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Ecommerce marketing automation platform Clavio has received a $100 million strategic investment from Shopify, according to filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The announcement coincides with the announcement that Clavio and Shopify will strengthen their existing partnership by making Shopify Plus a recommended email product for Shopify’s premium merchant plan, giving Clavio early access to in-development Shopify features.
“We’ve been working closely with Shopify for years and this is a great next step,” Clavio CEO Andrew Bialecki told TechCrunch in an email. They have great respect for the culture of product management. Shopify has been a great team to work with and has been key to our growth and we’re excited that this will help us move faster to help more of their customers.
In the year Founded in 2012, Boston-based Clavio — TechCrunch described it broadly — integrates with existing platforms (e.g. Octane AI, Recharge) to automate the delivery of emails and text messages to customers. Using Clavio, businesses can set triggers for messages about abandoned carts, product recommendations, and more, using a variety of templates and predictive analytics tools.
There is no shortage of competition in the marketing automation technology space (see Sendlane, Sendinblue, and Cordial to name a few). But Clavio has done incredibly well for itself, landing over 100,000 paying customers including Unilever, Dermalogica, Solo Stove and Citizen Watches.
To date, Clavio, which has more than 1,000 employees, has raised around $775 million. As of May 2021, the startup has been valued at $9.5 billion by investors including Sands Capital, Counterpoint Global, Accel and Summit Partners.
For Shopify, Clavio is the latest in a series of investments and acquisitions aimed at expanding the reach of the ecommerce platform. In May, Shopify acquired shipping logistics startup Deliver for $2.1 billion — the largest acquisition in Shopify’s history — to open an “end-to-end” logistics platform for merchants. Just this week, following an equity pledge in CMS developer Sanity, Shopify invested in Single, a music and video app that many businesses use on Shopify.
Shopify’s past investments have leaned toward referrals and martech, as long as they’re not focused. Last September, Shopify invested money and formed a partnership with Yotpo, which provides marketing tools and products for consumer sellers. The ecommerce giant recently infused capital into CraingMind, a startup that offers “personalized experiences” without using personal data.
There’s certainly pressure on Shopify to weather what could be an extended recession. Last month, the company cut 10 percent of its workforce, according to CEO and founder Toby Luttke, as it pulled back online orders and returned to old marketing practices. The company posted a net loss of $1.2 billion for Q2 2022, and warned shareholders during a call last week that inflation would impact earnings for the rest of the year.
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