Mavrck, a startup that helps marketers recruit customers to create promotional content, has raised $5 million in Series A funding.
There are plenty of other companies working on influencer marketing, but Mavrck co-founder and CEO Lyle Stevens said they usually identify influencers without helping brands “activate” them, or they’re focused on how to “rent” influencers, regardless of whether or not they have any actual loyalty to a specific brand or product.
Mavrck, in contrast, allows brands to work with what it calls “micro-influencers” who are already part of their customer base.
“We are seeing a drastic expansion in the types of influencers, their use cases and the scalability of influencer marketing as it becomes more automated,” Stevens told me via email. “Traditional ‘insta-famous’ bloggers or YouTube stars were managed via spreadsheets and used in one-off campaigns to help drive brand awareness. We are now seeing everyday consumers with highly engaged friend circles being used in an ‘always on’ methodology to help with a range of business objectives including customer acquisition, loyalty/retention and consumer insights.”
Mavrck works with brands including Gillete, Hershey’s and Tom’s of Maine. It has agency partnerships with Mullen Lowe and GroupM. It also offers a free Fan Grader product that identifies a brand’s 100 most engaged Facebook Fans.
The Series A comes from Kepha Partners and GrandBanks Capital, bringing the startup’s total funding to $8.3 million. In the funding release, Kepha founder and partner Jo Tango highlighted Mavrck’s “ability to drive measurable conversions on social and deliver authentic, targeted audience engagement independent of ad-blocking software and changes to social networks’ algorithms.”
Mavrck was incubated at TechStars Boston.
