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Venture Capital News: Localytics Raises $35M in Series D

2015-03-24
BOSTON, MA, Complete platform for app marketing and analytics, today announced it has raised $35 million in Series D funding.
Localytics, the only complete platform for app marketing and analytics, today announced it has raised $35 million in Series D funding, bringing its total investment to-date to $60 million. New investor Sapphire Ventures led the round with participation from existing investors Foundation Capital and Polaris Partners. The new funds will be used to strengthen Localytics' predictive intelligence capabilities, which enable customers to truly personalize the user experience and improve engagement and retention in their mobile and web apps.

'Companies are struggling to keep up with the growth of apps. Most are unable to leverage user intelligence to improve how they acquire and engage users. Localytics' investments in predictive app marketing will enable us to deliver the amazing, personalized app experiences that consumers have come to expect,' said Raj Aggarwal, CEO of Localytics. 'And, with its deep history in scaling successful marketing technology companies, such as ExactTarget and Criteo, Sapphire Ventures' expertise will help us continue building the leading solution for apps.'

One Platform to Understand User Behaviors, Predict Future Actions and Personalize Engagement

As apps become the dominant digital channel, marketers and product managers are challenged to ensure that mobile audiences stick with their app - in fact, it's critical to their business success. Trusted by the world's leading companies, such as ESPN, eBay, Fox, and the New York Times, Localytics integrates app marketing tools like push, in-app and email marketing with a robust analytics engine. The platform enables businesses to leverage real-time user data to run automated, personalized marketing campaigns, which dramatically improves user engagement and retention. For example, A+E Networks achieved a 200-percent increase in push notification engagement with targeting.

Going forward, Localytics will introduce powerful predictive app marketing to help customers leverage user data to predict and proactively engage customers at all stages of the customer journey. Using machine learning to extract richer insights from its analytics engine will enable Localytics to predict a user's likely next move and how to influence the desired action, giving marketers the ability to further enhance personalization.

Jeanniey Mullen, Vice President of Marketing at NOOK®, states, 'The ability to leverage real-time user data is a game changer for app publishers. It significantly improves our attribution ability and enables us to enhance the user's experience. Ultimately, success is driven by the ability to personalize app users' experiences. There's real value for businesses when a single platform can bring all of this together in one place.'

Localytics also partners with the top user acquisition players, like Facebook and Twitter, to connect acquisition spend to a user's lifetime value, enabling ROI based decisions for acquisition strategies. These partnerships have recently been expanded to enable remarketing; the ability to find and re-engage lost users when they are in other apps and on social media.

Continued Business Growth

Localytics continues to scale, now supporting 32,000 apps across 2.3 billion devices for customers including HBO Now, Nordstrom, and MyFitnessPal. The company's 2014 revenue was 2.5 times greater than the previous year.

'App marketing is seeing tremendous growth, and Localytics has the strongest customer base and the unique combination of app marketing and analytics needed to dominate this category,' notes Doug Higgins, Managing Director at Sapphire Ventures, who now joins Localytics' board of directors. 'We're excited to partner with Raj and his outstanding team to support Localytics' growth and further strengthen its market leadership.'

Localytics continues to be a top destination for tech talent and has added 40 new employees in January and February alone, for a total of 200 employees across its Boston, San Francisco and London offices. The company plans to continue to build out its team through 2015.

With this announcement, Localytics is opening up a private beta for the first use case of predictive app marketing to predict and prevent churn.

Learn more about Localytics' Series D funding and predictive app marketing.

About Localytics
Smart marketing demands powerful analytics. Only Localytics brings app marketing and analytics together in one complete platform. Used in more than 32,000 apps on more than 2.3 billion devices, Localytics helps companies create personalized app experiences that drive higher engagement, loyalty and lifetime value. Learn more at http://www.localytics.com.

About Sapphire Ventures
Sapphire Ventures is focused on helping today's most innovative technology companies become global category-defining leaders. Leveraging nearly two decades of experience and an extensive global enterprise network, Sapphire Ventures invests capital, resources and expertise to enable its portfolio companies to scale rapidly. Whether entrepreneurs sell to businesses, consumers or both, Sapphire Ventures offers a powerful platform for business development and operational excellence to help them accelerate growth. With $1.4 billion under active management via direct growth investments and an early-stage fund of funds strategy, Sapphire Ventures is uniquely positioned to elevate companies to the global stage. Find us in Palo Alto and London and at www.sapphireventures.com. Follow us @sapphirevc.
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