Customer relationship management marketing platform Optimove announced Monday it scored a $75 million investment from Summit Partners. The company says it will use this fresh funding to fuel a global hiring spree, revealing plans to double its 280-person team over the next two years.
Put simply, Optimove was created to help brands improve and maintain their relationships with customers. By leaning heavily on artificial intelligence and customer data, the platform helps companies design and send out the right marketing messages to the right customers at the right time, at scale. All the while, it integrates with other tech platforms like Shopify, Salesforce and Google Ads to measure and improve things like churn, reactivation and each customer’s lifetime value.
Headquartered in Tel Aviv and operating out of offices in NYC and London, Optimove was bootstrapped for its first five years until it raised a $20 million growth round in 2016. Over the years, the company says it has scaled quickly and maintained “healthy profit margins.” Today, it sends some 23 billion optimized messages over email, mobile and ad platforms to 3 billion customers every year, and counts major brands like Papa John’s, Staples and Dollar Shave Club among its 500 customers.
A lot of this growth has happened in just the last 12 months, with Optimove reportedly growing its revenue more than 40 percent. Of course, this surge isn’t coming out of nowhere. Maintaining reliable, long-term relationships with customers is more important than ever right now, especially as consumer behaviors continue to change amid the pandemic.
“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,” Optimove founder and CEO Pini Yakuel said in a statement. “Now, more than ever, brands understand the urgency to invest in existing customers to drive growth.”
Indeed, the global CRM market is expected to be worth more than $113 billion by 2027, and this fresh capital will be essential as Optimove works to position itself as a leader in the burgeoning space. In addition to the hiring spree, the company says it will use this fresh funding to fuel mergers and acquisitions, research and development, and product expansion. Summit Partners’ head of Europe Han Sikkens and managing director Steffan Peyer have also joined its board of directors.
“The growth in e-commerce over the past decade has led to an ever-increasing online competition, forcing brands to evolve their marketing strategies to deliver seamless, personalized omnichannel experiences that resonate and drive loyalty with customers,” Peyer said in a statement. “With strong technology, a strategic executive team, and the addition of growth capital, we believe Optimove is poised to build on its market leadership position.”
