Published on the 09/10/2014 | Written by Beverley Head
Cloud accounting specialist Xero has signed Andy Lark as its chief marketing officer – delivering the business with a wealth of insight about both the tech and finance sectors…
Andy Lark, former marketing lead for Dell and Commonwealth Bank, has signed on as the chief marketing officer of Xero, effective from November.
Lark, who has 15 years’ experience marketing in the US is a particular coup for Xero as it continues its push into North America.
In an operating update provided to the New Zealand Stock Exchange the company noted that the US was its fastest growing market. It grew the number of Xero users by 120 percent and revenues by 131 percent. However this growth comes off a low base – by the end of September Xero had just 22,000 US users out of a total 371,000 users internationally.
However, in its NZX report the company notes that the North American opportunity is significant for the firm given the 29 million small businesses which are potential sales targets.
Writing in his blog, Lark notes his consulting business has been working with Xero on the company’s global marketing strategy for some time.
According to Lark, “the opportunity is nearly limitless with the majority of small businesses not using any kind of platform to grow on”. He said that the rise of mobile platforms coupled with cloud computing services would eventually make accounting less of a dedicated task and something that would be completed during the normal flow of business.
Lark, a New Zealander, will continue to live in Sydney but work with Xero in NZ, the US and UK.
Australia is currently the company’s largest market after the user base doubled to 158,000. According to Xero 67 percent of its new customers signed up since September 2013 had switched from a rival accounting software provider.
The company is continuing to offer its free MYOB to Xero conversion tool to Australian customers.
Growth clearly remains the company’s focus. Subscription revenues for the first half of the year were $52 million – since 2010 the company has enjoyed a compound annual growth rate of 98 percent on subscription income. It is however still loss making.
For the six months to the end of September Xero made a net after tax loss of around $25 million.
