Alterian posts strong first half financial
performance
Over 150 new end user organisations adopt Alterian
technology and further new products to be released shortly
London – 4 November 09 – Alterian (LSE:ALN),
the leading international integrated marketing platform provider,
today announced a strong first half of their financial year with
revenues up 40% to £14.4m from £10.3m for the same period last
year. The successful acquisition of Social Media Monitoring
software company Techrigy Inc and integration of its SM2 software
coupled with the company’s continued investment in new products
have helped Alterian broaden its product platform and contributed
to the Company’s strong results.
Alterian also announces today that WebJourney
is entering the final phases of testing and is expected to be made
generally available early in 2010. This new web analytics
product provides the ability to bring web behaviour on an
organisation’s website into their core marketing database, and use
that information to provide more relevant and timely communications
to individuals.
David Eldridge, Chief Executive Officer of
Alterian, said, “We are pleased with our performance for the first
half, both in terms of the financial performance of the business
and progress against our strategic objectives.
We were particularly pleased to see North
American growth back at significant levels. This year we have seen
44% growth, up from 19% a year before and strong performance across
the globe with 37% revenue growth in the UK, Europe and Asia
Pacific. This growth has seen the addition of 150 new end users
across a wide range of vertical markets and geographies. We have
also added 17 new partners, including marketing agencies and
systems integrators as well as marketing services providers, taking
the total number of Alterian partners to approximately 180.
Looking to the second half, the combination of
the Company’s market position, a strong pipeline, the broadening of
our products and distribution together with our strong recurring
revenue model and sound financial characteristics leaves us well
placed for continued success.”
Much of Alterian’s success is due to their
vision in the marketing space around the death of traditional
marketing approaches. Every organisation faces significant
challenges in responding to the rapidly changing expectations of
their customers and ability of those customers to choose how they
will interact with organisations.
New channels have significantly increased the
control afforded to the consumer. For example:
- Consumers can get information when
they want information rather than waiting to be provided with it,
often by searching on the internet.
- If they do not like the way an
organisation is communicating with them, or find the information
provided irrelevant, they can block further communications by
registering on do not contact lists, unsubscribing from
communications, or classifying emails as spam.
- Social media channels give consumers the ability to share
information – positive or negative – very rapidly and effectively,
and consumers tend to have more confidence in
information from peers, more than information provided by
organisations.
Overall, there is a much higher expectation
that communications from organisations should be relevant and a
much lower tolerance of interruption.
Marketers must respond to these changes.
They need to move from mass marketing activities to methods of
recognising and communicating with individuals in a relevant way,
based on their needs and interests.
Alterian believes that this transition is at
an early stage, with many marketers experimenting with analysing
social media and beginning the process of transforming their web
sites from static brochure type sites to dynamic engaging
sites. This represents a significant opportunity for
marketers to create competitive differentiation for their
organisation and for providers of software and services, to
marketers, to create solutions that enable the
transition.
The addition of Techrigy to the Alterian platform
further strengthens the company’s ability to facilitate this
transition. This gives marketers an overall view of social media,
which can be applied to their entire marketing mix, and a set of
tools to help strengthen the relationship their organisation has
with its customers through integration with the rest of the
Alterian platform.
Eldridge continues, “Alterian has seen a very
positive reaction to the Techrigy acquisition from customers and
partners. Adoption by Alterian partners has already begun as
evidenced by the recent selection of Alterian SM2 by one of our
long standing North American partners. Additional developers
have also been employed to accelerate future development of the SM2
product and deliver its integration with the Alterian
platform.”