Zeta Global is customer lifecycle managementmarketing company which was founded in 2007. Zeta helps companies create, maintain and monetize customers, providing customers with enhanced multichannel marketing tools to help them manage the full customer life-cycle. The privately owned company's headquarters are in New York City, with additional offices worldwide, including Silicon Valley, London, as well as Chennai and Hyderabad in India. Zeta has more than 1300 employees worldwide. The company's CEO is David A. Steinberg. Forbes Magazine reported that the company has been referred to as a 'Unicorn' - a "billion-dollar startup". According to The Wall Street Journal, as of March 2020 the company’s annual revenue is more than $400 Million and is profitable.
History
Zeta Global was founded by David A. Steinberg and John Sculley in 2007 under the name 'XL Marketing'. The company changed its name to 'Zeta Interactive' in 2014, then again to 'Zeta Global' in October 2016. As of April 2017, Zeta had bought nine companies in the past nine years. In July 2015, the company raised US $125 million from Blackstone's GSO Capital Partners to grow its business through the acquisition of data startup companies. In November 2013, Zeta acquired the Adchemy Actions division from ad tech firm Adchemy, as to incorporate their 'machine learning' based advertising platform. In January 2014, they acquired Clicksquared, a Boston-based company that created 'The Hub', a SaaS-based, cross-channel campaign management platform. In late 2015, they acquired the customer relationship management division of eBay's Enterprise operation, in a deal which sources near the company said was worth US$80–90 million. CEO Steinberg said that the deal "gets us a long way toward becoming the largest customer lifecycle management platform." In August 2016, they announced that they purchased the marketing automation tool 'Acxiom Impact' from marketing technology and services company Acxiom, in a deal which sources said was worth more than US$50 million. In October 2016, Zeta Global hired Jarrod Yahes as CFO. Yahes is a former senior finance executive at EXL Service Holdings, who previously served as the CFO of Jackson Hewitt. In April 2017, Zeta appointed Donald Steele as the company’s first-ever CRO. In April 2017, the company raised $140 Million in a large late-stage equity and debt funding round, with funds coming from GPI Capital and Franklin Square Capital Partners. Forbes reported that sources close to the company said this raised the company's valuation to US$1.3 Billion. In 2017 both Steinberg and Sculley said that they were considering an IPO for the company in the future, but that this would depend on the state of the market. On December 5, 2017, Zeta Global acquired Disqus. In 2019, Zeta Global acquired Temnos, a Silicon Valley AI company. Steinberg, co-founder of Zeta Global, stated that Temnos "allows us to see everything on the Internet from an intent perspective. It lets us see what people are reading, and what is trending globally.”
Products
As of 2019, the company has a database of permission based profiles of approximately 750 million+ people. Using big data analysis, they identify which companies they should sell to, contact those people, and manage existing customers. While the company originally focused on email marketing, more recently it has expanded into the customer lifecycle management market. Zeta has three main product offerings - ZetaCRM, ZetaZX, and ZetaACT.
Activities and Events
On January 30, 2014, Zeta Interactive hosted a forum on changes in advertising and marketing over the years, using Apple's 1984 commercial as a benchmark. Sculley shared the panel with advertising executive David Sable, Global CEO of Young & Rubicam; Jessica Gelman, Vice President of Customer Marketing & Strategy; The Kraft Group—the owners of the New England Patriots; and Hooman Radfar, Chairman and Co-Founder of marketing firmAddThis.
Awards
In 2014, Forbes listed Zeta Interactive as a "Most Promising Company", and in 2015 the magazine put Zeta Interactive on its list of “Top 100 Analytics Startups of 2015. Zeta was included in Gartner Inc.’s annual “Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Campaign Management" in 2014 and 2015, and in 2017 was ranked as "Visionary" in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Digital Marketing Hubs.
