Act-On Software, the world's fastest growing marketing automation company, today announced that it secured $16 million in new venture financing. Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) led the round, with existing investors Trinity Ventures, US Venture Partners and Voyager Capital also participating.

In less than three years, Act-On has gone from being a newcomer in the marketing automation industry to a recognized leader, with well over 1,000 paying customers. After growing at over 300 percent in 2011, the company expects to achieve a healthy triple digit growth rate again this year, and this new capital will power its product innovation and aggressive expansion into new markets.

"We're seeing a huge and sustained demand for our cloud-based marketing automation solution from small and mid-sized businesses -- the Fortune 5 million -- across all major industries," said Raghu Raghavan, founder and CEO of Act-On. "This new investment will enable us to further increase our business momentum by expanding operations globally to meet this demand, and also to accelerate product innovation. The next wave of online marketing goes beyond marketing automation, and we plan to address the management of the entire customer lifecycle with a single, easy to use and integrated marketing platform."

Act-On's expansion plans come at an opportune time: according to Raab Associates' "B2B Marketing VEST Report," revenues for business-to-business marketing automation systems will grow 60 percent this year to $525 million. This projected growth is even higher than the 2011 growth rate of 50 percent. Furthermore, the use of marketing automation in the much larger business-to-business SMB market is less than 5 percent today.

"At Norwest Venture Partners, we have a 50 plus year history of partnering with entrepreneurs to help them build great companies," said General Partner Robert Abbott. "Our investment philosophy is focused on large, transformative market opportunities, and the companies that have the potential to become category leaders in those markets. Act-On's vision, strategy, technology and market traction show all the signs of it becoming such a category leader in a rapidly expanding market."

Act-On helps customers solve some of their biggest problems in marketing by enabling them to use its platform to organize their online marketing efforts, generate high quality leads and turn those leads into sales. These problems are top-of-mind for small and mid-sized business leaders but they have very little time to search and find the right solution. This new round of funding will enable Act-On to dramatically increase its marketing presence to win even more business.

About Norwest Venture Partners (NVP)
Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) is a multi-stage investment firm that has partnered with entrepreneurs to build great businesses for more than 50 years. The firm manages more than $3.7 billion in capital and has funded over 500 companies since inception. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, NVP has subsidiaries in Mumbai and Bengaluru, India and Herzelia, Israel and Hong Kong. NVP makes early to late stage venture and growth equity investments across a wide range of sectors including: information technology, business services, financial services, infrastructure, technology enabled services and consumer. For more information visit: www.nvp.com.

About Act-On
Act-On Software's cloud-based marketing automation platform is quickly forming the foundation of successful marketing campaigns everywhere -- from small, simple and direct, to complex globally-implemented programs. Act-On's technology features an Instant-On™ database for accelerated campaign implementation; an easy, highly intuitive user interface; and a comprehensive, feature-rich solution set. This includes a best-in-class email engine with one-click integration to leading web conferencing and CRM solutions; tools for website visitor tracking, lead scoring, lead nurturing and social media prospecting; design tools for web forms, landing pages and emails; and more. Act-On is headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon, with offices in Roseville and Menlo Park, California. To learn more, please visit http://www.act-on.com.