Attentive raises $40 million led by Sequoia to transform promo emails with targeted and personalized text messages

Attentive, a personalized mobile messaging platform that helps e-commerce and retail brands connect with customers, has raised a $40 million Series B investment to further scale its existing business operations by hiring across all departments, but especially engineering and sales to support the company’s rapid growth. The round was led by Sequoia with participation from existing investors Bain Capital Ventures, Eniac Ventures and NextView Ventures, and new investors IVP and High Alpha.

Founded in 2016 by the team behind TapCommerce, a mobile app retargeting startup which was acquired by Twitter in 2014, Attentive’s personalized mobile messaging platform that helps e-commerce and retail brands connect with customers. Using real-time behavioral data, Attentive automatically sends engaging text messages to each subscriber at every step of the customer lifecycle.

Attentive’s platform is targeted at e-commerce and retail brands, and it supports SMS and MMS messages for targeted promotions, retargeting, customer service, transactions (i.e., purchases made via text messaging) or retention. Its text messaging can be targeted by behavior like cart abandonment or mobile purchases, and signups can be handled through a two-click promo. More than 400 brands rely on Attentive to increase their sales. The company has experienced 250% employee growth in just one year—expanding its headquarters in New York City while establishing team members in Los Angeles, Boston, Denver, and Atlanta.

“CRM is changing. Businesses can’t build a relationship with the modern consumer through email alone,” said Brian Long, Co-Founder & CEO of Attentive. “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.”

Today’s consumers spend more time than ever on their mobile devices—and the overwhelming majority of that time is spent within messaging apps. Attentive is leading the way in making mobile messaging a highly profitable revenue channel and the new center of customer relationship management for brands.

Attentive works with over 400 innovative retail brands such as Sephora, Urban Outfitters, Coach, CB2, and Jack in the Box—and has experienced 8x customer growth in one year. With Attentive, mobile messaging can quickly become a top three digital revenue channel, regularly outperforming email marketing in terms of click-through rates and revenue driven per subscriber.

The company’s name, “Attentive,” is a testament to its mission—to build a communications channel that is thoughtful, authentic, and addresses the needs of both brands and consumers equally. Consumers opt-in to engage directly with their favorite businesses through personalized interactions at each step of the customer lifecycle.

“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.”

Attentive is a personalized mobile messaging platform for innovative brands that can quickly become a top three revenue channel. Using real-time behavioral data, Attentive automatically sends engaging text messages to each subscriber at every step of the customer lifecycle. 400+ brands rely on Attentive and see strong performance, like 30%+ click-through rates and 25x+ ROI.