CRM marketing hub Optimove raises $75 million to accelerate growth

CRM marketing tool Optimove announced on Monday a $75 million cash investment, led by global growth investor Summit Partners. The company said the financing will help further accelerate its growth through continued investment in “strategic hiring, M&A, and broadening its Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Marketing platform.” Optimove acquired Israeli event streaming startup Axonite last year.

Optimove’s SaaS technology combines a Customer Data Platform (CDP) with a Multichannel Marketing Hub (MMH) to empower brands to personalize campaigns and communicate to existing customers. The software’s AI elements enable it to scale this personalization to serve each customer with the optimal message and promotion, across websites, email, Facebook, Google Ads, text messages, push notifications, and other channels.

“In the last 18 months digital consumption grew like never before. The cost of acquiring new customers has skyrocketed, and brands understand today that they must invest in their existing customers in order to drive growth,” said Optimove Founder and CEO, Pini Yakuel. “We see more and more brands facing a new challenge when attempting to scale their personalization. We built Optimove to solve that challenge and offer marketing teams direct access to their customer data, the ability to build, test and optimize their CRM campaigns, and leverage our AI engine to assure every customer receives the message of highest impact on their lifetime value, through the optimal channel, at any given time.”

Founded in Tel Aviv in 2012, Optimove was bootstrapped for five years before raising $20 million in a 2016 Series A round. Summit Partners is the company's first U.S.-based investor and as part of the current round, have bought all shares of previous investors, becoming Optimove’s primary investor.

Optimove is also Summit Partners’ first Israeli investment. “Israel is producing more unicorn valuations than any other country in Europe and there’s been an uptick in its activity on the public markets as well, so it has had our attention for a while,” said Steffan Peyer, a Managing Director at Summit Partners who will join the Optimove Board of Directors. “Optimove emerged for us as the leader in the rapidly-growing CRM market for the strength of its technology, its strategy and executive team. Under Pini’s leadership Optimove is poised to take the lead on market consolidation and growth.”

Optimove's revenue grew 35% over 2020, driven by more than 500 brands using its platform. Customers span e-commerce, gaming, retail, QSR, telecommunications, financial services, and apps and include: BetMGM, Dollar Shave Club, Papa John’s, Pennsylvania Lottery, Staples, Sweaty Betty, and Varsity Tutors.

The company's CRM Marketing platform sends an average of more than 23 billion optimized messages to over 3 billion customers every year. Optimove is integrated with leading technology platforms, such as Snowflake, Shopify, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Playtech, SBTech, alongside leading execution channels, including Facebook, Google Ads, Criteo, Attentive, and Klaviyo.

Optimove is headquartered in Tel Aviv and also has offices in London and New York. The company currently has 280 employees and intends to double headcount over the next 24 months, with hiring predominantly for its technology, customer and commercial organizations.