Ina Herlihy believes e-commerce manufacturers are dropping out on natural site visitors and potential income by counting on third-party neighborhood websites, like Reddit and Fb Teams.

As new consumer acquisition prices improve, in some instances by a whole bunch of {dollars}, manufacturers should care extra about rising retention and natural site visitors, Herlihy informed TechCrunch by way of e mail. By constructing an onsite neighborhood, manufacturers are capable of improve that retention and drive extra natural site visitors as a result of the neighborhood is on their very own area.

Herlihy set out in late 2022 to construct neighborhood software program for manufacturers to host communities on their very own web sites. AddGlow is the outcome.

“Owned community is the next big marketing channel for the $17 trillion e-commerce market,” Herlihy mentioned. “Brands who want to foster community do so mostly via Facebook Groups, but there are gaps for both customers and brands. For example, customers don’t have context on who is posting. We solve that with detailed user profiles so brands don’t miss out on owning the data and can reduce the number of steps to make a purchase.”

Right here’s the way it works: The New York-based startup collects knowledge by way of profile attributes specified by the model, for instance, pores and skin concern, hair sort or favourite sort of shoe, in order that the model can personalize the homepage, product description pages, emails and SMS.

As well as, AddGlow integrates with a model’s catalog so neighborhood members can tag merchandise when mentioning them. This permits web site guests to seamlessly add to their cart with out leaving the neighborhood.

In the meantime, by an onsite engagement-based loyalty program neighborhood members can earn factors for finishing sure actions, like finishing their profile, posting and replying. All of that is customizable by the model.

The corporate continues to be very a lot in its early levels following a yr of product growth. It now has $1.7 million in pre-seed funding to spice up AddGlow into its subsequent part, Herlihy mentioned.

Instance of AddGlow’s profile and engagement choices. Picture Credit: AddGlow

The enterprise capital course of took about two months although Herlihy is considerably of a singular founder on this difficult funding surroundings: A “non-technical solo founder with an idea,” as she described herself.

Stellation Capital and Precursor Ventures co-led the spherical and have been joined by Miles Chook at StoryHouse Ventures and a bunch of strategic angel traders, together with former Walmart government Jeff Shotts, StockX co-founder Chris Kaufman, former Glossier president Henry Davis, Zumper co-founder and CEO Anthemos Georgiades and Walker & Firm Manufacturers founder Tristan Walker.

“I met both Peter Boyce II (Stellation) and Charles Hudson (Precursor) via founder friends,” Herlihy mentioned. “Before and during fundraising I asked tech friends which VCs they were most impressed by for pre-seed founders. Charles’ and Peter’s names came up the most, so I knew I needed them on my cap table.”

The brand new capital enabled Herlihy to convey on engineers and a designer who had earlier expertise at manufacturers like Walmart, Nike, eBay, Google and Twitch. After a yr targeted on product growth, AddGlow’s second yr will probably be targeted on income, Herlihy mentioned.

“We started partnering with smaller brands, and now we’re building additional functionality to support larger brands, too,” Herlihy mentioned. “AddGlow helps give people a sense of belonging. Our goal is to foster a safe space for community members to seek personal advice and build meaningful connections.”