Cordial, the creator of the first SaaS messaging platform that helps brands adapt their messaging and digital experiences to the connected consumer, today announced its $6 million Series A funding round from Upfront Ventures, the largest and longest-serving venture capital fund in Los Angeles.
Upfront's investment in Cordial -- to be generally announced to attendees at the eTail West Conference in Palm Springs -- was led by partner, Kobie Fuller. Fuller is a SaaS businesses and marketing and VR and AR technology expert, who was also an early personal investor in Oculus (which sold to Facebook for $2 billion) and sourced notable messaging platform investments in both Campaign Monitor and ExactTarget (acquired by Salesforce for $2.5 billion).
'We are defining the way Enterprise and Mid-Market brands innovate across their consumer messaging goals now and into the future,' said Cordial's Founder and CEO, Jeremy Swift. 'This raise will be used to accelerate adoption of our platform across more retailers as well as e-commerce, content publishing and travel and hospitality brands as we further empower marketers.'
For the last decade, consumers have been increasingly connected to devices and things. By 2020, there will be more than 50 billion connected devices. Cordial is an adaptive messaging platform powered by machine learning that learns, understands and adapts messaging based on customer actions in the moment. Cordial empowers brands by ensuring their email and mobile campaigns are perfectly orchestrated, personalized and automated to support one-on-one, real-time experiences across millions of connected devices, including The Internet of Things (IoT).
Edmunds.com, the leading car shopping and information platform, and Teleflora, the largest and most successful online wholesale flower-buying service in the world, are among Cordial's top customers. Brands use the company's platform every day to transform inputs from customers connected to virtually any device, into remarkable messaging experiences. Through Cordial's self-optimized machine learning layer, users have boasted a 760 percent increase in revenue and a 485 percent increase in engagement through transactional and triggered emails. Cordial has won 60 percent of its enterprise client business from marketing cloud providers: Salesforce.com, Oracle, Adobe and IBM.
'We struggled to find an ESP that could help us establish and integrate promotional and triggered emails for our international flagship sites and 1,500+ partner sites,' said Teleflora's Online Marketing Specialist, Amy Malcom. 'However, the Cordial team was able to achieve this task quickly and efficiently, and the improvements to our overall email performance, deliverability and data management were nearly instant.'
Cordial was built by a group of marketers who felt limited by the available solutions. Jeremy Swift, David Baker, Adam Gillespie and Chris McGreal hail from some of the earliest and most successful innovative marketing groups, including Acxiom, Agency.com, aQuantive/Razorfish, BlueHornet (which Swift and Gillespie sold to Digital River), Targetbase and Twelve Horses.
'We love marketing,' said Baker. 'But we didn't love the solutions anymore because they didn't allow us to be as agile, smart or innovative as we knew we could be. So we wiped the slate clean and did something about it. We built Cordial: a true solution, powered by machine learning, built to empower marketers to see more, do more and reach more people in more powerful ways. Today, many brands are doing just that, as revealed by Cordial's adoption pace.'
Baker is also a highly-awarded marketer and author who continues to contribute to marketing publications. In 2016, he was the recipient of the prestigious DMA/EEC Thought Leader of the Year Award. Cordial has also earned recognition from the DMA as one of the most disruptive startups, one of the Best Places to Work in San Diego and participated in R/GA's Connected Commerce Accelerator.
Said Fuller, 'Investing in Cordial was easy for us. At its core, Cordial is the most adaptive messaging platform, built especially for this ever-evolving connected age. It is led by a team of pioneers with the same high standards, enthusiasm and desire to make great ideas happen -- which is what made them all marketers in the first place. For marketers, it's a winning combination. Cordial delivers the hundreds of things marketers wished they could have done with other marketing clouds over the years, along with a multitude of other possibilities.'
In conjunction with sharing its funding news at eTail West, on Feb. 27, Cordial will also:
Lead a series of panels and roundtables during the Email Marketing and CRM Pre-Conference.
Host eTail attendees in the Cordial Lounge Feb. 27 and 28 in Springs Ballroom E. The lounge offers opportunities to meet Cordial executives, 30-minute sessions with EEC/DMA email Thought-Leader of the Year, Alessandra Souers, information about how to boost conversions through email programs and refreshing Cordial smoothies and specialty cocktails.
Announce the Retail Industry launch of Cordial Experiments, a proprietary, self-optimizing technology that leverages machine learning for online, subscription-based and membership-based retailers, allowing them to optimize every email variable tied to viewership, engagement and conversion for automated messaging.
Announce the Retail Industry beta launch of Cordial Recommendations, which offers individualized recommendations driven from web browse behaviors, purchase behaviors and response models.
Interested in visiting Cordial at eTail West? Contact Adam Meshot (ameshot@cordial.io) or visit the Cordial team in Springs Ballroom E.
About Cordial
Cordial is an adaptive messaging platform powered by machine learning that learns, understands and adapts messaging based on your customers' actions in the moment. Cordial empowers customers to ensure that their email and mobile campaigns are perfectly orchestrated, personalized and automated to support one-on-one, real-time experiences across millions of connected devices, including The Internet of Things. Through Cordial's self-optimized machine learning layer, users have boasted a 760 percent increase in email revenue and a 485 percent increase in engagement through transactional and triggered emails. For more information about Cordial, visit www.cordial.io.
About Upfront Ventures
Upfront Ventures is a Los Angeles-based venture capital firm that is focused on investments in early stage technology companies. The firm has been making investments in tech companies like Maker Studios, TrueCar, Overture, CitySearch, BillMeLater, Envestnet, DealerTrack, CyberSource, Qualys, and HDI since 1996. Upfront Ventures was founded in 1996 by Yves Sisteron, Steve Lebow, and Steven Dietz.