Ometria raises $40M C round to automate CRM for retailers

We last heard from Ometria, an “AI-powered” customer marketing platform allowing brands and retailers to personalize marketing messages, in 2019 when it raised $21 million in a Series B.

It’s now completed a $40 million Series C round, led by InfraVia Growth, with participation from existing investors Octopus Ventures, Sonae IM, Summit Action, Adjuvo and Columbia Lake Partners, as well as several early investors, including Chairman Lance Batchelor. This brings its total funding to over $75 million.

The company says the funding will be used to triple the size of the company’s product and engineering team, especially now that consumers are gaining more control about what personal data they share and with whom.

It’s also now hired a number of key new staff: Chief Technology Office Markus Plattner (former CTO of Sizmek by Amazon), Chief Revenue Office Paul Barnes (former MD of App Annie) and Chief Marketing Officer Michelle Schroeder (formerly of Simon Data and Tinyclues).

Ometria CEO and founder Ivan Mazour said: “Retail marketers have been promised personalization by almost every marketing technology vendor and yet our inboxes, as consumers, rarely reflect that promise. The cause of this customer experience gap lies in their tech stack. Ometria platform is built to close this gap.”

Guillaume Santamaria, partner at InfraVia Capital Partners, said: “Successful commerce now hinges completely on the ability for brands to differentiate through building superior customer experiences, and Ometria provides the solution for achieving this.

Ometria's main competitors include email service providers (Emarsys, Sailthru, Selligent, Bronto, Dotmailer), behavioral marketing tools (CloudIQ, SaleCycle, Yieldify) and customer insight companies (More2, AgileOne).

Customers for its "Co-Marketer" platform -- which uses data science to automatically create and optimize personalized marketing experiences several communications platforms -- now include Steve Madden, Aden + Anais, Pepe Jeans, MADE.com, Notonthehighstreet.com, Hotel Chocolat, Feelunique and others.

Speaking to me over a call Mazour added: “Retail marketers have trouble keeping up with customer expectations, which are going through the roof, with a million people through 30 different touchpoint, like SMS email etc., etc. The hybrid of human-machine and computer intelligence is the only way to serve this need.”