Leanplum, a service that helps developers and marketers engage with mobile users through personalized messages, dynamic UI optimization and A/B testing services, today announced that it has raised a $11.6 million Series B round led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Shasta Ventures, which led the company’s $4.8 million Series A round, also participated in this round.
The company graduated as an iOS and Android A/B testing service from TechStars Seattle in 2012. Since then, it has morphed into what it calls a “mobile lifecycle marketing” service, and today, the company completed this project with the launch of its Lifecycle Engine. This new tool makes it easier for marketers to trigger personalized messages based on time and user behavior.
Leanplum co-founder and CEO Momchil Kyurkchiev tells me that the company decided to raise this round to accelerate its growth. “Our business grew 5x year-over-year, and we’ve received strong market validation from companies like Expedia. It’s time to put more fuel in the tank and continue to be the category leader with our cutting-edge platform,” he said.
“If we look back 10 years from now, we will realize that now was the time when enterprises adopted mobile en masse, just like they did a decade ago with the web. It’s really exciting to be building the leading mobile marketing platform, and this funding will fuel even more growth.”
Together with Leanplum’s analytics and ability to test UI changes on the fly, the company now offers marketers a fully featured solution for engaging with users after they have installed an app. While the company previously offered most of these services, it was missing a comprehensive dashboard like the Lifecycle Engine that made it easy for non-technical users to use the service to its fullest extent.
It’s no secret that users tend to abandon mobile apps quickly, so having the ability to re-engage them through personalized messages based on pre-set, in-app triggers, for example, will be something most marketers will at least want to experiment with.
With today’s round, Leanplum has now raised a total of $17.2 million. Kyurkchiev told me that the company plans to use the new funding to double-down on its product by hiring more engineers. “Next, the Series B is about scaling up, so we will be investing heavily in marketing and sales, including international expansion,” he said.