Swrve, a leader in the mobile marketing engagement space, today announced that it has closed a $30mn funding and acquisition round. Swrve has acquired adaptiv.io, a data automation platform for mobile. These two announcements come on the heels of a period of significant growth for the company, including reaching one billion installs of the product.
Swrve, whose platform enables brands to deliver contextually rich and relevant in-app mobile interactions, will use this funding to continue the company’s global expansion and market-leading product innovation. Leading the round is Evolution Media Partners (EMP), a partnership of CAA-backed Evolution Media Capital, TPG Growth and Participant Media, and the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF).
Others participating in the oversubscribed round included existing investors Acero Capital, and Atlantic Bridge.
“Swrve solves real problems for real mobile marketers,” said Marco DeMiroz, Managing Director of Evolution Media Partners, who also joins Swrve’s Board of Directors. “We’re thrilled to be investing in Swrve, which is helping to make marketing more powerful, more relevant, more targeted and more effective than ever before, revolutionizing how some of the biggest brands in the world interact with their customers.”
With an existing roster of customers spanning some of best known brand names in the world, Swrve will use this capital primarily to accelerate product development and sales growth, to solidify their market position as a recognized global leader in the mobile marketing engagement space. Recent company milestones include: one billion installs of the Swrve SDK; a successful Q2 followed by a peak Q3 represented by 4x growth from Q3 2014; unprecedented expansion across verticals such as financial services, media and publishing, and entertainment and rapid hiring across its growing employee base in San Francisco, New York, Dublin, London, and continental Europe.
Swrve is also unveiling its new Swrve Amplify product, fueled by the acquisition of marketing and data automation provider adaptiv.io. Swrve Amplify will enable mobile marketers to build omni-channel marketing campaigns informed by real-time data streams. The result is more relevant, impactful, mobile campaigns that move the needle.
“We’re excited about the simplicity of Swrve Amplify in allowing us to make real-time decisions based on all of our data sets, no matter what silo they live in,” said Adam Warburton, Head of Mobile at Travelex. “We see tremendous value in transforming all of our user data to make an instant connection with our most loyal customers. The ease of reaching these users at the time when they are ready to engage with a brand through Swrve Amplify will be incredibly beneficial to any mobile marketing program.”
According to the September 2015 Forrester report (subscription required for access), Upgrade Your Marketing Plans With Push Notifications And In-App Messaging, “App usage is now mainstream … in the US, 62% of consumers opt to receive push notifications from a select few apps they download on their smartphone.” As a result, Swrve believes that digital marketers need to change the rules of mobile and digital engagement, adopting a personalized approach to marketing that goes beyond generic push notifications and blanket in-app messages that can damage a brand’s reputation.
