Bob Fabbio, co-founder and CEO of eRelevance Corp., courtesy photo.

Austin-based eRelevance Corp, which makes a marketing platform for small to medium sized businesses to engage customers, Tuesday announced it has closed a $5.1 million round of funding.

The company, founded in 2013, plans to use the funds to accelerate its growth by hiring more sales and marketing staff and to further develop its marketing platform aimed at small to medium sized businesses.

Rally Ventures, based in Silicon Valley, led the round with other existing investors Chicago Ventures, Miramar Venture Partners, Martin Investment Holdings and Capital Factory. To date, eRelevance has raised $13.7 million.

For 2016, eRelevance saw 444 percent revenue growth from 2015, ending the year with nearly $4 million in revenue. This year, the company is on track to surpass $10 million in revenue, said Bob Fabbio, eRelevance co-founder and CEO.

The company is seeing tremendous growth for its marketing platform with more than 900 customers primarily in the healthcare industry targeting plastic surgeons, medical spas and others. eRelevance focuses on helping those businesses generate more repeat business from their existing customers, Fabbio said.

“We bring very sophisticated marketing down to the small business market in a form factor and a price point they can afford,” Fabbio said.

Today, thousands of tech tools and marketing programs exist aimed at small to medium sized businesses. What sets eRelevance apart is its proprietary platform takes a conversational approach to marketing healthcare services to existing patients.

“In our world, our competition is MailChimp and Constant Contact and we’re displacing those kinds of software tools daily,” Fabbio said.

eRelevance’s marketing platform uses data mining, analytics and targeted content to reach customers in a variety of digital ways, Fabbio said. On average, eRelevance is generating five times return on investment for its customers every month, he said.

“What we do is we go into businesses and we help them find more business from their existing customers,” Fabbio said. “It takes the effort off their shoulders of doing very sophisticated marketing.”

eRelevance moves them from a service beyond simple email blasting to a sophisticated approach to their markets by picking and selecting particular needs and interests of their customers and then engaging them through email, texting, web and social media, Fabbio said.

eRelevance has 58 employees today and plans to be at 80 employees by the end of the year, Fabbio said.

“Later this year, we’ll move outside of healthcare and move into other verticals,” Fabbio said.