Leadspace Inc., a startup competing in the increasingly crowded customer data platform market, today said that it has closed a $46 million funding round led by JVP.

Alongside its funding news, Leadspace announced today that it has appointed analytics industry veteran Alex Yoder as chief executive officer to lead growth efforts growing forward. The startup said that it will use the new $46 million round to expand its headcount and to address strong demand it has seen over the past year.

Organizations use tools such as Google Analytics to understand buyer preferences and optimize their marketing efforts accordingly. A customer data platform, or CDP, is a service that blends buyer information from the different marketing and sales tools a company uses into a unified profile of each lead. Centralizing the information makes it much easier to work with.

Leadspace’s namesake CDP is one of many on the market. Microsoft Corp., Salesforce.com Inc. and Adobe Systems Inc. have all introduced their own entries into the category over the last few years. Leadspace’s differentiator is that its CDP is built specifically for business-to-business firms, or companies that sell to other companies, which have vastly different requirements than firms whose customers are consumers.

When users add a company to their Leadspace dashboards, the service automatically appends dozens of additional pieces of data to the entry. The service finds details such as the number of employees who work at the company and how many branch offices it maintains worldwide. That kind of information is valuable because business-to-business salespeople and marketers must thoroughly understand a firm’s requirements to put together a compelling pitch.

Once lead information is ready, Leadspace uses artificial intelligence to generate more useful data. The service can rank leads to help sales teams determine how to prioritize customer acquisition efforts. The AI is also capable of finding new leads similar to a company’s best customers, according to the startup, which helps uncover previously unknown deal opportunities. 

Leadspace’s value proposition is twofold. The startup says that its service saves time for users, by reducing the amount of manual work that goes into assembling lead data, and also helps them close deals more effectively. Leadspace claims that one user of its service, the financial technology startup Tipalti Inc., increased the number of leads its salespeople turn into paying customers by 20%.

Leadspace’s client list also features much bigger names from the tech industry, including Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., among others.

There are data points suggesting that the broader CDP market, including the business-to-consumer side, is seeing strong demand too. Twilio Inc. late last year inked a $3.2 billion deal to acquire CDP startup Segment. In an investor presentation explaining the move, the company estimated that organizations are spending $2 billion on CDP software annually, plus an additional $15 billion on other types of customer data tools.

Image: Leadspace