MessageGears, an Atlanta-based provider of customer marketing solutions, has raised a $12 million round led by Argentum and Bridge Bank. In addition to the funding, Walter H. Barandiarán, managing partner at Argentum, has joined MessageGears’ board of directors.
The round will primarily be used to expand and scale the company's sales and marketing team, according to Roger Barnette, MessageGears’ CEO. The hope is to add about 50 positions by the end of the year.
"We will also be continuing to invest in our engineering team and to continue to grow our customer success team as we are rapidly adding clients," he said.
MessageGears works with large, well-known B2C brands such as Chick-fil-A, Expedia, Home Depot, OpenTable, T-Mobile and Rakuten to connect with their customers in a personalized way, Barnette said.
"All of these customers have several things in common -- large customer databases and the need to send personalized messaging at scale to their millions of customers," he said.
The MessageGears' platform helps those brands connect to their customer base through personalized emails, text messages and other mobile push media messages. Other software companies in this sector work in a staff cloud model that's disconnected from sensitive customer data that lives behind the brands' firewalls, Barnette said.
"Our technology is able to access all of our customer’s data for rapid and highly personalized messaging of scale," he said.
Barnette said that each individual gets a different marketing message based on who they are.
"Chick-fil-A is a great example," he said. "They send the same email template to tens of millions of customers, but each email is highly personalized to who you are." For instance, he said the type of email you would receive could be based on whether you eat breakfast or lunch there, what you typically order, whether you're a rewards member, etc., in the hopes the customer would have a better user experience.
Over the past few months, the company has had record revenue months and continued growth, Barnette said. Despite the general practice of pulling back on marketing and advertising during economic uncertainty, this form of marketing is one that big brands are continuing to invest in, he said.
"Our customers are telling us that during this challenging economic time, email is their most important channel to connect with their existing customers," he said. "...One area where they need to invest to continue to engage their customer base… email is the best way to do that."
Founded in 2010, MessageGears employs about 50 people and has raised a total of $29 million in funding.
"We are Atlanta founded and Atlanta-based, and we’re going to continue to invest in Atlanta going forward...," Barnette said. "We’re excited to do so."
