• by Ray Schultz , June 15, 2017

Litmus, the provider of an email creative platform, has named Erik Nierenberg as CEO. He was one of several executive hires announced on Wednesday by the company.

Nierenberg, a Litmus board member since 2016, has served as CVP and GM at Lynda.com, and spent over six years at Salesforcecom.

Litmus co-founder Paul Farnell was CEO from the company's inception in 2005 until Nierenberg joined the firm.

“It was always the vision of the Founders to bring on a more seasoned executive team as Litmus grew in scope and scale,” said Nierenberg  in an email. “The founders remain an important part of both the day-to-day and the future of Litmus.”

Farnell will serve as chief design officer, overseeing the Litmus user experience.

Also appointed were David Rich, former worldwide director for Adobe’s creative cloud for Business, as chief marketing officer; Brian Martin, formerly of NetSuite, as VP of customer development; and Matt Gore, previously at Enservio, as VP of engineering.

Litmus has also hired Muhammad Rehman, who has worked at GoDaddy, eBay and Oracle, as VP of Product; Ryan Martin, who served at Box and Salesforce), as VP of business development; and Joep Leussink, previously with join.me and LogMeIn, as VP of online growth. 

Litmus says it grew its new accounts by over than 50% last year, luring clients such as Amazon, JetBlue, Lenovo, and Panera Bread, and has had consistent growth and profitability of more than 30% over the last 12 years.

Founded in 2005 by Farnell, Matthew Brindley, and David Smalley, Litmus provides an email creation, testing and analytics platform. Its objective is to help companies build satisfying user experiences.  

Backed by a $49 million investment by Spectrum Equity in 2015, Litmus has over 100 employees. And it has offics in Cambridge, MA; San Mateo, CA and London."The email creative process is no longer limited to a single person building and deploying campaigns,” said Nierenberg. “Marketing teams are doubling down on the pre-send management of the subscriber experience to protect their brand and ensure their investment in email marketing reaches the inbox.”

Nierenberg argued that, “with almost $3B spent annually on email marketing and an increasing focus on delivering high quality, personalized subscriber experiences,” companies require a integrated email creation platform at all stages of the process.