SessionM, a SaaS-based platform that provides customer engagement for mobile developers, has raised $35 million in funding. The round was led by New York-based General Atlantic along with Salesforce Ventures. The financing was also backed by already existing investors including Causeway Media Partners, CRV, Highland Capital Partners, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The funds, said the company, will be used to accelerate expansion among enterprise marketers and fuel product development. The backing by Salesforce however can be viewed as a continued effort–after the announcement of acquiring messaging platform HeyWire — in investing in mobile marketing strategy.
In conjunction with the deal, Jim Rossman from General Atlantic will join the board of directors at SessionM. He said, “Delivering real-time, personalized marketing across multiple digital channels, particularly on mobile is an immediate need in the marketplace and we believe SessionM is uniquely positioned to seize this opportunity.”
“SessionM’s proven technology is used today by some of the largest consumer-facing enterprises in the world across nearly every category. We are proud to partner with Lars and the entire SessionM organization as they take on and disrupt legacy players in this emerging and critically important area of mobile marketing,” Rossman added.
Headquartered in Boston, SessionM claims to serve as a technical bridge between a company’s CRM database and its marketing stack. It was founded in the year 2011 and since has participated in four rounds of funding. In today’s date it has secured funding worth $73.5 million approximately. Prior to this, earlier in May 2015, SessionM raised $12 million in Series C funding led by Causeway Media Partners and Commerce Ventures.
The startup offers services like Audience Management, Real-time Rules Engine, Campaigns & Messaging and Loyalty Management to clients. Reportedly, its platform gathers customer behaviors across all channels, adds the data to each individual’s profile and generates personalized responses through a real-time rules engine. SessionM also said that this year it has processed 1.5 billion consumer actions each month, associated those behaviors with more than 250 million customer profiles, and delivered 1.2 billion ‘personalized engagements, each in less than 50 milliseconds on average.’
Lars Albright, Co-founder and CEO, SessionM, believes that the objective of every CRM strategy is to improve customer loyalty. He also realizes that the feat requires transitioning beyond a static, list-based CRM to one that enables dynamic personalization as customers engage across various channels. Albright commented:
“Our platform is built to enable customized customer interactions at scale. With General Atlantic’s strong expertise in the marketing technology sector, we look forward to adding even more resources to our platform, acquiring more blue-chip customers and further expanding our global footprint.”