Vienna AT – July 8, 2016 – Emarsys, a leading global provider of cloud marketing software for B2C companies, today announced that Josef Ahorner, co-founder and Chairman of the Board, and Hagai Hartman, co-founder and CEO, have taken the joint decision that Hartman will fully focus his attention on innovation to further strengthen the company’s competitiveness in a rapidly changing market. In his new role as CINO – Chief Innovation Officer – he will drive breakthrough innovation, product development based on artificial intelligence and its rapid roll-out to customers. The Board has accepted Hartman’s decision to re-orient his focus and place greater emphasis on delivery of the company vision. The change will be effective July 11, 2016.
The Board, led by the chairman Josef Ahorner and with Matt Blodgett, Managing Director at Vector Capital, fully support Mr. Hartman’s recommendation to appoint Ohad Hecht as CEO.
Hecht built Emarsys’ market-leading presence in Asia-Pacific between 2010 and 2014 and returned to Vienna to serve as the company’s COO in 2014. In his new role, Hecht will focus on sustaining the company’s rapid growth by driving international expansion, including further penetration of the US market. Emarsys currently serves more than 1,400 customers in 140 markets, supporting their marketing with customer intelligence, personalization, predictive recommendations and omnichannel marketing automation.
“Breakthrough innovation is pivotal to our business and it is Emarsys’ key differentiator in a rapidly changing market. I will focus on our role as game changer and bring our vision to life – which is to fully leverage artificial intelligence in marketing to further increase customer value. I am confident that in his new role as CEO Ohad Hecht will also provide Emarsys with the necessary drive to keep it on its steep and unparalleled growth trajectory,” says founder Hagai Hartman.
“I am excited to take on the role of CEO at a moment of rapid international expansion,” adds Ohad Hecht. “In addition to continued expansion in North America, our leadership team will focus on strengthening our existing customer base and markets and turning our innovations into superior value for our customers.”
“Tapping into artificial intelligence, Emarsys is fully equipped to stay ahead of the game, with a visionary leadership and global team,” says Josef Ahorner, co-founder, Chairman of the Board and majority shareholder. “I absolutely agree with Hagai that delivering on the company vision requires one leader to focus his attention exclusively on innovation.”
“We see massive global potential for B2C marketers with Emarsys’ unique integration of analytics, customer intelligence, true personalization, and marketing automation. We are proud to support Emarsys as the company’s first institutional investor, and are excited about the future and continued rapid growth and global expansion under the strong entrepreneurial leadership of
Hecht and the visionary innovations of Hartman,” adds Matt Blodgett, Managing Director at Vector Capital.
Josef Ahorner, Hagai Hartman and Daniel Harari, who co-founded the company in 2000, have led Emarsys through a tremendous growth phase in the past decade. Under their leadership,
Emarsys grew into a global business with more than 2,000 customers in 140 countries worldwide and 16 offices with more than 600 employees around the globe. In 2015, YoY business growth amounted to 100 percent, the company entered the U.S. and Canadian markets and added over 400 new clients, among them Body Shop, Office Depot and L’Oréal. It also received a 33 million USD equity investment in a Series A round from San Francisco-based private equity firm Vector Capital. In 2015 alone, Emarsys segmented and analyzed more than 12 billion customer profiles and created more than three million personalized campaigns.