Urban Airship Lands $25 Million to Further Accelerate Global Growth of its Rapidly Expanding Customer Engagement Platform

PORTLAND, Ore., June 21, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Digital growth company Urban Airship today announced that it raised $25 million in Series F funding led by Foundry Group. In addition to Foundry, current investors True Ventures, August Capital, Intel Capital, Verizon Ventures, QuestMark Partners and Franklin Park Associates all participated in the round. Already operating at financial break-even, Urban Airship will use the new funds to accelerate global sales, marketing, customer success and product innovation — integrating new customer engagement channels while extending its growth into new industries and markets.

Today, Urban Airship also revealed it has now delivered more than two trillion messages — showing its rapid growth and scale by doubling its message volume in just the past year. Urban Airship’s new Digital Growth Platform enables businesses to tightly target and coordinate messages sent across any channel — apps, websites, mobile wallets, email, SMS and more. Marketers can use Urban Airship’s native channels for outreach, or integrate any of their existing systems, databases or analytic tools — resulting in intelligent and coordinated customer interactions. The company’s flexible Open Channels API makes it easy for companies to add virtually any new channel as their needs evolve.

“Digital channels are proliferating at an astonishing pace -- from yesterday’s wearables to this year’s voice assistants and next year’s driverless cars,” said Brett Caine, CEO and president, Urban Airship. “Our open platform enables businesses to set new standards for customer experience by delivering the right information at the right time to any channel--including channels that haven’t even been invented yet. We infuse your existing martech stack with real time data and event-based triggers, giving the marketer more visibility, capability and flexibility than they've ever had before.”

Urban Airship’s data solutions, which allow marketers to analyze and act upon real-time customer behavior, is growing annual recurring revenue at 2.5X year-over-year — with a two-fold increase in the number of customers adopting them in the last year alone. In addition, the company’s new predictive AI and intelligent orchestration use this unique data to reduce churn and ensure the right message is delivered through the best channel at the optimal time for each customer.

“Urban Airship is battle-tested by many of the world’s largest enterprises and now rapid product advancements are bringing its expertise in customer engagement and real-time data to every channel serving today’s modern CMO,” said Chris Moody, partner, Foundry Group. “Foundry Group and True Ventures have been investors since the earliest rounds at Urban Airship. From senior leadership and product innovation to customer support, it is clear that Urban Airship has the most comprehensive offering today.”

In just the last year, Urban Airship has made giant strides in bringing its real-time data and multichannel customer engagement platform to market:

• Signed new enterprise customers using multiple channels and customer data solutions, including: AMC Entertainment Holdings, Magazine Luiza, Royal Automobile Club, Shiftgig and The Heat Group
  
  
• Launched the industry’s only open orchestration platform that easily integrates any channel in the martech stack and connects any existing database or analytic tool
  
  
• Added native support for email, bringing a new level of customer responsiveness with real-time behavioral triggers 
  
  
• Added native SMS to provide even more options for businesses to connect with their customers
  
  
• Worked with Google Pay to create ticketing and boarding pass experiences that reset customer expectations for travel, hospitality and entertainment businesses
  
  
• Released AI-based predictive tools to optimize cross-channel engagement and message timing while adding a new real-time dimension to predictive lifecycle marketing analytics
  
  
• Launched a beta program for Alexa voice notifications
  
  
• Introduced technology to directly embed automation and rich messages into mobile apps to instantly reach customers based on multiple in-the-moment behaviors
  
  
• Added to its growing presence in Portland, San Francisco, New York and London with an office in New Delhi

About Urban Airship
Urban Airship® is trusted by thousands of businesses to drive growth through real time customer engagement. Every day, marketers and developers depend on Urban Airship to deliver billions of personalized, interactive notifications that inspire interest and drive action across all digital channels including apps, websites, mobile wallets, email, SMS and more. Urban Airship is used by many of the world’s most admired companies, including Adidas, Alaska Airlines, The Home Depot, NBCUniversal, Sky Plc and Zillow. For more information, visit www.urbanairship.com, read our blog and follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn.