Online Content Manager Acquia Raises $55 Million For Online Customer Relationships

Acquia, the eight-year-old service provider that helps businesses tailor their websites to Internet browsers and mobile application users, has raised $55 million in a late-stage round of financing.

The move comes as the battle to manage the customer experience continues to heat up. Giants like Salesforce are looking to own the customer experience as it relates to the customer record, marketing and customer service, while web content management folks (like Acquia) manage how a potential customer experiences and interacts with websites and a business’ content on other devices.

The big capital infusion helps put Acquia on a more even footing with players like Adobe, Sitecore, Alfresco and the previous leaders in the space like OpenText, SDL, IBM and Oracle.

With the round, Acquia builds upon a war chest that already totaled $118 million as of 2014. The new funding was led by middle-market technology investment firm Centerview Capital, which invests in growth-stage technology companies. Previous investors New Enterprise Associates and Split Rock Partners also participated in the financing.

To get a better feel for what, exactly, the Drupal-based Acquia’s services offer, I refer to my colleague Ron Miller. In an article about a new product suite Acquia launched last year, Miller wrote:

The typical way websites personalize is through segmentations, creating different buyer personas that can help present the correct content. A classic example of this is the hotel, which has three distinct personas: the business traveler, families and event planners. Once the site knows a visitor’s typical path, it can present relevant information and the hotel can tailor offers when each type of person visits. That means people who travel on business don’t see offers geared for wedding planners.

With its new products, Acquia wants to help track these segments better and even suggest new ones you might not have considered based on the data the tool collects about site visitors.

The name of the game is better targeting, better data collection, and ostensibly better services for customers.