Sociable Labs Emerges from Stealth with $7 Million in Series B Financing Led by Battery Ventures

SAN MATEO, Calif., Oct. 26, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Sociable Labs™, a leading provider of on-site social commerce solutions, today announced that the company has closed $7 million in Series B financing led by Battery Ventures, with participation from Series A lead investor Javelin Venture Partners. Battery Ventures' partner, Brian O'Malley, joins Sociable Labs' Board of Directors, effective immediately. Concurrently, Sociable Labs also announced the launch of its ROI-Guided Social Design™ solution to help online retailers dramatically increase referral traffic and sales using social graph technology.

With Facebook emerging as a critical source of referral traffic, the majority of large retailers are investing heavily in social. Despite this trend, most retailers are struggling to deliver quantifiable ROI associated with social marketing and commerce. According to a recent Forrester study, 62 percent of retailers reported that ROI from social marketing is unclear.(1) Unlike other commercially available social commerce solutions, Sociable Labs enables retailers to deploy, test and optimize social referral and conversion applications for maximum shopper participation and sales uplift on their ecommerce sites. This ROI-guided approach is proven to increase social sharing on-site by up to 20 times compared to Facebook Likes and deliver conversion rates up to 300 percent higher than Facebook fan page traffic and 330 percent higher than Twitter traffic.  

"Business-to-consumer social campaigns aren't the solution for retailers to increase sales from social," said Nisan Gabbay, founder and CEO of Sociable Labs. "Instead, retailers must create ways for consumers to effectively do the selling for them on their sites - where the vast majority of consumers go when they are ready to shop. This is the true spirit of social commerce and the foundation on which Sociable Labs was built."

Founded by social marketing experts and seed funded by Facebook through the fbFund, Sociable Labs is built on deep expertise in the emerging field of social design and the intricacies of the Facebook platform.   Sociable Labs is currently in use by marketing and ecommerce teams at some of the world's top online retailers, including Rue La La, BackCountry.com, HauteLook and Chegg. Additional investors include KPG Ventures, Quest Venture Partners and Founders Fund.

"In the past couple of years retailers have spent millions of dollars on social media, yet most are still not seeing hard ROI from these investments," said Brian O'Malley, partner at Battery Ventures. "We believe Sociable Labs, with its unique approach to experimentation and ROI optimization, is very well positioned to change the status quo."

About Battery Ventures

Since 1983, Battery has been investing in technology and innovation worldwide. The firm partners with entrepreneurs and management teams across technology sectors, geographies and stages of a company’s life, from start-up and expansion financing, to growth equity and buyouts. Battery has supported many breakthrough companies around the world, including: Airespace (acquired by Cisco), Akamai Technologies, BladeLogic (acquired by BMC Software), Cbeyond, ITA Software (acquired by Google), LIFFE (acquired by Euronext), MetroPCS, Netezza (acquired by IBM), Neoteris (acquired by Netscreen) and Omniture (acquired by Adobe). Its current portfolio includes companies such as Angie’s List, Bazaarvoice, BlueKai, Calxeda, Exact Target, Groupon, Opscode, and VSS Monitoring. From offices in Boston, Silicon Valley and Israel, Battery manages $4B in committed capital, including its current fund of $750M. For more information, visit http://www.battery.com.

About Sociable Labs

Sociable Labs helps online retailers maximize social sharing, referral traffic and conversions by optimizing the mix and design of its suite of social applications on ecommerce websites. At the core of the Sociable Labs solution is a test-and-learn ROI platform proven to deliver social sharing up to 20 times greater than Facebook Likes, and conversion rates up to 300 percent higher than Facebook fan page traffic. Sociable Labs is a privately held company based in San Mateo, Calif.  Customers include Rue La La, Backcountry, HauteLook and Chegg. Investors include Battery Ventures, Facebook/fbFund and Javelin Venture Partners. For more information about Sociable Labs, please visit www.sociablelabs.com.

Media Contact:
Shannon Hutto
Bateman Group for Sociable Labs
(415) 503-1818 ext. 27
[email protected]

(1) Sucharita Mulpuru, "The State of Retailing Online 2011: Marketing, Social, And Mobile," Forrester, June 3, 2011.  

SOURCE Sociable Labs