Bluecore raises eight-figure series B for email personalization

Bluecore, a marketing automation solution focused on personalization, has raised $21 million in its series B round of investment.

The company has been growing quickly, adding $1 million in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) every 45 days, and doubling AAR every six months. A number of top ecommerce retailers are now customers, including Staples, Express, and Cabelas.

This kind of growth has impressed investors, including Georgian Partners, which led the round. Georgian has focused investments in companies applying analytics to improve or automate existing processes. Previous investments include companies like Shopify, Tealium, and FreshBooks.

What sets Bluecore apart?

Bluecore lets marketers use behavioral data to personalize customer engagements, primarily via email. We’ve found in our own research that behavioral data is often the most valuable type of data for marketers. Behavioral data provides real-time insight about a consumer’s interest and intent, most of it coming from web and mobile activity.

Yet most marketers today haven’t been able to capitalize on this data. One reason for Bluecore’s success is its ability to capture and process large volumes of behavioral data, like product page views, search term use, and cart abandonment. In conjunction with behavioral data, Bluecore also uses product catalog data, including changes in price or inventory.

Consumers increasingly expect personalization and are unsubscribing from irrelevant emails. As a result, marketers are looking to personalization as a way to increase relevance, along with key metrics and revenue.

In our report on email personalization published yesterday, we found that the vast majority of marketers reported increased open rates and click-through rates (CTR) by employing some form of email personalization (including even the most basic personalization tactics).

We also found that email personalization reduces unsubscribe rates and increases revenue by an even greater factor (around 6x).

Most marketers still rate poorly on our email personalization maturity framework, but growing interest will continue to fuel investment in marketing automation and personalization tools like Bluecore.

For those interested in the technical details, Bluecore explained in an email that it drives personalization in several ways, including:

• Similar products versus recommendations based on co-view and co-purchase models
• Aggregated profile data based on session searches, category navigation and facets, as well as wish list, add to cart, and purchase behavior.
• Audience data based on product catalog analytics, used to personalize emails by answering questions like “If the inventory drops on a product by more than 50%, which customers are the most likely to buy the fastest?”

The new round of funding will bring Bluecore’s total funding since 2013 to $28.2 million.