Dataships Secures €6.8M to Transform Data Compliance into eCommerce Growth Engine

Dataships: In an era where data privacy regulations are becoming increasingly stringent, eCommerce businesses face the dual challenge of ensuring compliance while striving for growth. Dataships, founded in 2019 by Michael Storan and Ryan McErlane, has positioned itself at the intersection of these needs, offering solutions that automate compliance processes and simultaneously boost marketing capabilities. 

The company’s innovative approach has been further emphasized by the recent €6.8 million Series A funding round, which might reshape how online merchants handle data privacy.

Company Overview

Operating from NexusUCD in Dublin and an office in San Francisco, Dataships employs a team of 25 professionals dedicated to simplifying data compliance for eCommerce platforms. The company’s software automatically complies with regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which allows merchants to increase their marketing lists without violating data privacy laws. 

Focusing on the checkout process, a critical yet underutilized moment for capturing customer consent, Dataships enables businesses to optimize consent language according to visitor location and marketing channel, leading to a dramatic increase in opt-in rates and repeat purchases.

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Funding Details

Dataships’ Series A funding round was led by Osage Venture Partners, with participation from Lavrock Ventures and Urban Innovation Fund. The capital infusion is expected to drive Dataships’ mission to help merchants grow their marketing lists while maintaining robust data privacy compliance. The funds will be directed towards product innovation, market expansion, and enhancing customer success initiatives.

Strategic Vision

Dataships’ approach challenges the traditional perception of compliance as a mere regulatory hurdle. The company integrates compliance mechanisms directly into the eCommerce workflow, especially at the checkout stage, transforming compliance into a growth driver. 

Their platform dynamically adjusts consent requests to align with regional regulations and marketing strategies, ensuring that businesses can confidently expand their outreach without legal concerns. This strategy has resulted in impressive results, such as a tenfold increase in SMS opt-in rates and a three to fourfold boost in email marketing contacts for their clients. 

Market Context

The eCommerce landscape is rapidly evolving, with rising customer acquisition costs and heightened expectations for personalized communication.

At the same time, data privacy regulations are becoming increasingly complex, making compliance a critical concern for online merchants. Dataships addresses these challenges by offering a solution that not only ensures compliance but uses this as leverage to increase their marketing potential. By focusing on the checkout process, they tap into a pivotal point in the customer journey-converting compliance into strategic leverage for them. 

Client Impact

Dataships’ cutting-edge solutions have drawn more than 500 growth brands, such as Ekster, TB12, and Benchmade. Altogether, these customers have brought in more than 8 million new contactable markets, and repeat business has generated over $112 million in revenue for the company. The ability of the platform to tailor consent collection according to regional and channel-specific needs was particularly useful to multi-channel and multinational brands which need to cross multiple borders where data privacy law is different.

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Future Opportunities

With the new funding, Dataships aims to:

• Improve Product Innovation: Create new features that will further integrate compliance and marketing growth strategies, which will unlock higher audience engagement while strictly adhering to data privacy laws.
• Expand Market Reach: Introduce their solutions to a broader segment of the eCommerce ecosystem, including emerging markets and diverse business models.
• Strong customer support: Grow their engineering and support teams to deliver world-class service to the increasingly large merchant base, ensuring the seamless integration and optimal use of their platform.