German conversational AI platform Spectrm raises €6M to automate one-to-one communication with customers

Berlin-based Spectrm, a conversational marketing platform that helps businesses automate one-to-one conversations with consumers on social messaging channels, announced on Tuesday, June 6, that it has secured $6.5M (approximately €6M) in a fresh round of funding.

The investment was led by 3TS Capital Partners. Existing investors LHV Global, BDMI, North Base Media, and Jens Schumann also participated in the round.

With this deal, Sever Totia, Partner at 3TS Capital Partners, will join Spectrm’s board of directors.

Totia says, “Spectrm is defining the conversational marketing category for consumer brands. Their vision for the future of one-to-one marketing leveraging all the ubiquitous messaging channels fits well in our portfolio of investing in disruptive personalisation platforms.”

“The company’s rapidly expanding enterprise customer base and consistent year-over-year revenue growth confirm their market opportunity.”

Dave Helmreich, Chief Commercial Officer of Innovid, and Andy Hunn, a three-time exited founder, will also join Spectrm’s board.

Capital utilisation

Spectrm says it will use the funds to enable marketing teams at global brands to have one-on-one consumer discussions at scale.

The funds will also help the startup strengthen its position in brand-ready AI technologies and CRM system integration to boost conversion and collect zero-party data. This will then be used to develop the next-gen of the customer lifecycle, segmentation, and retention marketing.

Spectrm says it witnessed “monumental” growth recently. Its revenue increased three times in the previous two years. 

Since its inception in 2016, the startup had an 8X YoY increase in the number of clients on messaging applications and there was a 152X YoY rise in those customers’ one-to-one brand engagements throughout that timeframe.

Automate one-to-one conversations with customers

Founded by Max Koziolek and Jendrik Höft, Spectrm is a no-code conversational marketing automation technology that enables businesses to use social message channels to increase customer conversion and revenue. 

The conversational AI, messaging analytics, and chatbot marketing solutions from Spectrm claim to make it simple to customise consumer experiences at scale.

In 2020, Spectrm filed two patents for generative networks-based domain-specific NLP applications. 

Since GPT-2, the startup has included GPT into their offering, upgrading constantly with each new model and customising integrations to allow for scalable, brand-safe conversational commerce with clients.

Koziolek says, “Imagine ChatGPT for marketers, transformed to be brand-ready, predictive, and secure for enterprises, connected seamlessly across all messaging apps like Messenger, Instagram DMs, and WhatsApp, engaging with consumers at scale in private threads.”

“Spectrm combines the power of large language models to understand consumers, with proven best practices, templates and tools to build conversational journeys and automate direct interaction in messaging apps.”

“It’s the new way for lifecycle, CRM and retention marketers to build relationships that increase revenue and grow customer lifetime value,” Koziolek adds.

As an enterprise messaging partner of Meta and Google for a number of years, Spectrm began on Messenger when it first became available to enterprises and continues to work closely with Meta and Google go-to-market teams.

Zendesk, Jellyfish, WPP, and Accenture Interactive are a few of the partners the startup has in its ecosystem, and they have all been crucial, claims Spectrm, in helping large consumer brands scale on messaging platforms. 

Spectrm’s customers include Uber, HelloFresh, Volkswagen, Premier League, and Pandora.