[ad_1]
Converted, an Egyptian startup that powers a marketing operating system for e-commerce brands, has raised $3 million in a seed round led by Saudi Arabia-headquartered Merak Capital.
Other participating investors include 500 Global and MSAS. In a statement, the company said it plans to use the funds for strategic hiring and further platform development.
As brands transition to e-commerce sales, they work with vast amounts of fragmented data that need to be unified to drive informed decisions and growth. Likewise, platforms like Convertedin become important as they cater to products and businesses with one, some or all of these objectives: drive personalized and measurable campaigns, convert customers, achieve measurable results and increase revenue.
CEO Mohammad Ferghani founded the company in 2019 with Mohammad Atef and Mustafa Raslan after working with several brands at companies such as Speakol Ads and Vodafone. His time as an employee opened up the opportunity to help offline stores retain their customers online while acquiring new offline shoppers.
“If you work at IKEA and you pick up your phone number. After that, our engine will work to find the same product that you can buy and we will pick you up online again. If you go back to IKEA for that product, we will calculate the replacement cost online,” the CEO said in an interview. “That was the main idea at the time when we saw a big problem with offline storage, where there was no analytics platform or retargeting mechanism.”
As the pandemic hit and offline stores were forced to close their doors, many of these brands turned to e-commerce, and as a result, Convertedin took its business online as well.
Ferghani argues that although online brands use CRM software to collect data, most of them don’t. Therefore, Convertedin provides a solution where you can use your data better. It plugs into more than 10 major e-commerce platforms and ad networks – and once brands are connected, it segments customers into different segments, such as high and low prices and those looking for specific products, and uses these insights to personalize. Multi-channel marketing and driving various campaigns across social media, SMS, email, search and other channels while having the ability to track and identify revenue conversions.
Convertedin claims that SMB e-commerce marketers using the platform will increase their return on ad spend (ROAS) by 2x and reduce customer acquisition costs (CAC) by 40%. To date, the company has partnered with media buying and advertising agencies in Africa, the Middle East and South America for more than 100 local and international brands in the automotive, healthcare and technology industries. Convertedin’s revenue from these businesses is growing by “double-digits” month over month, Ferghani said.
The three-year-old Egyptian-headquartered company has offices in Saudi Arabia and Brazil; Recently opened one in the latter. The South American market is huge, with e-commerce revenue expected to reach $160 billion by 2025 with more than 200 million users. As a result, Convertedin plans to offer its services in Portuguese – in addition to English and Arabic – in Brazil and Mexico, another South American market. Ferghani says Convertedin is also looking at South Africa and India.
On expanding into five new markets, including Saudi Arabia, the CEO said, “We will focus on emerging markets and from a healthy unit economics point of view, we can easily sell in those countries because there is less competition there.” Customer acquisition costs are low compared to the US or European markets. The new investment will help Convertedin with this expansion in addition to R&D and hiring.
Ahmed Aljibrin, partner at lead investor Merak Capital, said in a statement that the ever-changing landscape of digital marketing platforms poses new challenges for e-commerce companies – and Convertedin solves that. Hence the reason Merak Capital backed the firm. “We are pleased to support Convertedin, a martech company that has built a modern platform to simplify digital marketing, improve customer acquisition and drive growth for its customers. Convertedin is led by a world-class team we are confident in as the company embarks on its next phase of growth in MENA and Latin America.
[ad_2]
Source link
