AVARI rebrands from RetentionGrid and seals partnership with ESP Emma, sender of 400m emails per month
Berlin 19 February 2018: Predictive personalization technology provider AVARI has announced that it has raised additional capital in a funding round of €500,000 as it brings the third generation of its email marketing technology to market.
AVARI’s groundbreaking technology allows marketers to send a single email campaign - via any email service provider or marketing automation system - that could potentially result in millions of different outcomes as every recipient will see a completely personalized message that is filled with dynamic content at the moment they open it.
The current round of investment has been led by Connect Ventures. Also joining the round is Berlin investor Christoph Maire - the founder of txtr.com, gate5, Plazes, PhoneDeck.com, and EyeEm. Christophe Maire is the CEO and founder of Atlantic Labs, an entrepreneurial ventures firm focused on creating companies and supporting innovative ventures.
Other investors in this round include Eric Wahlforss, co-founder and CTO of SoundCloud, and Felix Petersen, who is a founder of Amen and Plazes.
Founded in Berlin in 2013 as RetentionGrid, AVARI has now raised €1,020,000, with the first round also led by Connect Ventures and involving Eric Wahlforss, as well as fellow SoundCloud founder Alex Ljung; Leanne Pittsford, founder of Lesbians Who Tech; Turi Munthe, former founder of Demotix; and Jeremy Millar of Magister Advisors.
Designed to work alongside existing email marketing automation systems, AVARI’s new third-generation technology uses an ultra-lightweight integration that securely captures visitor journeys through a website. The information gathered from actions such as clicks, page views, dwell time, basket items, purchase items, form submits, downloads, and social actions is used to produce personalized recommendations that are injected into the email campaign.
The content of the email is instantly generated at the time of open - injecting recommended products, lifecycle offers, live social feeds and other content - meaning the recipient sees content that is not only highly personalized, but completely up-to-date, dynamic content too. AVARI’s technology then monitors how recipients interact with the content of the email, so it is continually learning and refining its prediction engine. The result is a 73% overall lift in the CTOR (click-to-open rate) for brands using AVARI Dynamic Content.
“Technology for email service providers has fallen far behind other forms of ad tech. AVARI has created a game-changing product because it is the first predictive analytics engine that works alongside whatever email system is being used - it can be fully integrated via a simple, lightweight piece of code,” said AVARI CEO and co-founder Kevin Dykes. “But while the implementation is simple, AVARI is an incredibly powerful new tool for email service providers which ensures that when a customer clicks on a marketing email, it contains accurate and relevant information that has been updated in real time.”
With AVARI sharpening its focus on the email service provider (ESP) channel, it has announced a new partnership with Nashville-based Emma, a company that works with almost 50,000 businesses in the small and mid-market, sending over 400 million emails every month.
“AVARI’s technology is a real step forward for marketers. It intelligently gathers and uses data to deliver personalized email content that is appropriate for the lifecycle of each recipient. Our partnership with AVARI means that predictive, dynamic content is now a core part of our offering to our clients. We believe that gives us a real edge over competitors as we seek to grow our business,” said Simon O’Day, head of partnerships at Emma.
Since founding in April 2013, AVARI now serves more than 7,000 e-commerce businesses in 59 countries. AVARI’s customers serve 10 million consumers in 187 countries. New hires made in recent months include a VP of business development, VP of sales, a creative director and several senior developers on the engineering team, bringing the company’s headcount to 18, and there are plans to increase hiring in the next three months.
For further information, please contact:
Sandy Hathaway
Co-founder / CMO, AVARI
Tel: 011-49-151-1727-3838 (Germany)
About AVARI: AVARI was founded in Berlin in 2013 by Kevin Dykes, Sandy Hathaway and Karsten Rieke. The company was previously known as the e-commerce-focused, predictive analytics and email marketing company RetentionGrid. It rebranded from RetentionGrid to AVARI in January 2018 to reflect its focus on being an enabling-technology company with predictive personalization solutions for email service providers. AVARI currently serves more than 7,000 businesses in 59 countries. These customers reach 10 million consumers in 187 countries.
