Flowtown

Flowtown was a social media marketing platform founded in 2009 by co-founders Ethan Bloch and Dan Martell. The company originated from the founders' shared passion for creating tools to help small businesses succeed. Bloch's motivation stemmed from a negative experience his father had with an online marketing package in the late '90s, driving him to build products that deliver tangible results. Martell, a Canadian serial entrepreneur, had previously founded and exited Spheric Technologies and shared Bloch's vision. The company secured $750,000 in a seed funding round in August 2010 from investors including Baseline Ventures, Kapor Capital, and 500 Global.

The initial product was a social discovery service that allowed businesses to upload customer email lists and receive enriched profiles with social media accounts from over 40 networks, demographic data, and influence rankings. This enabled companies to transform their existing email contacts into a socially-aware customer base, facilitating targeted marketing campaigns and direct engagement on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Within its first year, Flowtown attracted 26,000 businesses and was nearing profitability. However, the business model was severely impacted when Facebook changed its API and terms of service, restricting the data access that was core to Flowtown's service. This event forced the small team to pivot.

Facing this existential crisis, the founders brainstormed new directions and shifted focus toward gift marketing, a service designed to help businesses build loyalty by sending personalized gifts to customers. The company also developed a tweet-scheduling tool called Timely.is. This strategic pivot proved successful, culminating in the acquisition of Flowtown by Demandforce, a marketing automation company, on October 14, 2011. The entire Flowtown team and its technology, including Timely.is, were integrated into Demandforce to enhance its marketing solutions for small and medium-sized businesses.

Keywords: social media marketing, customer intelligence, email enrichment, social discovery, Dan Martell, Ethan Bloch, Demandforce acquisition, SaaS, marketing automation, customer engagement, social CRM, lead enrichment, influencer identification, marketing pivot, Timely.is, small business marketing, customer data platform, social analytics, contact enrichment, digital marketing tools, tech acquisition