Posted inBusiness

Optimove raises USD75 million to help brands deliver AI-mapped customer journeys

Summit Partners’ investment will fuel Optimove’s M&A strategy, hiring and go-to-market of its SaaS application for customer-led growth and retention

Optimove, a leader in CRM marketing, announced a $75 million investment led by global growth investor Summit Partners. The financing will support continued investment in strategic hiring and M&A, expansion of the company’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Marketing platform, and further acceleration of Optimove’s rapid growth.

Optimove’s SaaS technology combines a Customer Data Platform (CDP) with a Multichannel Marketing Hub (MMH) designed to uniquely empower brands to deliver personalised marketing campaigns to connect and engage with existing customers. Unlike more traditional solutions that rely on common, rule-based orchestration, Optimove places customer data at its core, layering advanced AI-based campaign orchestration on top.

This helps its users manage large-scale CRM marketing frameworks, personalising thousands of campaigns to hundreds of segments and reaching each end consumer with the optimal message and promotion across email, mobile and other channels. The company’s solutions help customers achieve and attribute measurable improvement in key metrics such as churn, reactivation, conversion, and lifetime value per each customer, campaign, set of campaigns, and across the entire customer base.

“In the last 18 months, digital consumption grew like never before. As a result, the cost of acquiring new customers has skyrocketed, while customer loyalty took a deep dive. Now, more than ever, brands understand the urgency to invest in existing customers to drive growth,” said Optimove Founder and CEO, Pini Yakuel.

“We built Optimove to address the challenges brands face when attempting to deliver personalisation at scale. Our solutions are designed to offer marketing teams direct access to their customer data to build, test and optimise their CRM campaigns. Our AI engine helps ensure that every customer receives the marketing treatment that increases their lifetime value, through the optimal channel, at any given time.”

According to data from Gartner’s Market Share Analysis: Customer Experience and Relationship Management Software Worldwide, the multichannel marketing market grew at a 3-year CAGR of 17% and is expected to reach USD10 billion by end of 2021.

Headquartered in Tel Aviv and operating from offices in New York and London, Optimove was bootstrapped for its first five years and has scaled quickly, while maintaining healthy profit margins, since its founding in 2012. This new capital positions Optimove to further accelerate its growth and expand its global footprint.

Today, the company’s CRM Marketing platform sends more than 23 billion optimised messages through email, mobile, ad platforms and other channels, to over 3 billion customers every year. Optimove serves more than 500 brands – including BetMGM, Papa John’s, Staples, Varsity Tutors and others across e-commerce, gaming, retail, QSR, telecommunications, and financial services – and integrates with leading technology platforms, such as Snowflake, Shopify, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, alongside leading execution channels, including Facebook, Google Ads, Criteo, and Attentive.

Over the last 12 months, Optimove generated revenue growth of more than 40% while continuing to maintain healthy profit margins. The company currently has 280 employees and plans to double its global headcount over the next 24 months, with hiring predominantly for its technology, customer, and commercial organisations.