UK startup RevLifter has raised an approx. €3.6 million Series A round led by Gresham House Ventures and Maven Capital Partners. The funds will be used to boost its sophisticated e-commerce deals personalisation platform and scale its offer globally.
Founded in 2017, RevLifter has already bagged clients like retailers Harvey Nichols, Very, HP, Currys PC World and The Hut Group, along with telecoms providers AT&T, BT Broadband and EE. The companies use RevLifter to eradicate the wastage associated with blanket promotions and instead offer real-time, hyper-personalised deals that drive up basket value and encourage higher spend per customer.
RevLifter is positioning itself to take advantage of a rapid acceleration in the shift to online as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Validify, the independent platform helping consumer brands to source, evaluate and manage the procurement of technology solutions into their businesses, RevLifter’s addressable market has increased in size by 50% in the past six months. Additionally the startup is on track to almost treble its YoY revenue in 2020.
According to new data from IBM’s U.S. Retail Index, the pandemic has accelerated the shift away from physical stores to digital shopping by roughly five years. In such an accelerated market, RevLifter’s customers are reconfiguring how they view deals and incentives and using the likes of Black Friday and Christmas to turn promotions from ‘loss leading discounts’ to profitable and strategic marketing imperatives.
Harvey Nichols, synonymous with high-end luxury and personalised shopping, used RevLifter to engage its VIP customers in multiple markets and languages. The retailer achieved a conversion rate 8x higher than their on-site average and a 41% increase in average order value compared to the on-site average.
Carolina Paradas, Global Senior Affiliate & CLO Manager at Harvey Nichols, said: “RevLifter had the sensitive touch we needed. We were able to significantly increase our conversion rate and average order value across our targeted growth markets, including the United States, Japan and Korea. We are so thrilled with the success that we are rolling out further plans for the partnership.”
Co-founder and CEO Simon Bird said: “We’re delighted to welcome both Gresham House Ventures and Maven Capital Partners into the RevLifter fold. Knowing we have their belief is an amazing validation of our vision. We’ll be using the investment to capitalise on our leadership position in this market and continue our rapid expansion into new markets. The US currently accounts for about 60% of our revenues but there’s growing demand that we’re primed to meet across EMEA and APAC in particular.”
Co-founder and Chief Product Officer Ryan Kliszat said: “We’re already in retail and telecoms but we see an opportunity to break into new industries such as finance and utilities. Our clients tell us they love the ongoing improvements we’ve made to our product and capability this year. This fundraise will help us accelerate plans for further new features, including a product that will bring our game-changing AI deal personalisation treatment to a ‘basket abandonment emails’ market in need of a shake-up. We’ll also bring innovation to push notifications, product recommendations and deal personalisation across the whole e-commerce journey. There’ll be more we can reveal at a later date.”
Investment Director at Maven Capital Partners, Alexander Sleigh, said: “We’re delighted to support RevLifter at this exciting stage of its journey. The surge in online that we’re all seeing as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, brings with it increasing customer demands and expectations. The quality of personalised experience that brands need to deliver to customers has never been more important.”
Investment Director at Gresham House Ventures, Thomas Makey, said: “We’re really excited to be teaming up with RevLifter, which we believe is perfectly positioned to capitalise on the most pressing trends and challenges facing online retailers. The management team at Revlifter has been focused and strategic in evolving its personalised deals platform and, we believe that it now has a fantastic opportunity to solidify its position as an important partner for any consumer-facing e-commerce business.”
