2021 Year in Review
Looking back on 2021, I find myself reflecting on the year, and the onset of the global pandemic in 2020. While 2021 had its challenges, there were also bright spots including the global vaccine roll out, organizations learning to adjust to hybrid operations, and creative approaches to business that many of us didn’t know we had in us. I continue to be inspired over and over again by the creativity and resilience of people all over the world — especially Issuu creators. Our customers have chosen Issuu to communicate digitally with their customers, from restaurants posting their menus, real estate promoting a new home for sale, conferences and events sharing marketing collateral, healthcare organizations sharing critical COVID-19 informational resources, editorial content on the issues and ideas most important us across the globe, and content that connects us all.
During these challenging two years, we’ve seen a huge increase in demand across all industry types for digital content. In 2021, we now have the most active content creators in the history of Issuu. And as businesses, restaurants, schools, and communities have reopened — the expectation moving forward is to continue to offer content in digital and mobile friendly formats. Issuu is the digital content solution for our customers as we discover new ways to work, learn, and gather. Our customers have published nearly 60 million documents on Issuu, with 262 billion pages having been read - the digital equivalent of saving over 3.8 million trees in the last year alone!
Our customers now span even more industries and locations. From traditional publications, to educators, major corporations, start-ups, restaurants, real estate, and more – the Issuu platform enables organizations around the world to create and share interactive digital content with customers, prospects, and internal teams. Our customers tapped the power of Issuu for digital publishing and enhancements such as embedding content on their website, formatting their content into mobile-optimized article stories, and customizing their content with visual stories for social media.
To support the increased demand and additional needs of our customers, our Issuu team focused on adding product integrations and enhancements to the platform, while also expanding our team. We added a new office in Braga, Portugal and expanded the Issuu leadership team with key new hires and promotions. This September, we announced a $31M round of funding that will enable us to continue to innovate with new features, enhance the products that matter most to our customers, build integrations to make use of Issuu tools more efficiently and to grow the team. We’re hiring across the company, so check out our careers page if you are interested in joining us.
Our global team continued to grow this year as well, (forty new employees). We added a new office in Braga, Portugal, a burgeoning hub for technology talent and innovation. In addition to building out our teams based in the U.S. and Europe, we expanded the Issuu leadership team with key new hires and promotions to support us during this period of high growth. The Issuu team is still growing, so check out our careers page if you are interested in joining us.
We’re excited to see that the Issuu platform is proving to be an indispensable tool for the creator economy ecosystem. Issuu is providing savvy content creators with the powerful digital publishing and distribution tools they need, including our premium digital sales feature that is 100% commission-free. Issuu has earned its place in the marketing technology stack for many of these creators, start-ups, and small businesses by providing tools that power their work, while ensuring they keep all of the profits they earn from their content.
Around the world, we recognize that the future of work is shaping out to be a mix of in-person and remote workspaces. The technology tools that these hybrid workforces need are agile, cloud-based, and multi-functional. The Issuu platform meets the needs of today’s workforce and we continue to add integrations and feature enhancements to the Issuu Story Cloud. Earlier this year, we were named a Premier Technology Partner with Dropbox, offering a seamless integration between Dropbox and Issuu to simplify content marketing. It is now even easier for marketers and designers to keep creative files hosted and organized in a central Dropbox repository, always available to upload and publish via the Issuu Story Cloud.
We understand how valuable both email and social channels are for users to connect directly with their own customers. The Issuu platform already transforms flipbook content into formats for these channels, plus we recently launched an integration with Mailchimp that allows Issuu customers to link accounts, and send email-ready files to the Mailchimp Content Studio. Similarly, our integration with Hootsuite streamlines the process for scheduling and sharing Issuu content to all of your social channels.
As new content creators joined Issuu and the creator economy continues to grow, we recognized the value in providing easy-to-edit templates that support our customers during the design phase. Issuu’s new downloadable online templates are now at every customer’s fingertips, empowering aspiring publishers to create exceptional content in minutes. Templates are available for brochures, magazines, eBooks, catalogs, portfolios, and more.
Here at Issuu, we are proud to be building a best-in-class content marketing platform that also offers a sustainable publishing solution for customers. We understand just how important it is for larger companies and organizations to make steps towards a more sustainable future. As a digital publishing company, the nature of our business itself helps improve the environment. Digital publishing saves an immense amount of paper each year, and every piece of paper saved helps repair our world. Based on our calculations, this year we have saved over 3.8 million trees.
As I look toward a new year, I’d like to thank the more than one million of you who have used our tools to connect, inform, inspire and build community with your readers. Our mission at Issuu has always been about connecting content to people. We are focused on building a digital content and marketing platform that helps you build the community and connections that will make you successful.
Happy New Year,
Joe Hyrkin
CEO, Issuu
