Contentful Secures $80 Million in Series E Funding, Announces New CMO, and Scales Rapidly to Power the Digital-First Era

Contentful is leading a major industry shift away from traditional content management systems to an omnichannel content platform

Contentful announced today $80 million in Series E funding led by Sapphire Ventures, with participation from General Catalyst, Salesforce Ventures and five other new and existing backers. This round brings Contentful’s total funding to $158 million to date. Contentful also announced hiring a new CMO, Bridget Perry, who most recently led Adobe marketing across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Contentful, a pioneer and global leader in headless content management systems (CMS), is now leading the industry with its next-generation content platform, which enables builders — developers, designers and content creators — to create and deliver digital experiences for any channel or device.

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Contentful is helping businesses compete in the massive market shift to a digital-first economy. With Contentful, brands can adapt to a changing landscape by quickly scaling up digital offerings across the entire customer journey. In recent months, the COVID-19 pandemic increased the reliance of brands on digital channels as the primary means of customer engagement. Contentful is helping businesses quickly respond to what has become, almost overnight, a digital-only economy.

Contentful’s strong growth is fueled by rapid adoption: 28% of the Fortune 500 and 2,200 paying customers worldwide use Contentful to manage and deliver content across websites, mobile apps, wearables and digital displays.

“Since pioneering headless CMS six years ago, Contentful has been transforming how companies manage and deploy content across all of their properties,” said Andreas Weiskam, Managing Director of Sapphire Ventures, which also led Contentful’s Series D funding. “As consumers access digital content across more channels, legacy CMS suites are unable to support the demand. We believe Contentful’s API-first approach makes it easy for companies to integrate hundreds of tools and scale up their digital presence on any channel.”

In recent years, companies of all sizes increased their investment in digital to reach customers through a growing array of channels, devices and displays. This exponential growth, as well as the need for builders to reuse, adapt and deliver content dynamically, quickly exceeded traditional CMS capabilities.

“Legacy content management systems were built for a web-only era, before mobile devices became the front door to nearly every business on the planet,” said Steve Sloan, CEO of Contentful. “In this new digital-first era, companies must deliver content across devices and around the world. This changes the game, requiring new capabilities to create the next generation of digital experiences.”

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More than 200 billion-dollar global brands, as well as innovative disruptor brands, use Contentful’s content platform, including Spotify, Aldo, The British Museum, Bang & Olufsen and Lenovo.

“When we decided to replatform, we weren’t just looking for technologies that met our business needs,” said Thomas Thomas, Director of Technology & Operations at British television network ITV. “They needed to integrate with each other easily and be flexible enough for future growth. Contentful proved to be a great choice for our content platform, and we’re excited to see how much more powerful this platform will become.”

Alpro, part of Danone Group and pioneer of plant-based food, said Contentful’s content platform played a key role in the success of Alpro’s latest multi-market rebranding campaign. “Contentful enabled us to quickly launch across 15 markets thanks to its modular architecture, intuitive user interface and multiple integrations with our preferred technical services and business tools,” said Ralph Urmel, Digital Experience Manager at Alpro. “We will be doubling our presence in global markets in the next few quarters with Contentful.”

Contentful’s rapid growth, with revenue roughly doubling each year for the past four years, was fueled by developers who looked for faster and better ways to build digital experiences. Contentful’s cloud-native, API-first platform has attracted a community of more than 400,000 developers and users who integrate Contentful with other third-party services such as Cloudinary, Commercetools and Smartling to extend the capabilities of the platform. With the recent release of the Contentful App Framework, an additional wave of technology partners now offer integrations with Contentful.

Developer preference also drove adoption of Contentful in leading digital agencies and system integrators. Contentful’s ecosystem of 300+ partners includes top-tier digital agencies such as Publicis Sapient, Huge, Valtech and AKQA.

“Today, the market is full of CMSes that were designed for the needs of the past, and old ways of working,” said Abhishek Kumar, Manager of Content Management Systems and eCommerce for Deloitte Digital AB. “Contentful brings in the latest advancements in content management and enables teams to deliver digital experiences faster. It’s the best of both worlds.”

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With its most recent funding, Contentful will scale quickly to meet the demand and momentum in the market.

In addition to announcing Bridget Perry as CMO to lead marketing and partnerships, Contentful’s senior leadership team expanded late last year with CEO Steve Sloan and Chief Legal Officer Margo Smith. In total, eight senior leaders joined in the past year.

“As a marketing leader responsible for ensuring brand consistency, I know firsthand how challenging it is for builders to deliver a consistent digital customer experience while using outdated technology,” said CMO Perry. “Established CMSes and DXPs aren’t agile enough to manage and deliver dynamic, omnichannel content. Contentful’s agile content platform is on a fast path to disrupting the market.”

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