Conversational marketing technology provider Neolane today announced it has closed a $27 million financing round. Battery Ventures led the round, joining initial Neolane investors Auriga Partners, XAnge and Gilles Queru. The funding will be used to aggressively expand Neolane's global leadership across the marketing technology industry, particularly in North America, by bolstering its own sales, marketing and product development efforts, while increasing its presence in new geographies.

Neolane enables users to unify inbound and outbound communications strategies by providing a centralized system to track and manage all marketing activity data to generate targeted messaging and the best, most relevant offers based on customer behavior and established preferences. Based on significant growth across its customer base including expanded deals with existing customers and a very low attrition rate, in the first half of 2011 Neolane grew revenues 70 percent compared to the same period a year prior.

"Neolane has successfully carved out an impressive footprint within the marketing technology space," said Battery Ventures Vice President, Morad Elhafed. "We are impressed with the financial discipline that drove profitability for the company in 2011, its measured approach to corporate expansion, and Neolane's ability to drive consistent and impressive revenues. We are optimistic about Neolane's expansion goals and the overall future growth trajectory of this category."

With its conversational marketing technology, Neolane has successfully created a new category within the broader marketing technology space. Nearly 400 B2C and B2B customers, including divisions of Fortune Global 500 organizations, rely on Neolane to redefine how they engage with their customers while driving new revenue opportunities and increasing marketing effectiveness. Neolane is differentiated by its ability to empower organizations to build and sustain one-to-one personalized lifetime dialogs across all marketing channels from a single platform.

"With a number of financial transactions and merger and acquisition activity in the marketing technology space, we have certainly reached an exciting time in the market's evolution. Historically a financially conservative organization, we determined the time was right to capitalize on that momentum and make some bold moves of our own in the market," said Stephane Dehoche, president and CEO, Neolane. "This new investment by Battery Ventures is a strong endorsement from a top tier firm that has a clear understanding of the market. We feel that many marketers have only scratched the surface in terms of the impact our conversational marketing technology can have on overall marketing effectiveness, revenue generation and loyalty. This funding will help drive greater adoption and increase visibility for what's truly possible with the technology."

Over the past year, Neolane hit several key milestones including the launch of the newest version of Neolane Interaction. Neolane Interaction is the company's application for fusing inbound and outbound marketing campaigns and offers, with the ability to dynamically generate real-time personalized marketing offers and content on web sites and Facebook brand pages. The company also successfully launched Neolane Social Marketing, an industry-first solution enabling marketers to transform vast audiences of anonymous fans and followers into qualified prospects and profitable customers. Further, Neolane celebrated its 10 year anniversary, marking a decade of marketing technology innovation.

About Battery Ventures

Since 1983, Battery has been investing in technology and innovation worldwide. The firm partners with entrepreneurs and management teams across technology sectors, geographies and stages of a company's life, from start-up and expansion financing, to growth equity and buyouts.

Battery has supported many breakthrough companies around the world, including: Airespace (acquired by Cisco), Akamai Technologies (IPO), Angie's List (IPO), Cbeyond (IPO), LIFFE (acquired by Euronext), Groupon (IPO), ITA Software (acquired by Google), MetroPCS (IPO) and Neoteris (acquired by Netscreen). Its current portfolio includes emerging and more established firms such as Anobit, Bazaarvoice, Bluestem Brands, Consona Software, Fingerhut, FreeWheel, Hotel Tonight, Marketo, Opscode, Redwood Systems, Skullcandy (IPO), VSS Monitoring, Wayfair, and Zerto.

From offices in Boston, Silicon Valley and Israel, Battery manages nearly $4B in committed capital, including its current fund of $750M. For more information, visit www.battery.com . Follow Battery on Twitter @BatteryVentures.

About Neolane

Neolane provides the only conversational marketing technology that empowers organizations to build and sustain one-to-one lifetime dialogues, dramatically increasing revenue and marketing efficiency. Born digital, with best-in-class email and inbound-outbound channel fusion capabilities architected into a single code-based platform, marketers achieve results in record time. Neolane is easy to use for both power and casual users, but powerful enough to drive the most sophisticated marketing strategies. Future proof, Neolane has a track record of enabling its customers to adapt to new customer engagement challenges and exploit opportunities more quickly than their competition. Neolane is used by nearly 400 of the world's leading companies including Alcatel Lucent, barnesandnoble.com, Orange, Sears Canada, Sephora Europe and Sony Music.