Optimove Raises $75 Million to Help Operators Deliver AI-Mapped Player Journeys and Personalized CRM at Scale

Summit Partners’ investment will fuel Optimove’s M&A strategy, hiring and go-to-market of its SaaS application for customer-led growth and retention

Optimove, a leader in CRM marketing, today announced a $75 million investment led by global growth investor Summit Partners. The financing will support continued investment in strategic hiring and M&A, expansion of the company’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Marketing platform, and further acceleration of Optimove’s rapid growth. The company also announced the addition of Summit Partners’ Head of Europe, Han Sikkens, and Managing Director Steffan Peyer to its Board of Directors.

Optimove’s SaaS technology combines a Customer Data Platform (CDP) with a Multichannel Marketing Hub (MMH) designed to uniquely empower brands to deliver personalized marketing campaigns to connect and engage with existing customers. Unlike more traditional solutions that rely on common, rule-based orchestration, Optimove places customer data at its core, layering advanced AI-based campaign orchestration on top. This helps its users manage large-scale CRM marketing frameworks, personalizing thousands of campaigns to hundreds of segments and reaching each end player with the optimal message and promotion across email, mobile and other channels. The company’s solutions help operators achieve and attribute measurable improvement in key metrics such as churn, reactivation, conversion, and lifetime value per each player, campaign, set of campaigns, and across the entire customer base.

“In the last 18 months, digital consumption grew like never before. As a result, the cost of acquiring new customers has skyrocketed, while customer loyalty took a deep dive. Now, more than ever, brands understand the urgency to invest in existing customers to drive growth,” said Optimove Founder and CEO, Pini Yakuel. “We built Optimove to address the challenges operators face when attempting to deliver personalization at scale. Our solutions are designed to offer marketing teams direct access to their player data to build, test and optimize their CRM campaigns. Our AI engine helps ensure that every player receives the marketing treatment that increases their lifetime value, through the optimal channel, at any given time.”

According to data from Gartner’s Market Share Analysis: Customer Experience and Relationship Management Software Worldwide, the multichannel marketing market grew at a 3-year CAGR of 17% and is expected to reach $10B by end of 2021.

Headquartered in Tel Aviv and operating from offices in New York and London, Optimove was bootstrapped for its first five years and has scaled quickly, while maintaining healthy profit margins, since its founding in 2012. This new capital positions Optimove to further accelerate its growth and expand its global footprint. Today, the company’s CRM Marketing platform sends more than 23 billion optimized messages through email, mobile, ad platforms and other channels, to over 3 billion customers every year. Optimove serves more than 500 brands – including Entain, Gamesys, Kindred, Penn National, Sisal and others – and integrates with leading gaming platforms, such as Playtech, Pragmatic Solutions and SBTech, alongside leading execution channels, including Facebook, Google Ads, Dynamic Yield, and Attentive.

“The growth in e-commerce over the past decade has led to ever-increasing online competition, forcing brands to evolve their marketing strategies to deliver seamless, personalized omnichannel experiences that resonate and drive loyalty with consumers,” said Steffan Peyer, Managing Director at Summit Partners. “From its roots in Israel’s thriving and dynamic technology ecosystem, Optimove has grown into a truly global business, serving well-known brands across more than 40 countries. With strong technology, a strategic executive team, and the addition of growth capital, we believe Optimove is poised to build on its market leadership position.”

Over the last 12 months, Optimove generated revenue growth of more than 40% while continuing to maintain healthy profit margins. The company currently has 280 employees and plans to double its global headcount over the next 24 months, with hiring predominantly for its technology, customer, and commercial organizations.

Optimove is widely recognized as a category leader, with notable recognition as a Leader in “The Forrester Wave™: Cross-Channel Campaign Management (Independent Platforms), Q3 2021; a Challenger in Gartner’s 2021 Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Marketing Hubs; and one of the Top Five Leading Customer Data Platforms from G2’s Fall 2021 Grid® Report.