leverage the new funding to expand globally, opening two new offices in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Stockholm, Sweden, in the past month. The company’s expansion into Denmark is spearheaded by Nicolai Mariegaard and Marcus Ericson will lead impact.com’s Swedish presence. 

The company also enhanced its own referral programme, where partners can sign up to earn a percentage of revenue every time one of their referrals becomes a paying impact.com customer. Added Yovanno, “impact.com’s powerful, purpose-built platform helps businesses—brands, agencies, and publishers—to build authentic, enduring, and rewarding relationships with consumers. We’re eager to watch this growth and momentum continue as we round out the second half of 2021.”

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