Marketing analytics startup Hightouch reels in $80M at $1.2B valuation – News

Marketing software startup Hightouch today announced that it has closed a $80 million funding round at a $1.2 billion valuation.

Sapphire Ventures led the Series C investment. It was joined by Bain Capital Ventures, which led Hightouch’s previous $38 million funding round, Y Combinator and several other institutional backers. The raise follows a year in which the software maker claims to have more than doubled its revenue.

Officially Carry Technologies Inc., Hightouch provides a customer data platform that makes it easier to analyze marketing information such as ad performance metrics. Enterprises often host such information in cloud data warehouses. Hightouch’s CDP can run directly on a company’s data warehouse, which means the information inside doesn’t have to be moved to external infrastructure before analysis can begin.

Hightouch makes it possible to assemble disparate marketing records into datasets called audiences. A company could, for example, create an audience that includes all the customers who have made at least three purchases in the past year. The company’s advertising team can then create personalized offers tailored to the users in that audience. 

Enterprises can link Hightouch’s CDP to their other marketing systems. An online retailer could use data from the platform to personalize query results in its e-commerce website’s embedded search engine. Hightouch also makes it possible to customize product catalogs, shopping recommendations and other marketing materials.

Last August, the company expanded its product portfolio with a tool called AI Decisioning. Marketers use it by uploading promotional materials, such a collection of product ads, and variations of that content personalized for different audiences. From there, AI Decisioning automatically determines what promotion should be displayed to which user and when.

The software doubles as an A/B testing tool. Companies can create multiple versions of the same promotion and display each version to a different audience. According to Hightouch, AI Decisioning collects data about the performance of the different ad versions to identify the one that drives the most sales. 

“Instead of building rigid calendars and static journeys that are inherently impersonal, marketers can simply enter goals like ‘drive repeat purchases and subscriptions’ and let AI agents decide what to do next at a 1:1 level,” said co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Tejas Manohar.

Hightouch’s customer base includes more than 600 companies, including Spotify Technology SA and GitLab Inc. The software maker will use the capital to further grow its products’ adoption. It will hire engineering, product and go-to-market professionals to support the effort.

Image: Hightouch