A Yodle IPO in 2013?

Yodle, the leading Silicon Alley-based digital marketing platform for small businesses, is “strongly considering” an IPO, according to CEO Court Cunningham, as reported by Street Fight.
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Yodle is profitable and generating over $130 million in revenue annually, Cunningham said recently.

Yodle bought Atlanta-based Lighthouse 360, it was reported today.  Lighthouse 360 has built an advanced customer relationship management (CRM) system for dental offices which reportedly does a terrific job integrating all those systems in a dentist’s office.  Yodle plans to expand the technology each of its 30 verticals.

Read our 2012 Yodle post here.

Some other metrics of note.

  • Yodle has $130 million annual revenues, and 30,000 mostly smaller clients with an average of $4k per client per year.

ReachLocal stock closed today at $13.50, up more than 2x in 14 months.

Update:  March 7

A Yodle source gave me some other revenue numbers, expecting 35% growth this year.

2011:  $75 million

2012: $130 million

2013F:  $175 million.

Yodle Challenges the Conventional Local Sales Wisdom

NYC-based Yodle is perfecting a telemarketing approach to small businesses across the USA.  Yodle sells digital advertising solutions to 30,000 customers and generates about $130 million in revenue.  This post from Kelsey Group explains some of CEO Court Cunnigham’s methods:

Cunningham tells us that by analyzing the metadata around the call activity (call duration, outcome, etc.) it generates for customers, as regular analysis of nearly 150 million keywords has led Yodle to a number of insights that have led Yodle to make tactical decisions that defy conventional wisdom.

One such example involves the number of times a company can contact a sales prospect unsuccessfully before “burning” the lead. Yodle has determined from statistical analysis that it is possible to contact a record (sales prospect) considerably more times (more than 2X) than conventional wisdom suggests.

Cunningham also has a lot of unconventional things to say about sales effectiveness.

“Drive, persistence and optimism are the attributes that equate to success in a sales reps, and everyone knows that,” Cunningham says. “Yet most companies don’t interview for these attributes.”