Attentive Raises $40M Series B Funding Led by Sequoia

Attentive, a mobile messaging SaaS platform, has revealed that they have raised a Series B funding of $40M.

Attentive was founded in 2016 by Brian Long and Andrew Jones — the founders of TapCommerce, which was later acquired by Twitter. The startup came into the limelight for helping retailers and e-commerce brands with facilitating better communication experience to customers. The platform gives brands exciting solutions to get in touch with their target user base and deliver personalized message and services to them.

“CRM is changing,” Long said in a statement. “Businesses can’t build a relationship with the modern consumer through email alone. Email performance, as measured by how many subscribers click-through on a message, is down 45% over the last five years. Rather than continuing to shout one-way messages at consumers, smart brands will stay relevant by embracing personalized, real-time, two-way communication channels.”

The team started their journey with the launch of ‘two-tap sign up’. It was a product that empowered consumers to tap on any promotional link on the brand’s website and frame a pre-populated message. The innovativeness of the two-tap sign up is what got the team a $13 million Series A funding in 2017.

Since then, it has offered businesses a comprehensive suit of messaging tools – right from support for Cart abandonment reminders, Subscriber segmentation, A/B testing, and more. This, as a whole has helped many retail brands devise smarter and more targeted messaging strategies. 

At the back of its innovativeness, Attentive has become a pillar behind the success of around 400 pioneering retail brands such as Sephora, Coach, Jack in the Box, CB2, and Urban Outfitters.

To deepen its foothold in the messaging industry further, Attentive  has raised $40M Series B funding in the round participated by Sequoia, Eniac Ventures, NextView Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, High Alpha, and IVP.

“As people increasingly use messaging as a primary form of communication, businesses will too,” said Pat Grady, partner at Sequoia. “With their mobile messaging platform, Attentive is leading a new category of direct-to-consumer marketing that we believe has huge market potential. We’re thrilled to partner with the entire team as they grow and provide brands with modern, effective tools to better engage with customers.”

This funding, as disclosed by Attentive management team, will be used to grow their entire team further — especially sales and engineering. The funding round can be seen as the inception of the future which will be driven by personalized and heavily targeted messages.