Cardlytics, an ATDC company offering targeted, trackable deals through financial institutions, recently closed an $18 million Series B round led by ITC holdings and Kinetic Ventures. Previous investors Canaan Partners, Polaris Venture Partners, and Total Technology Partners also participated. Cam Lanier of ITC will join the Cardlytics board and Nelson Chu of Kinetic will become a board observer.
The success of Cardlytics is exciting but not surprising. In the fall of 2008, Scott Grimes and Lynne Laube proposed an idea that would enable banks and merchants to provide rich rewards to customers based on their individual purchase behavior. Like a personalized GroupOn-type deal delivered via online bank statements, Cardlytics enables retailers to run offers in consumers’ transactions statements targeted against actual debit or credit card purchases. Cardlytics then tracks all redemptions, whether online or in store. Merchants do not pay for distribution, clicks, or customer intelligence, only sales.
The Cardlytics concept and exceptional founders have lived up to their potential, generating customer response rates up to 20 times more effective than traditional advertising. Stay tuned. This remarkable success story is warming up and could be very big by the time Scott and Lynne are finished.