Mention Me, the London headquartered referral marketing platform, has raised $7m, in a round led by our Europe Ventures team. The company was founded by experienced digital executives and repeat entrepreneurs Andy Cockburn and Tim Boughton, who met at Homeaway where they were UK MD and European CTO respectively before its $3bn IPO on the NASDAQ.

Mention Me, which has been bootstrapped until now, has experienced rapid growth in the past three years. With over 300 customers including FarFetch, Ovo Energy, Ted Baker and ZipCar, they are now a team of nearly 50 people. Currently operating referral programmes in 16 languages, they plan to use this funding to accelerate growth in the UK, expand their footprint internationally, and broaden their platform with additional services.

Consumer brands are increasingly using word-of-mouth referrals to attract new customers, as acquisition costs continue to rise on platforms such as Facebook and Google. Referral marketing, if done well, can drive 10-30% of a brand’s new customer acquisition, whilst also increasing engagement with existing customers. Referral marketing programmes have helped build some of the world’s most recognisable businesses from Uber to Airbnb. However to date only a few brands have been able to create effective referral marketing schemes. Mention Me’s transparent and easy-to-use platform makes these world-class capabilities available to all. It provides the technology for its clients to create, AB test, iterate and measure referral campaigns. Referees are quickly rewarded through the platform, which alerts brands to any malicious behaviour that could increase the cost of campaigns.

Andy Cockburn, CEO of Mention Me, said: “Customer referral programmes have emerged as a key channel in the developing world of Trust Marketing. Trust Marketing encourages businesses to actively build up trust with their customers and use it to create long term value. Looking to the future, we know that the principle which makes referral so powerful - the trust built on a personal connection - can be used to enhance marketing more generally too.”