Attentive, a mobile marketing startup out of New York, just announced it closed on a $70 million Series C round led by Sequoia and IVP. Wednesday’s deal comes on the heels of a $40 million Series B investment the company raised less than six months ago.
The platform was created to make crowded email inboxes a thing of the past by bringing company promotions to mobile messaging. With Attentive, brands can grow a list of subscribers and keep them engaged with personalized texts that pertain to things the customer actually cares about, like shipping, pricing or inventory updates. The software also encourages two-way communication between companies and their customers and analyzes things like engagement and revenue so the company can refine its strategy over time.
“In a few years, brands will be expected to engage in real-time, two-way conversations with their customers via mobile messaging,” Attentive CEO Brian Long said in a statement. “You will see every business using personalized messages to communicate everything from marketing, transactions and customer service — across the entire lifecycle. Our mission is to create the best-in-class solution for engaging with today’s mobile first consumers.”
Long and his co-founder Andrew Jones founded Attentive back in 2016 after their previous startup TapCommerce was acquired by Twitter. Since then, the company has raised $124 million and currently works with more than 750 brands, including Sephora, Urban Outfitters and Live Nation. Attentive also says it grew its client list by almost 350 percent in just one year and increased its total team headcount by more than 200 percent in 2019.
Statements from Sequoia and IVP — both of whom contributed to the $40 million round in August — attribute Attentive’s growth to an emerging desire from both companies and customers to change the way they communicate with each other.
“Mobile messaging is the fastest-growing channel for businesses to communicate with consumers, and we believe Attentive is strongly positioned here as the category leader,” Tom Loverro, general partner at IVP, said. “The team has grown the company and its product in a thoughtful, impressive way and that is reflected in Attentive quickly emerging as the trusted solution for the largest brands in the world.”
The company said in its announcement that this funding will allow it to expand into new industries and innovate its platform. Attentive also told Built In via email that it will be using the money to hire “across all departments.”
