ActiveCampaign Inc., a Chicago-based software company that helps brands make their marketing operations more automated, has raised $240 million in fresh funding at a valuation north of $3 billion.

The investment, announced this morning, was led by prominent tech investor Tiger Global. The capital injection will enable ActiveCampaign to double down on the rapid sales growth it has been experiencing over the last few quarters. According to the company, its active recurring revenue jumped from $100 million to $165 million in less than a year. 

ActiveCampaign’s cloud-based platform allows companies to personalize the marketing messages they show consumers automatically in order to generate more sales. An online retailer can use the platform to display a pop-up with a discount code to visitors when it appears they may abandon their shopping carts. A software maker can detect when clients open promotional emails about a new feature, then send them a follow-up with more information.

Technology and e-commerce are only two of the many markets in which ActiveCampaign has a presence. Across all the segments where its platform is used, the company claims to have more than 145,000 customers.

ActiveCampaign will use its latest funding to continue expanding its global customer base, which the company hopes to accomplish by, among other things, accelerating product development. To date, ActiveCampaign’s focus with its engineering roadmap has been to build an end-to-end platform that brands can use not only for marketing automation but for a range of related tasks as well.

The platform includes, among many other features, a built-in customer relationship platform for storing buyer information. That means ActiveCampaign’s intensified growth efforts in the wake of the $240 million round could potentially create more competition for other CRM providers.

The information that brands store in ActiveCampaign’s CRM creates numerous expansion opportunities for the company now that it has additional capital with which to address them. For brands that already keep data about their customers in the company’s platform, it can add more analytics and machine learning features to help put the data to use.

ActiveCampaign has been moving in that direction with its feature roadmap for some time. The company’s platform includes a tool that allows brands to analyze data in its CRM to identify which prospective buyers are most likely to become paying customers. Another capability uses machine learning to identify the most opportune moment to show a promotion to shoppers.

By continuing to expand into more parts of the marketing automation segment and thereby expanding its addressable market, ActiveCampaign could be in a stronger position to keep up its recent sales growth. The $240 million round also gives it capital for acquisitions to potentially support the effort.

The approach of building a broad all-in-one suite for managing multiple aspects of companies’ customer engagement activities has also helped at least one another startup achieve unicorn status. Sprinklr Inc., which provides a service for managing user-facing activities such as marketing and customer service, raised funding at a $2.7 billion valuation late last year. 

Image: ActiveCampaign