Tuesday morning, Boston-based Swirl Networks Inc announced that it has closed a $8 million Series A investment round lead by Hearst Ventures with SoftBank Capital and Longworth Venture Partners also contributing. Headquartered on Boylston Street, Swirl plans to use the funding to expand its mobile marketing platform beyond specialty apparel and fashion retailers to multi-category big box and department stores in order to drive in-store sales, customer engagement and loyalty.

Swirl received an initial funding of $6 million, launched its mobile app back in May 2012 and then went quiet until August when it announced it had 220 brand partners in Boston and New York.

Founded by serial entrepreneur Hilmi Ozguc, the goal of Swirl is to combat the growing trend of showrooming. Swirl brings patent-pending micro-location and marketing technologies into brick-and-mortar stores through a combination of indoor positioning beacons, mobile apps and cloud-based services. After the initial launch in May, early adopters Alex and Ani, Kenneth Cole and Timberland reported an impressive 75 percent in-store app open rate.

“Research shows that 90 percent of shoppers still prefer to shop in-store and more than half of them use their smartphones while shopping,” Ozguc told BostInno. “This is a fact for all retailers, regardless of size or what’s on their shelves. At Swirl, our goal is to provide retailers with the right tools to effectively engage with shoppers in-store on their mobile devices. Hearst’s investment helps us move beyond our successful pilot and extend our reach into big-box stores and beyond.”

The Swirl platform can be integrated with any retailer’s mobile app and uses GPS to locate which aisle you are in to send specifically targeted offers and recommendations directly to your phone. So, for example, if you are standing in the snacks aisle, you will be notified that Cheez-Its are buy-one-get-one-free, or that Oreo now has a Chocolate Berry Burst filling flavor.