6Sense,Which uses Artificial Intelligence to Power Account Engagement, has Raised $125 million

6Sense, an account engagement startup, announced today the completion of a $125 million series D fundraising round led by D1 Capital Partners, valuing the firm at $2.1 billion post-money. According to 6Sense, the investment will support the company's growth and product strategies, especially in the areas of machine next-best-action prediction, data analytics, and AI-powered orchestration capability.

Until engaging with sales teams, business-to-business customers are usually 57 percent of the way to a purchase decision. Furthermore, only 23% of executives are confident in the pace at which they obtain accurate observations.

In 2013, five entrepreneurs — Amanda Kahlow, Dustin Chang, Premal Shah, Shan Moriah, and Viral Bajaria — cofounded 6Sense, motivated by the belief that AI could play a role in helping close the transaction.

6Sense's product collects intent signals from known and unknown channels, such as the internet, to create customer segments based on account, behavioral intent, or a combination of the two. With machine learning-based fit ratings, 6Sense recognizes contacts and builds out tailored customer lists, assisting in the prioritization of outreach sales activities and increasing conversions. In response to sales prospects' demands, the platform also initiates marketing communications through apps such as Marketo and Eloqua. Furthermore, it allows salespeople to communicate with purchasing teams through multichannel, multitouch campaigns.

Because of its ability to better target customer communications, automation is now regarded as essential by marketers to increase campaign outreach. Email automation campaigns are among the top three strategies used by advertisers to boost efficiency, according to a new HubSpot report. Besides, according to Salesforce, 67% of sales leaders used a marketing automation platform in 2017.

The platform of 6Sense is driven by a demand graph, which catches signals and automatically links them to sales prospects. Every day, algorithms ingest historical intent data to recreate account-based buyer journeys for any given company, while also tracking the demand graph and evaluating changes in intent to score hundreds of millions of accounts and individuals.

Segment Performance Reports and Custom Talking Points are two new features from 6Sense that allow marketers to analyze trends in account interaction and development through the purchasing stages and provide driven discussion points focused on customer intent, position, and fit. Next Best Actions was introduced in February 2020, and it uses AI to provide custom development leaders with a prioritized list of actions to involve purchasing teams within a specific account.

6Sense competes with ZoomInfo to some extent. Demandbase, which has raised over $150 million in capital from high-profile investors, as well as Lattice Engines and Leadspace, are other startups in the segment.

According to Forrester, investment in marketing automation systems will increase "vigorously" over the next few years, hitting $25.1 billion annually by 2023, up from $11.4 billion in 2017. According to estimates, 55 percent of marketing decision-makers plan to boost their investment in marketing technologies, including AI and machine learning, with one-fifth expecting an increase of 10% or more.