imagino, a marketing technology provider headquartered in Paris, has closed €25 million in Series A investment. The round was led by Cathay Innovation and joined by henQ (which invested in Tomorro and Malou.
How will imagino use the funding?
The investment will accelerate its growth in the UK, which is already gaining momentum, and support its launch in the US. It will also support the company’s ambitious recruitment plans as it scales and builds its presence in the UK and launches in the US this year. In addition, the funding will ensure significant resources can be devoted to its ongoing product development.
Marketing automation growth
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. Likewise, there is a increase in 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.
This is where imagino comes into the picture. It 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.
The team behind imagino
Founded in 2017 by Stéphane Dehoche, Arnaud Chapis, and Thomas Boudalier, imagino’s leaders have a track record of growing successful businesses. After 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.
What does it do?
imagino offers a customer data management platform and a campaign management solution designed to connect, unify and activate customer data.
These two tools meet the needs of professionals in marketing, finance and customer relations departments, enabling them to deliver a seamless, personalised experience to their customers. With an automation system and the creation of a unified view, imagino enables companies to regain control of their customer data in order to reduce time to value, lower initial investment and accelerate return on investment.
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.
Stéphane Dehoche, co-founder and CEO of imagino, said: “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.”
“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.
Lindsay McEwan, Chief Revenue Officer at imagino, said: “Marketers in the UK are already well-acquainted with CDPs; but we hear time and time again from brands that they have a feeling of being let down by their tech investments seeing lacklustre results. In this increasingly competitive environment, marketers have no option but to deliver value for their organisations or fail. In just a short period of time, we’ve seen an overwhelmingly positive reaction from brands in the UK. This funding will ensure this momentum continues at scale.”
What do we think about imagino?
The company has raised investment from Cathay Innovation and henQ, both with long-standing reputations supporting entrepreneurial businesses growth. This shows that the company is committed to grow and reach new markets and this investment stands as a testament to it.
