Online marketing platform SocialChorus has closed $2.5 million in Series A funding, bringing its total amount raised so far to $8 million. The San Francisco-based startup added a new investor, Windforce Ventures, in addition to receiving new funds from existing lead investor Kohlberg Ventures.
SocialChorus also announced that it has achieved more than 350% growth in new customers over the last year and added Brad Klaus, the former CEO of referral marketing platform Extole, as its new Chief Revenue Officer.
The company’s cloud-based platform has been used for over 200 advocate marketing campaigns by customers such as AT&T, Kia Motors, Peet’s, Toyota, Outback Steakhouse and Windows Phone. It recently added mobile optimization, LinkedIn integration and automated social engagement detection.
In the early days of social media marketing, companies had to find popular bloggers or other people with sizable online followings, send them a coupon code or link to a promotion and then hope for the best.
SocialChorus makes that process much easier and more effective by helping marketers identify the best potential brand advocates. Brands can then create and share promotions with advocates through SocialChorus’ online platform, which includes a dashboard that tracks user engagement and sentiment and includes data from Google Analytics and Omniture.
In turn, brand advocates can use SocialChorus’ platform to share promotions directly to their social network newsfeeds, including Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. This makes it easy for advocates to include hashtags and links that allow SocialChorus to track how each promotion does and ensure that it is compliant with the Federal Trade Commission’s social media marketing disclosure guidelines.
“Brand marketers are quickly realizing the business potential of advocate marketing,” said Greg Shove, SocialChorus founder and CEO, in a statement. “Our customers are seeing significant increases in social engagement, earned media value and new customer acquisition. This momentum has been recognized by our investors and experienced startup executives.”