The job of B2C marketers is getting harder every day.
It used to be a brand could send a simple email promotion to engage a customer and easily drive new sales. But in an age of push notifications, social media, an inundated inbox, and many other forms of invisible commerce, the need for technical solutions to manage multi-channel marketing raises a huge challenge.
There are very few founders we meet who can successfully address issues as pressing as this one with the deep technological advantage it takes for this massive market need.
Luckily, we got to know Spencer Pingry, founder and CTO of Zaius, when the company was just an idea. We immediately believed in the bold vision for B2C CRM that Spencer and the team had from day one and were fortunate to have the opportunity to back them before even raising Underscore VC’s debut fund.
Watching Spencer, CEO Mark Gally, and the entire team grow and evolve has been humbling, and we’re excited to celebrate a major milestone with the team today as they boldly raise the capital to establish Zaius’ market leadership. Underscore VC, Matrix Partners, and Leaders Fund are excited to welcome Insight Venture Partners to support the next stages of Zaius’ growth as they lead the company’s $30 million Series B.
Here’s the news directly from Mark Gally, CEO of Zaius:
There are big things happening at Zaius.
We’re excited to share that we raised $30 million in a Series B investment led by Insight Venture Partners.
Based in New York, Insight has also backed companies like Shopify, ExactTarget, Twitter, Gainsight, Zenefits, and more — so we’re quite literally in good company. Our previous investors Matrix Partners, Underscore VC, and Leaders Fund also participated in the round, which brings our total funding to $50.8 million.
But this round isn’t just a big deal for us at Zaius; it’s also a big deal for our customers.
We’ve always prided ourselves on being a company that exceeds customers’ expectations, and we can now devote even more resources to this mission. We plan to invest in our product and our team to better serve B2C marketers on their own path to growth.
How we empower marketers at every turn
From day one, our goal has been to to help marketers understand their customers fully, so they can engage them most effectively. We do this by helping hundreds of brands like Scotts Miracle-Gro, Sotheby’s, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Burt’s Bees Baby, and Moda Operandi manage personalization, lifecycle automation, segmentation, optimization, and attribution all in a single platform.
And this is the right time for a solution like ours. For years, use case and channel-centric marketing solutions proliferated — solutions like email service providers, push notification vendors, paid ad platforms, etc. This patchwork of siloed solutions has made it difficult (if not impossible) to track buyers across multiple systems and consumer devices.
We took a different approach. By combining a customer data platform and marketing automation, we started with the customer first. As a result, Zaius’ B2C CRM allows marketers to take control of customer data and use it to execute targeted marketing campaigns across platforms and channels. With a flexible architecture, Zais allows marketers to unify data from multiple applications — without ripping and replacing their existing systems — for a complete view of the customer without a forklift.
We’ve seen this same type of unification happen in other markets time and time again. For example in the enterprise resource planning (ERP) space, financial planning has now merged with HR capabilities. Specifically, Workday now has comprehensive finance capabilities while Netsuite now has HR functionality. Rolling up to the same person in the organization, the CFO, customers realized these two functions were best served by a single, consolidated application.
This is exactly what’s happening today in B2C marketing. It’s about time for the marketer to be able to manage data and campaigns in the same application.
A bright future for B2C marketers
We believe this round of funding is a validation of the value B2C CRM brings to ecommerce and B2C brands. Zaius grew more than 300 percent in the past year and more than doubled our headcount all because of the success of our customers. And we expect to grow even faster in the coming years because of the power of B2C CRM.
We can’t thank our customers enough for believing in us, for supporting us, and for sharing our vision of B2C CRM. We’re here because of you, and we’ll continue to think of you first.
Excited? So are we. We hope you’ll continue along with us on this journey as we aim to create the product that no B2C marketer can live without.
Learn more about Zaius today.
Zaius is hiring: join them as they continue to empower the B2C marketer and change the way brands engage their customers. Learn more about their open roles.
