London-based startup Ometria, a customer marketing platform for retailers, has raised €19 million in Series B funding to further develop its technology, which enables retailers to better understand and better communicate with their customers. The round was led by Octopus Ventures, with Sonae IM and a number of other investors participating as well.
As the UK online retail industry surpasses a hundred billion pounds in annual sales, and grows at 20% year on year, consumers find themselves receiving endless and unwanted marketing communication.
“Junk mail through our letterboxes has now been replaced by a deluge of messages and notifications, whether through email, text, WhatsApp, Instagram or a dozen other channels,” said Ometria’s CEO and founder Ivan Mazour. “It’s relentless and must be addressed. Retail marketing contributes heavily to this, with most marketing experiences leading to frustrated and disengaged consumers.”
Ometria was founded in 2013 on the idea that marketers need to take responsibility for the impact of every communication they send, and be able ensure that every marketing experience they create for any customer is a positive one.
“We want our customers to discover amazing new products, but we also want to make sure that they do that through marketing experiences they enjoy,” said Jennifer Roebuck, CMO at Feelunique.com.
As the retail industry becomes more competitive, and as customer touchpoints grow in complexity, ensuring that billions of customers have truly relevant experiences will only be possible through leveraging real-time AI. Ometria’s retail-focused technology is pioneering the transition, enabling marketers to use predictive intelligence to create individually-relevant experiences for each customer, in turn driving significant uplifts in retail revenue.
Since raising its €5.5 million Series A funding round, Ometria, which was recently named the ninth fastest-growing technology company in the UK in the Deloitte Fast 50, has expanded its client base to two hundred retailers, including Hotel Chocolat, Fred Perry, MADE.com and Notonthehighstreet.com.
“We are very excited to have led Ometria’s Series B – a great example of how we invest in truly pioneering entrepreneurs that are creating innovative solutions through tech,” said Marieke Christmann, investor at Octopus Ventures. “Ometria will use this investment to revolutionise the retail marketing industry with its AI capabilities. We want to see entrepreneurs put their customers at the heart of the business and that is precisely what the team is doing.
“Ometria has built a genuinely thrilling piece of technology delivering a highly tailored product to create an even more precise, personalised offering to its customers. Octopus Ventures looks forward to being part of the innovative team behind Ometria and we are excited to work with them as it expand on its international capabilities into the US.”
“We are thrilled to continue to support Ometria in this new phase of growth,” added Eduardo Piedade, Sonae IM’s CEO. “We know from our experience how important it is to provide a personalised marketing experience and Ometria’s solution plays a key role in solving this problem for retailers.”
