There’s been a lot of talk about cross-channel personalization in marketing these days. Yet according to a new VB Insight report from earlier this month, a whopping 80 percent of consumer-facing companies don’t “get” their customers—not beyond basic demographics and purchase history, anyway. Meanwhile, true personalization demands much deeper knowledge, which depends on stitching together customer details from various sources. Unfortunately, this kind of data unification seems to be another thing marketers are struggling with: In fact, 96 percent admit that building a comprehensive single view of customers is a challenge.
BlueConic, a European marketing tech firm that planted its roots in Boston over a year ago, has built a platform that leverages big data to build rich, unified profiles on consumers. The result? More synchronized, relevant real-time interactions with each individual based on both their implicit and explicit intent.
Founded in 2010, BlueConic has over 70 clients, including Volvo, ING and Pitney Bowes—but more recently, has added some big local names to its customer base, like City Sports and Drizly.
By enabling marketers to continually keep tabs on all user activity across all channels and devices, BlueConic empowers them to segment consumers in a smarter way, and ultimately craft more personalized interactions for each segment.
Advantages across industries
Drizly presents the perfect example of a company that can benefit from BlueConic's technology. The booze delivery company prides itself on being what founder and CEO Nick Rellas has called “the Amazon.com for alcohol.” Part of this, of course, is convenience. But the startup sought to go above and beyond in terms of making personalized product suggestions, and ensuring that all shoppers have a unique shopping experience that’s targeted to their preferences. As of June of this year, BlueConic has been powering its digital liquor store to make this happen.
“They’re looking for cross-channel insights to drive actions,” BlueConic CMO Dan Gilmartin explained to BostInno. “In other words: What type of beer is someone clicking on? Are they searching for whiskey? What wine did they add to their shopping cart? Did they abandon their cart?”
The Boston Globe is another example: BlueConic is able to help them gain visibility into readers, and then display certain content to individuals based on what they’ve read in the past like articles from a particular author or on a particular subject. City Sports, which has customers across a variety of channels—in addition to a strong loyalty program—also recently chose BlueConic to gain a deeper look at users’ habits and deliver a more targeted shopping experience.
Gilmartin, who joined BlueConic at the end of last year, said he began thinking about gaps in the marketing technology stack after running digital marketing at PayPal. Prior to that, he was VP of marketing at Where Inc., until it was acquired by PayPal in 2011.
“I kept thinking—there has to be a better way to do these things,” he said.
When Gilmartin met BlueConic’s cofounders and got a product demo, he said: “I was amazed by how clearly the technology can help marketers connect the dots."
What was supposed to be a 30-minute meeting turned into several hours, one thing led to another and now Gilmartin is leading the company’s marketing operations.
A whopping 80 percent of consumer-facing companies don’t “get” their customers—not beyond basic demographics and purchase history.
In February of last year, BlueConic banked a $4 million Series A round from Sigma Prime Ventures. With that round of funding, the firm moved its headquarters and chief executives to Boston. That Series A brought the total capital the company has raised to date to $8.9 million. The local headcount is now roughly 32, half of whom are working out of the Boston office (the other half are on the development team in the Netherlands). BlueConic is currently hiring for multiple positions.
As for the company’s top priority going forward: “We’re always looking to build out the platform, adding new capabilities, particularly in mobile and on desktop,” said Gilmartin.
Typically, new features are released nearly every two to three weeks, with a new release of the core platform coming out every couple months. Gilmartin attributes this fast turnaround to the fact that half of BlueConic’s team is engineers.
Stay tuned—in just a few weeks, BlueConic is slated to announce a big publicly traded software company as a new customer.
All images courtesy of BlueConic.
