Claravine, a self-described marketing data platform, announced today that it had raised $16 million in a Series B round led by Five Elms Capital with participation from Grayhawk Capital, Next Frontier Capital, Peninsula Ventures, Kickstart Fund, and Silverton Partners. CEO Verl Allen says the new money, bringing the company’s total cash to $27.9 million, will bouble Claravine’s workforce to 88 employees by year-end and support product R&D.
Claravine was founded in 2012 as Tracking. First, a company focused on streamlining the tracking code process for large organizations. Tracking code is a snippet that tracks a website visitor’s activity by collecting data and sending it to an analytics module, usually for marketing purposes.
According to Allen, Tracking First had “gritty founders” who “knew the space well” and had “high-value” customers, but the focus was too narrow. “There was an awareness that there was a bigger underlying problem that was being ignored in the market and that our solution had the potential to address it,” Allen told blog line in an email interview. “In 2018, I joined as CEO and helped the organization – now Claravine – grow and expand thowwe can help the largest organizations in the world take a proactive approach to their data.”
Claravine’s product is designed to help enterprises control what flows through their tech stack, especially business intelligence and analytics software, and manage their marketing data standards – the blueprints for defining common formats for data across regions, teams, and campaigns. Through an API and integrations with platforms including Adobe Experience Manager and Workfront, as well as media platforms such as Google Ads, Claravine helps teams manage pthe arameters of these standards over time.
†[F]or many organizations, decision-makers have to rely on unreliable data for business decisions… [These] decision-makers depended not only on technologies and data but also on people, which creates a high potential for errors in the data entry process, exacerbated by all the disconnected technologies and teams,” said Allen. “That’s why our solution is built to embed standards in thowbusiness teams work and collaborate to create and modify data. Facilitating a common understanding of standards when input is generated and assessed gives early-stage organizations greater control, whatever their needs. And users of downstream data can move with greater confidence and speed as they use this data to make decisions.”
To that end, Claravine provides a dashboard where companies can build taxonomies using descriptions, lists, values, and reference fields. For example, using the platform, a user can pull in and standardize a tracking code dataset – automatically verifying that no information is missing. Claravine also offers consulting services to help companies evaluate the current state of their data standards. For a fee, staffers outline alternative approaches, capturing things like naming conventions, rules, and custom attributes in a central location for reference.
“Data standards enable organizations to build a solid data foundation by reducing human errors up front and unlocking greater depth and breadth of data for use…Building data integrity early and putting this data into core systems, including cloud storage, gives you back time for downstream teams that would otherwise be wasted cleaning up and translating,” Allen said.
Allen sees Claravine’s main competition as spreadsheet-based processes, internally built workflows, and increasingly code-less apps. While he admits it can be difficult to convince teams to manage their data standards in a platform rather than silo solutions, he argues that the cost of not doing so is too high.
Allen’s point is underscored: A recent Gartner survey found that only 14% of companies have achieved what they perceive to be a “360-degree view” of their customer due to poor quality data and other organizational hurdles.
“While some organizations try to define and disseminate data requirements in documents, structured spreadsheets, or homegrown solutions, these create enormous challenges in change management, versioning, access, and process, resulting in challenges in data readiness and reliability, especially for global organizations,” Allen says. “The status quo for marketing operations, measurement, and data teams are no longer good enough.”
Mother is the word on Claravine’s Annual Recurring Earnings (ARR) — Allen declined to say — but the startup has nearly 100 clients, including Under Armour, Ancestry, and Vanguard. From 2020 to 2021, Allen says Claravine saw more than 40% ARR growth and 95% gross revenue retention, which refers to the percentage of recurring revenue retained from existing customers, including cancellations.
“Claravine has created a new category that continues to redefine how top brands manage their digital experience. We are extremely impressed with Verl, his team, and their mission,” Stephanie Schneider, a partner at Five Elms Capital, told blog line via email when contacted for comment. “Claravine is positioned as a dominant player in the space as it continues to scale its platform and offerings. We are proud to support the company on this exciting growth journey.”
