ZineOne raises cash to help e-commerce companies predict customer behavior

In-session marketing is a form of inbound marketing that attempts to analyze and influence the purchasing decisions of web and app users and is often difficult to implement.With so much competition going on these days for consumer attention, few brands can make a lasting first impression. spend About 10 seconds on the company homepage if the page doesn’t immediately lead to the marketing message.

Debjani Deb, Manish Malhotra and Arnab Mukherjee, co-founders of the in-session marketing platform THEIN ONE, directly addressed customer tracking hurdles in a previous job. Deb previously co-founded EmPower, a company that provides tools for social media research and media monitoring, and Malhotra launched his own company, Social Lair, to build social media capabilities for large enterprises. As for Mukherjee, he left his Oracle to launch his Udichi, his platform of computing for “big data” analytics.

In the early days of ZineOne, Deb, Malhotra, and Mukherjee would meet at Santa Clara’s Milpitas Library and a local coffee shop to speculate where online marketing technology was headed. They concluded that recording real-time customer decisions was the key to driving conversions, resulting in ZineOne’s first line of products.

After winning customers including Men’s Wearhouse, Wynn Resorts, Advance Auto Parts and Kohl’s, ZineOne has raised $27.4 million in Series C funding, the company announced today. SignalFire led the round, with Norwest and others also participating, bringing ZineOne’s total funding to his $42 million.

“We believe that in-session marketing is an important and perhaps the most important component of modern marketing for brands in a privacy-first world,” Deb said in an email interview with TechCrunch. said in “Ultimately, what in-session marketing accomplishes is helping brands get the optimal amount of conversions on their website, which leads to more efficient pre-purchase dollars and remarketing It becomes less dependent on strategy.”

Broadly speaking, ZineOne, which serves e-commerce brands in particular, uses AI to score behavior and personalize the individual experience of website and app users. By observing a visitor’s first few clicks or taps, the platform can customize messages, discount offers, and product recommendations that are ostensibly displayed in real time.

at least some researchmost consumers disagree Any A form of behavioral tracking for marketing.Some of the denials may arise from the following concerns AI system bias, can impact the experience of certain customer segments. But Deb claims ZineOne has safeguards to ease those fears.

For example, ZineOne uses anonymized session data for analytics, says Deb. This is primarily a “detailed set of behavioral events” for each visitor, such as product detail view, cart update, checkout, etc. Since the platform’s targeting is based on short-term behavior, she claims there is no need to store her long-term identity or profile her data.

“ZineOne’s in-session marketing platform focuses on three main pillars: understanding the in-session behavior of anonymous visitors (not just known customers), predicting outcomes, and executing the optimal set of in-session actions. I’m guessing,” said Deb. “ZineOne’s early purchase prediction model [brands] Within 5 clicks, which anonymous visitors are more likely to buy, who is on the fence, and who is less likely to make a purchase in that session. That way, you can trigger experiences today, now, and in the moment based on consumer buying habits. ”

ZineOne is not the only platform that applies data analytics to drive e-commerce personalization. dynamic yieldwhich got By McDonald’s in 2019 before being sold to Mastercard, it uses AI to customize website content, insert product recommendations, and even dynamically change web flow layouts. Metrical learns which visitors to your site are more likely to bounce or abandon their carts, and “hyper-target” these prospects to persuade them to continue shopping.

But Deb argues that ZineOne is differentiated by the breadth of its AI system. AI systems can also predict the level of friction throughout the shopping process and price sensitivity at specific points in the session. The current product roadmap is focused on commercializing new predictive models and building new data her visualizations, as well as launching self-service her dashboards, she said.

ZineOne also plans to increase its headcount by 70% by the end of the year.

“ZineOne provides a more personalized browsing and shopping experience without compromising end-user privacy through cookie tracking and shadow profiles. Due to a number of factors, now is the ideal time for session marketing to rise for retailers,” said Deb. “The retail sector, which experienced tremendous e-commerce growth at the peak of the pandemic, is now facing a range of challenges due to a slowing economy and skyrocketing inflation. Addressing these major brand blind spots by responding to needs and instantly recognizing what’s going on while consumers are actively engaging with the brand.”