Nomi raises $3 million in seed funding

Retail analytics company founded by executives from Salesforce and Buddy Media

Nomi, a startup led by former executives from Salesforce.com and Buddy Media, has raised $3 million in seed funding, it was announced Monday. 

The funding was led by First Round Capital, with additional investors in the round including Greycroft Partners, SV Angel, Forerunner Ventures, Ralph Mack, Dave Tisch, Bonobos CEO Andy Dunn, and Mass Relevance CEO Sam Decker.

Nomi is a mobile first technology platform that provides brick and mortar retailers with the ability to gain greater insights by tracking consumer behavior across in-store and online channels by measuring, analyzing, and engaging their customers in real time.

The company attempts to optimize in-store shopping, and create the same type of customer experience that users get on Amazon, Chief Revenue Officer Wesley Barrow said in an interview with VatorNews. 

The company's solution leverages the company's existing infrastructure by integrating with existing CRM, loyalty, and e-commerce platforms and it allows retailers to leverage both offline and online data to provide customers with more personalized service. To achieve this, Nomi offers two products: Nomi Listen and Nomi Measure.

• Nomi Listen provides real time offline analytics technology to customers by allowing them to measure statistics, such as window conversion, visit duration, visit frequency and device type. This allows the stores to uncover trends in customer behavior across stores within a city, district or region. The way that Nomi does this is by laying its software on top of a retailer's in-store wifi. The store will then be able to see how long a customer has been in the store, if they have been in the store before, if they walked by and what type of device they are using. 

• Nomi Measure takes the insights gained from Listen and and then applies them so that retailers can create better advertising campaigns.  Businesses are able to create personalized and targeted campaigns, improve display advertising, test scenarios to see what works best with customers, and measure the impact of events on in-store visits and revenue,

"When someone walks into a store, they are treated like it is the first time they have been in there, even if they are the best customer," Barrow said. "There is no reason not to be treated like a loyal customer."

Right now, all of the data collected is anonymous, so customers cannot be targeted individually, but in the next three to six months the company plans to begin allowing customers to opt-in to receive more personalized recommendations and targeted advertising on sites like Facebook, Groupon and Foursquare.

The ultimate goal of Nomi is to create the best in-store experience possible for the customer, Barrrow said. In the next year or two, Nomi wants to have those working at the stores to be trained to immediately recognize loyal customers by seeing what stores they have been in and what they purchased. and then cater them accordingly.

Stores will also be able to send targeted, personalized ads to their customers. For example, Barrow said, a store will be able to send a coupon to women, aged 25-35, who have visited the store three times in three months, and who have spent $1000 dollars. These customers may also get an alert on their phone as they walk by the store for a specific product that they have bought in the past.

Brick and mortar retailers simply cannot compete on pricing, Barrow said, since they will always lose that way. What these stores need to do is provide experience and value, and do it by tying offline and online shopping behavior. And Nomi helps them provide it. 

The founders of New York City-based Nomi include CEO Marc Ferrentino, the former Chief Technical Architect for Salesforce.com; Barrow, who was the top revenue producer at Buddy Media; and President Corey Capasso, co-founder of Spinback, which was acquired by Buddy Media in May 2011. Salesforce bought Buddy Media for $689 million in June 2012. 

The Board of Advisors at Nomi includes Ari Hoffman the CEO of Benetton U.S.A; Jerry Politzer, the former CEO of Loehmann's; Bryan Eisenberg, Co-Founder & Chairman of Web Analytics Association; Michael Osborne, the former CRO of Bazaarvoice; and Peter Fader & Eric Bradlow, the Co-Directors of Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative.

The company was founded in August 2012, and has been operational since September.

(Image source: https://www.getnomi.com)