Marketing-tech firm Zenapse has raised $8 million in a seed round of funding to equip marketers with tools that drive sales.
Zenapse provides a marketing graph that collects anonymous data about 150 million consumers, equivalent to 3.5 billion pieces of data. The data pieces together what someone does online — like what websites someone went to after adding a product to a website — but doesn’t include identifiable data like an email address.
Marketers including Sam’s Club, Prosper, and Aeropostale use Zenapse’s graph to determine what content and ads are most effective at getting someone to buy something.
The idea is to help marketers predict what people will be interested in enough to get them to buy. For example, one of the firm’s clients has a 99% cart abandonment rate from people who add a product to a cart but don’t check out, said CEO Matthew Bernardini. The retailer may use Zenapse to choose between offering the person free shipping or a 20% coupon to encourage them to buy the product later. In another example, marketers use Zenapse’s tools to test what images and copy people respond to, which Bernardini said indicates a person’s emotions and beliefs. A younger consumer might prefer an image of a beach, for example, while an older consumer prefers an image of the mountains.
Zenapse’s competitors include Adobe and Optimizely, Bernardini said. He said Zenapse wants to differentiate itself by using AI to infer emotional data that can spit insights out to brands quickly.
VC firm Naples Technology Ventures led the round of funding. Ben Franklin Technology Partners, Broad Street Angels, and BaseCamp Ventures also participated in the round.
Bernardini said Zenapse plans to use the money to create products aimed at midsize brands — like Shopify merchants — and develop products for devices like connected TVs and in-car screens.
Below are the key slides of Zenapse’s investor pitch deck.
