imagino, a marketing technology provider headquartered in Paris, announced the details of its €25 million Series A investment led by Cathay Innovation and joined by henQ. The investment will accelerate its growth in the UK, which is already seeing positive momentum, and support its launch in the US.
The investment will support the company’s ambitious recruitment plans as it scales and build its presence in the UK and launch in the US this year. In addition, the funding will ensure significant resources can be devoted to its ongoing product development. The company has already tested its first generative AI feature, AI Copywriter, and additional investment will enable further development for generative and predictive AI features to give brands a competitive advantage.
Already well-established in France, imagino is a revenue-first customer experience platform providing brands with clear and actionable insights through its Customer Data Platform (CDP) to enhance their marketing campaigns. From acquisition to reengagement, imagino’s approach enriches brands’ understanding of their customers and improves the ROI of marketing campaigns to create value in existing systems and build a better overall marketing experience.
Founded in 2017 by Stéphane Dehoche, Arnaud Chapis and Thomas Boudalier, imagino’s leaders have a track record of growing successful businesses. After successfully building Neolane into a world leader in marketing automation and campaign management, the trio was instrumental in the successful sale of the business to Adobe for $600 million. This acquisition formed a key part of Adobe’s Marketing Cloud.
According to Mordor Intelligence, the size of the marketing automation market is expected to reach $15.36 billion, up from $6.85 billion in 2024. Coupled with this, as the pace of AI adoption accelerates, so does the need for reliable data sources available to organisations, which in turn makes having a clear picture of customer data indispensable.
Analysts expect the size of the AI market to grow by 24% every year until 2030 to reach an annual turnover of more than €200 billion. With GenAI making creating content easier and faster, deploying a safe and scalable platform to engage prospective customers is a key success factor for organisations.
Stéphane Dehoche, co-founder and CEO of imagino, commented: “From the start, we’ve always had significant ambitions for the company including international growth. With more than 60 brands seeing the value of imagino in France and the UK, we see even more opportunity in the United States, which is a key market for marketing automation.”
“Our demonstrable experience as seasoned entrepreneurs – evident through Neolane’s success – meant our conversations with investors were clear and productive. imagino is on the same success path as Neolane, but even faster and with more promise,” continued Dehoche.
Cathay Innovation and henQ both have long-standing reputations supporting entrepreneurial businesses grow. Notable companies include Glovo (acquired by DeliveryHero), DataSine (acquired by Shutterstock) and Alkemics (acquired by Salsify) from Cathay Innovation and Mews, Sendcloud, Wemolo and Mendix from henQ.
“The imagino team is led by the most experienced entrepreneurs with a potent combination of both tech and Go-To-Market expertise with a proven track record,” said Bruno Delahaye, Partner at Cathay Innovation. “They have developed a powerful tool to transform data into actions that create personalised, sustainable and seamless customer experiences. AI and international are at the heart of its strategy, and we believe that our knowledge of AI applications and our cross-border expertise will be valuable as it scales.”
“The term serial entrepreneur is too often used, but it truly applies to the founding team of imagino. After founding their first company, which was as early as 1991, the team has been executing super strongly – being increasingly successful with each company they’ve founded. In 2024, 33 years later, we are incredibly impressed with their unwavering drive and unstoppable momentum. We are confident they will build something even bigger and better with imagino than all the great achievements they have realised before,” added Jan Andriessen, Partner at henQ.
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2024/06/paris-based-imagino-raises-e25-million-series-a-to-expand-its-revenue-first-customer-experience-platform/
