San Francisco based, VMob that specializes in personalized marketing solution has secured $2.3 million in funding from Vix Investments. The fresh flow of funds, says the company, will be used to fuel its product development and market expansion.
VMob is a real time contextual analytics platform that drives store retails. It indexes data including weather, location and traffic conditions which is used to personalize marketing content and enhanced customer experiences.
Scott Bradley, VMob’s founder and CEO, says, “We are delighted to welcome Vix as an experienced investor very familiar with our space. Vix understands what it takes to scale out a technology business globally, and the investment is a vote of confidence in VMob’s market proposition, execution plan and team.”
As the in-store technology evolves, mobile-focused app employment has found more mention than ever. VMob in its efforts to understand the connected customer journey powered by Internet of Things (IoT), leverages customer data to increase customer engagement and retention. It believes it is a ‘natural fit’ for the Vix portfolio and transaction will aid support to its existing products and solutions.
The company claims to harnesses the power of IoT, Big Data, machine learning, business intelligence and predictive analytics to understand the mobile’s contribution in boosting sales. It also had an alliance with Microsoft Azure and its integrated services which was aimed at maximizing processing capabilities.
Rhoda Phillippo, executive chair of Vix Investments Limited, states, “The unique nature of the VMob offering, go-to-market strategy and strong Microsoft partner relationship made this an attractive investment.”
VMob claims that it encourages customers offline by delivering targeted content to connected devices including smartphones and wearables and continues the conversation with visitors to physical locations of the enterprises through WiFi, beacons, Near Field Communication (NFC), digital displays and Point of Sale (POS), creating an engaging customer experience by tracking and analyzing.
Here’s How?
The VMob platform enables a mobile app which constantly pulls data from a vast number of digital touch points in addition to users’ devices like weather data, POS terminals, in-store Wi-Fi, and beacons and other sensors that track where customers are in the store, from the sales counter to the drive-through. Then by using Microsoft Azure Blob storage to process data from more than 40 million endpoints in the cloud with Azure Stream Analytics, the platform analyzes customer behavior patterns and responses to offers to ensure that targeted promotions are the most relevant and desirable for the customer.
Later, customized offers are sent back to customers through Azure Notification Hubs, regardless of the mobile platform – Windows, Android or iOS. It works with customers’ marketing agencies or in-house teams to provide data for reporting, which can be done through BI for Office 365 or fed into customers’ bespoke analytics systems.