French startup Accengage, which provides mobile app engagement tech for push notifications, in-app messages and mobile retargeting, has raised a $3 million round in funding from private equity and venture capital firm OTC Aggregator, and the mobile marketing company Mobile First Alliance — money it will use to increase head-count, build out new features and scale its tech to meet demand in Europe and further international expansion.
However, new funding aside, the Paris-based company is perhaps most noteworthy due to the traction its getting, specifically in its home market of France where it claims its tech is installed on 95 percent of smartphones.
Furthermore, the startup’s CEO and co-founder Jérôme Stioui tells me Accengage now powers 130 million installed applications, sending 500 million push notifications monthly to users in over 70 countries. That’s not bad going for a company hailing out of Paris, one of the lesser-hyped tech hubs in Europe.
Stioui says Accengage is attempting to tap into a trend that is seeing a shift from app marketers focusing purely on getting downloads to actually improving engagement, retention and conversion of its acquired users.
It does this through tech that combines various mobile CRM features, including an array of formats (push notifications, rich-push notifications, in-app messages, and inbox), custom audience segmentation, real-time geo-targeting and geo-fencing, and other personalisation options, all in real-time. In addition, it’s able to connect to external CRM tools.
As for how this industry-speak translates in practice, Stioui tells me Accengage is being used by PriceMinister, for example, to send targeted and automated push notifications to welcome new users, minimize churn, promote its loyalty program, and to up-sell and cross-sell to boost purchases.
“Push notifications are automatically broadcast based on the customer lifecycle,” he explains, such as welcome messages for new users, and automatic anti-churn messages sent to lapsed users.
In another example, Disneyland Paris have set up automated push notification campaigns based on an app user’s location in order to welcome them, feature specific restaurants, and generate yearly pass purchases.
The types of messages triggered include a welcome message upon arrival (“Welcome to Disneyland Paris! Don’t hesitate to check the waiting times for your favourite rides”) and a special offer when a visitor leaves the park (“Great deal! Did you enjoy your visit? Enjoy an unlimited yearly pass to the Park!”).
You get the idea.
To that end, Accengage boasts over 300 ‘blue chip’ customers who are using its tech to boost app performance, including the likes of Disney, Universal Music, Rocket Internet, Nestlé, Century 21, KLM, Rakuten, Europcar, Orange, and Dafiti.