Jessica Herrin, founder of Stella & Dot, has raised $5 million in seed funding for Marklo, an AI marketing startup designed to help consumer brands plan campaigns using sales, inventory, and marketing data. The round was led by Forerunner, with participation from Freestyle Capital and angel investors including former Klaviyo and current Shopify leaders. Marklo integrates data from platforms like Shopify, Klaviyo, Attentive, Meta, and Google to provide a unified view of past promotions and sales performance.
The software uses AI to suggest products to promote, draft campaign briefs, and organize tasks. While still pre-revenue, over 100 brands—including Away, Clare V., Monica + Andy, Maya Brenner, and Latico Leathers—are already using the platform in pilot mode. Based in Burlingame, California, Marklo is opening its software to the public ahead of the holiday shopping season.
The funding will be used to hire engineers, develop the product, and expand customer support. Herrin noted that existing AI tools often lack broader context, failing to account for inventory constraints or seasonal relevance. Marklo addresses this by analyzing competitors’ promotions, social trends, and stock levels to recommend timely, feasible campaigns.
Brands can plan, draft, and assign marketing work directly in the platform, with outputs delivered via Slack or email. The company does not use customer data to train its AI models and plans to monetize through a monthly subscription with usage-based pricing. For now, the tool is available for free.
Source: Crunchbase News · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing