Halifax marketing data vendor LeadSift has cracked $1 million in annual revenue four years after a pivot that CEO Tukan Das previously described as key to the survival of the company.

LeadSift uses data analytics to help small and medium-sized technology firms in the business-to-business market find sales prospects. On Wednesday, the company launched a new software feature that Das said will increase the value of its annual contracts by about a quarter.

Revenue grew by 118 percent in 2019 and was averaging 6 percent monthly growth pre-COVID. Despite the economic downturn, Das said LeadSift has so far come through the pandemic mostly unscathed.

“I would say we have navigated COVID pretty well,” he said. “Fortunately, we were in a position where there’s more of a tailwind in our industry, with more data needed, and data specifically for helping other B2B companies identify their buyers.”

LeadSift sells intention-tracking software, which uses web scraping and other data harvesting techniques to identify companies and executives whose online behavior has signalled their intent to make a purchase.

The technology can also integrate with other marketing automation tools, such as Salesforce and Agile CRM.

LeadSift broke the $1 million annual revenue threshold for the first time just before COVID-19 hit -- up from $60,000 in December, 2017.

Revenue subsequently fell about eight percent, as a looming recession drove customers to cut spending.

“When COVID hit ... a lot of companies just went into a little bit of a freeze,” said Das. “Some of our customers were B2B companies in the travel and event management space, and some of them, their whole marketing teams were fired. So they obviously had to pause any other spend.”

As layoffs shook much of the Canadian economy, he was determined to offer his employees a sense of security.

Beginning in March, Das adopted a policy of radical transparency, holding daily meetings in which he detailed LeadSift’s financial situation. As he told his staff, several years of sales growth had left the company with enough cash in the bank to weather the economic shutdown without layoffs.

When the situation at LeadSift’s Barrington Street office stabilized, Das’s next priority was to “play offense” with marketing and product development initiatives.

He inked a deal with Innovacorp to provide LeadSift’s software to Nova Scotian companies free for six months, with the venture capital crown corporation agreeing pay for half the foregone subscription fees.

And as customers began asking for help compensating for lost sales opportunities from cancelled trade shows, LeadSift set to work developing Wednesday’s addition to its software -- a feature that allows salespeople to track what software tools potential buyers have already purchased. The information is meant to help business development teams craft more specific messaging.

“What it does for our end customers is, when they are reaching out ... they can craft their message,” said Das. “They can say, ‘Oh, they are already using Shopify as an e-commerce platform. Our database integrates amazingly with Shopify.’”

LeadSift’s sales figures are now better than they were before the pandemic and revenue is still rising about 5 percent month-over-month.

The company has hired two new employees: a full-time marketing manager and a part-time social media manager, bringing the team to 12 full-time staff and two part-timers.

Das credits his employees for LeadSift’s resilience: “I don’t think we would have been able to navigate [COVID-19] as well as we have if the team didn’t align.”

He added that local funding organizations have been supportive. Gerry Pond’s East Valley Ventures, for example, offered to temporarily absorb furloughed staff from struggling startups, although LeadSift was never forced to take them up on the offer.

Despite strong sales, Das is not specifically planning a capital raise. The company has not raised funding since 2015, and revenue is strong enough to finance further growth. In the absence of the two most recent hires, LeadSift would now be profitable.

“We are going to be opportunistic” said Das. “If we continue to grow at the rate we are, even during COVID, if we see an opportunity and the terms are right, we would certainly consider raising capital. But it’s not something where I’m saying, ‘We need to raise capital or we are going to run out of money.’”