RichRelevance Raises $20 Million For Continued Market Expansion
Global adoption of RichRelevance personalization platform attracts Crosslink Capital, Greylock Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Tugboat Ventures
San Francisco, CA – May 7, 2012 –– RichRelevance®, the leading provider of dynamic personalization for the world’s largest retailers and brands, today announced that it has received $20 million in venture capital financing from Crosslink Capital, Greylock Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Tugboat Ventures. New investor, Crosslink Capital, led the round and Partner, David Silverman, will join RichRelevance’s Board of Directors. The round will be used to accelerate growth with expansion into new markets, introduction of new product innovations and research and development.
The funding comes as RichRelevance continues to aggressively redefine personalization for retail across its global base of leading retail and brand customers. In aggregate, RichRelevance’s clients represent more than 30% of online retail and today the company serves six of the top 10 US retailers in ecommerce, as well as seven of the top 50 leading UK/EU online retailers. In the last year, RichRelevance took over operation and development of CNET’s Intelligence Cross-Sell and acquired Searchandise Commerce to enable new strategies for reaching consumers with relevant brand advertising.
“Consumers’ embrace of online, mobile and social technologies is driving a sea change in commerce,” said David Selinger, founder and CEO of RichRelevance. “Innovation is the only path forward for retailers and brands, and we are seeing tremendous momentum as companies turn to data-driven personalization to engage shoppers, attract new customers and remain competitive in a retail landscape where consumer behavior is changing daily.”
“RichRelevance has cemented a leadership position in personalization shopping by transforming businesses for its global retail clients with increased business value, revenue and profits,” said David Silverman, Partner at Crosslink Capital. “RIchRelevance’s executive team consists of tech visionaries with proven track records of success. The team has both the passion and experience needed to continue to propel the company to disrupt the advertising and retail industries.”
Developed by the architects of Amazon.com’s recommendation technology, RichRelevance allows retailers to deliver dynamic, engaging experiences that put the customers at the center of retail strategy. The company consistently innovates new personalization solutions that allow retailers to monetize every pixel of their sites through product recommendations, targeted promotions and advertising. Most recently, RichRelevance introduced a new product to its personalization suite, RichPromo, in April 2012 to enable dynamic content targeting for commerce.
In addition, RichRelevance offers a groundbreaking Shopping Media suite for brand advertisers. Launched in December 2010, RichRelevance’s advertising offerings are used by world-class brands like Colgate, 3M, P&G, AT&T, Verizon, Toyota and Cisco to engage shoppers on the world’s largest retail sites with custom content while they are researching and purchasing products.
RichRelevance’s Shopping Media campaigns yield significantly higher engagement rates — double that of traditional rich media ads — and deliver a 60-100% sales lift for the advertised brand’s products. Based on these results, RichRelevance was honored with an ad:tech Start-Up Showcase Innovation Award in April 2011, and Advertising Age magazine recently credited RichRelevance as an ‘online shopper-marketing juggernaut’.
“Data is the currency in today’s omni-channel retail environment,” said David Strohm, partner at Greylock Partners. “Companies like Apple, Google and Facebook have set the stage for what it means to use data to attract and maintain loyal customers. RichRelevance is among this select group of platform companies who can harness data on consumer behavior and insights, specifically shopping and intent data, to change the way that retailers and brand advertisers operate.”
“The two things that matter most are the entrepreneur and the team’s ability to execute against a compelling vision,” said Dave Whorton, founder of Tugboat Ventures. “As RichRelevance has grown, David’s single-minded focus on partnering with retailers to deliver better consumer shopping experiences has created significant economic value in the retail industry and now in the advertising industry. Leveraging massive data, scalable infrastructure and one of the best product and engineering teams in the market, RichRelevance continuously improves its value to consumers, retailers and brand advertisers. We’re excited about RichRelevance’s future as it takes its platform to the next level with new experiences, even stronger economics and deeper insights on behalf of consumers, and its retail and advertising partners.”
“As one of the initial investors in RichRelevance, DFJ recognized early on that the company would become the market leader in the retail personalization market, and they have surpassed our expectations by successfully servicing some of the biggest names in online commerce,” said Andreas Stavropoulos, Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. “We are pleased to welcome Crosslink Capital, a top-tier venture investor, as a partner committed to RichRelevance’s continued rapid growth.”
About RichRelevance
Over 350 million times per day, RichRelevance is powering the personalized shopping experiences for consumers shopping the world’s largest and most innovative retail brands like Walmart, Sears, Target, Marks & Spencer and John Lewis. Founded and led by the e-commerce expert who helped pioneer personalization at Amazon.com, RichRelevance helps retailers increase sales and customer engagement by recommending the most relevant products to consumers regardless of the channel they are shopping. RichRelevance has delivered more than $5 Billion in attributable sales for its retail clients to date, and is accelerating these results with the introduction of a new form of digital advertising called Shopping Media which allows manufacturers to engage consumers where it matters most—in the digital aisles on the largest retail sites in world. RichRelevance is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in New York, Seattle, Boston and London. For more information, please visit www.richrelevance.com.
