Text | Sailing to the Sea, Author: Zhou Ke
Marketing through information channels using AI technology is now experiencing explosive market demand.
A few days ago, digital marketing platformConnectly Announces $20 Million in Series B Fundingled byAlibabaAfter this round of financing,Connectly has raised a total of $37.2 million in funding, with a valuation of $100 million.
Connectly is an emerging digital marketing platform focusing onConversational Businessusing artificial intelligence and blockchain technology,Build a connection channel between enterprises and individualsWith this round of financing, Connectly’s development in the field of conversational e-commerce has also become a focus of attention in the capital market.
Another reason why Connectly has attracted attention is that the lead investor in its Series B round is Alibaba. As we all know, Alibaba’s position in the global e-commerce field and its optimism about Connectly have inevitably made people in the industry more curious about the technical support, service capabilities, market prospects, etc. behind this product.
As AI products continue to find application scenarios, we have observed that more and more teams areMarketing, SalesLooking for application opportunities for AI technology in commercial scenarios such as AI, the positioning direction of these teams’ product usage scenarios, and their technological advantages are also worthy of attention.
Annual revenue increased 5 times, what is the background of Connectly
Connectly was founded in 2020. Its founder, Stefanos Loukakos, was the director of the Messenger department. During his work, he found that there was an information gap between online e-commerce retailers and consumers. Especially in marketing activities, during various promotional events, e-commerce sellers sent messages to consumers through various channels, which has become a basic operation of marketing activities. But how is the conversion effect of these messages? Anyone who has had e-commerce shopping experience knows that as consumers, we often automatically block these “spam messages”, but this does not mean that we have no shopping needs.
From the perspective of e-commerce sellers or e-commerce platforms, this kind of information marketing has poor results.No real reach to userswhetherSocial media channels, text messages or emailsvarious forms ofIf the marketing information is not really seen by consumers, the entire marketing chain will be broken.incomplete marketing certainly cannot bring satisfactory results.
Loukakos, who has been studying social media and information reach for many years, quickly discovered the market opportunity. He believes that “companies need a solution to create successful messaging campaigns and automatically engage in conversations with potential customers and customers.” Loukakos said: “Ideally, (companies using this solution) can customize recommendations to ensure that customers discover products they like and help companies understand their customers more deeply.”
Loukakos’ idea was supported by Chinese engineer Yandong Liu, who previously worked as a chief engineer in Uber’s machine learning team.
Both of them are very interested in information marketing and founded Connectly.ai in 2020. The company uses artificial intelligence technology to help retailers and e-commerce platforms provide information marketing to sell their products and services.
Loukakos put Connectly’s functionality in very simple terms: “Send and receive messages without the enterprise having to host, manage or deal with software updates.”
In terms of working mode, Connectly is currently integrated with a series of messaging applications and services, including WhatsApp, Instagram, SMS, etc. Brands can use its services to create advertising campaigns and have basic conversations with customers.
The core of the Connectly platform is Sofia AI, an artificial intelligence sales assistant that can seamlessly connect with the enterprise backend platform. Sofia AI’s functions cover several aspects:
Customized recommendations powered by artificial intelligence ensure customers discover products they’ll love.
Engage and assist customers wherever they are through Instagram, WhatsApp, text or web chat.
Use these insights to gain a deeper understanding of your customers.
Artificial intelligence technology can be fine-tuned according to the retailer’s product catalog and preferences, and inserted into the brand’s online store. In order to attract more users to place orders, the platform can also inform consumers of product prices, discount information, etc. to help consumers make decisions.
Gartner consulting firm predicts that in the next two years, some operators will save $80 billion in labor costs for related industries by widely deploying artificial intelligence. Gartner estimates that by 2026, nearly 10% of corporate customers’ service agent interactions will be automated, which will help companies save costs.
Therefore, there will be broad market opportunities in the future for serving enterprises through artificial intelligence technology.
The capital market’s recognition of Connectly has made Loukakos and his team more confident in the industry. It is understood that Connectly previously had more than 300 paying customers. In 2023, its revenue increased fivefold, and it is expected that revenue will continue to grow by 100% in 2024.
Previous data showed that Connectly’s revenue in 2023 was US$3.5 million. The media estimated that in 2024, Connectly’s revenue is expected to reach US$7 million. Its commercialization model is still relatively recognized.
Liu Yandong, one of Connectly’s founders and the company’s CTO responsible for technical support, once said: “The multi-platform approach is beneficial to retailers because it enables retailers to connect with customers via mobile devices anytime, anywhere, thereby increasing sales and deepening customer engagement.”
However, Liu Yandong also acknowledged the challenges faced by products like Connectly: “Creating a seamless experience across different channels requires sophisticated artificial intelligence to understand and predict customer needs to ensure personalization and satisfaction.”
Although it was established not long ago, Connectly’s business has developed rapidly, and its team members are also conducting business in many parts of the world. In the early days of the company, Connectly focused on the United States. Recently, after receiving financing from Alibaba, its officials stated that it plans to conduct business in Greece to radiate a wider market.
Currently, Connectly’s employees are based in major regions including the United States, Greece, Brazil, Turkey, Canada, Indonesia, mainland China, and Hong Kong, among which there are quite a few Chinese employees. In addition to the Chinese co-founder Liu Yandong, his team also has several software engineers living in mainland China and Hong Kong.
How big is the market for AI marketing?
There are many products like Connectly that combine AI technology with marketing methods. In the past two years, with the accelerated development of AI technology, finding application scenarios has become an important issue for many AI technology products. AI+marketing empowers B-side enterprises, which is a relatively mature direction. Many AI companies and products have found commercial scenarios in corporate marketing and achieved profitability, proving the feasibility of this direction.
By analyzing some of the better-performing AI service company products on the market, we can discover the various directions in which AI technology empowers enterprises.
For example, Synthesia, in which Nvidia invested $90 million, provides generative AI services similar to ChatGPT, but the generated content is based on digital people with human faces. For example, after obtaining David Beckham’s consent, Synthesia worked with a charity organization to produce a synthetic video. In the video, the virtual Beckham called on people to raise awareness of malaria in 9 different languages.
This video digital human tool is now very mature and widely usedEnterprise digital marketing channelscovering even the world’s top 500 companies, and its technology is used to help companies makeDigital human video training, promotional activities, etc..
Applying the video model to corporate marketing and promotion channels will bring more attention.
Similar to Synthesia, AI video tools including Veed, Colossyan, Elai, and HeyGen all have the ability toEnterprises provide digital video marketingThe service is a way to promote AI+ video generation in corporate marketing scenarios.
Synthesia Products
Another example is the Polish marketing company Digital First AI, a marketing startup that just received $3.8 million in July this year. It provides SaaS solutions that use AI to select marketing strategies and generate advertising content.
Digital First AI’s technology in serving customers can help them save budgets, optimize operational results, and move towards autonomous marketing to replace manual intervention in online advertising and marketing.
Of course, there are many marketing platforms similar to Connectly. Before Connectly, Gong, an intelligent solution platform, was born in 2015. It provides customers with a full range of revenue intelligence solutions that use generative artificial intelligence and other advanced features to supportRevenue forecasting, customer service engagement, analytics, team productivity managementetc. Gong’s clients include ADP, Nasdaq, LinkedIn, Dropbox and Snowflake.
Looking at the current AI+marketing product track, its innovation is mainly reflected in two aspects: product form upgrades covering service upgrades, and AI marketing platforms exploring application scenarios in more subdivided fields.
After analyzing several AI marketing tools including Connectly, we found that the current AI marketing products have three characteristics:
First of all, the corporate tracks targeted by AI marketing products are more vertical.Connectly is a typical example of finding business pain points in a certain segment, using AI technology to solve the problems faced by enterprises, and solving specific marketing pain points of enterprises. Its support for enterprise marketing methods is more targeted.
Secondly, AI products that do marketing in vertical fields will further explore customer needs in related fields and provide customers with value-added services after perfecting their marketing methods.At present, after entering the corporate customer base with AI-assisted marketing, many marketing platforms have begun to expand their business in the direction of collecting intelligence for enterprises, conducting market research and analysis, and team document processing.
Third, the forms of AI marketing platforms are more diversified.Platforms like Synthesia are based on digital humans and provide video marketing services. In addition to video, they also include AI voice, AI multi-language translation, etc. These forms are constantly moving closer to corporate marketing needs, using more innovative means to help customers reach more users and improve marketing quality.
Conclusion
The implementation scenarios of AI+marketing are becoming the object of exploration for many companies. E-commerce marketing, like that covered by Connectly, is a relatively popular field. There are many vertical tracks like this. In the future, the AI+marketing model is bound to give birth to more new products and new models in multiple fields, changing the entire industry. However, companies still need to pay attention to issues such as information security brought about by AI marketing. Looking for opportunities in more segmented or relatively niche markets may provide more room.
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