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Monocle raised $7.5 million in seed funding to speed up its tailored promotions offering, CEO Noam Szpiro tells Axios exclusively.

Why it matters: With customer acquisition costs rising, retailers are looking to cut ad spend and optimize areas like promotions and pricing.

What's happening: F2 Venture Capital led the round, and was joined by Tiferes Ventures, irrvrntVC and the founders of Instacart, Everlane, Melio and Chubbies.

The company expects the fresh funds to give it at least two to three years of runway, COO Mark Lotman tells Axios.

How it works: Monocle helps consumer brands figure out how to best get promotions in front of consumers.

The company uses causal inference, a type of machine learning that attempts to determine the cause and effect of customer behavior, Szpiro says.

Monocle tries to understand how much a promotion changes a customer's behaviors and then how much incremental revenue a retailer can gain by giving the incentive to the individual.

Zoom out: Customer acquisition costs have risen 222% in the past eight years from 2022, according to commerce platform SimplicityDX, and this has gotten more difficult given brands have difficulty accurately measuring revenues online.

Zoom in: "We try to understand what is the individual preference in terms of what would get them to make that purchase," Szpiro says.

There are a wide range of incentives that could get people to spend, such as offering a percentage or dollar amount off or buy one, get one free or cashback.

Monocle would ensure that they're able to get that discount "if that's what would have led them to make that purchase," Szpiro says.

What's next: Monocle already integrates into a retailer's existing tools, such as its Shopify store, its email platform and SMS.

The company hopes to extend its offering into other areas, such as direct mail.

It could also be applied in fields like inventory and supply chain management, Lotman adds.

Exclusive: Monocle raises $7.5M to shepherd tailored promotions

The company wants to save costs through retailers by getting promotions right.

Illustration of three cellphones, each with a "like" icon, in a shopping cart.

Venture capital funding

Monocle raised $7.5 million in seed funding to speed up its tailored promotions offering, CEO Noam Szpiro tells Axios exclusively.Why it matters: With customer acquisition costs rising, retailers are looking to cut ad spend and optimize areas like promotions and pricing.

Exclusive: Monocle raises $7.5M to shepherd tailored promotions

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