Outer Signal pitches customer profiles as brands pursue omnichannel retail

Outer Signal describes its platform as building detailed consumer profiles from checkout and transaction data so businesses can personalize marketing and identify who is buying. The company says resolving which person placed an order can take “hundreds and hundreds or thousands” of engineering hours. It presents the profiles as useful across email, paid media and customer acquisition, as well as retail strategy.

Outer Signal says it can help brands target audiences around stores and understand which customers drive sales. In one example, a creatine brand won a major retail placement after finding that a senior Walmart buyer had personally purchased its product. The broader market argument is that consumer brands increasingly plan for omnichannel sales from the outset and risk missing retail opportunities if they insist on being pure-play direct-to-consumer businesses. Outer Signal says it is attracting larger customers, including hotels, consumer apps and major retailers; an unnamed hotel company reportedly approached it after LeBron James’s stay went unnoticed until he reached the lobby because the booking was under his assistant’s name. The roughly one-year-old company says it acquires customers through word of mouth, ads, a Shopify app, agency partners, sales and content.