People are spending more and more time on their smartphones, and that’s only good news for marketers of mobile apps.
At least that’s what MobileRQ thinks. The Portland-based startup has raised an additional $2 million to help fuel development of its software that helps customers reach out to their mobile app user base in relevant and personalized ways.
Investors in the new round include Verizon Ventures, which had previously poured in $800,000, and Coremix Capital LLC, Rogue Ventures and TiE Oregon. Total funding is close to $3 million.
Co-founders Tyler McKinley and Darin Glatt started MobileRQ in October 2011 after they noticed a huge opportunity in the travel industry.
“The business is fundamentally based on a marketer’s dream: An itinerary,” McKinley explained to GeekWire. “You know exactly where the customer is going to be when in the ‘trip funnel.’ Travel marketers like airlines, hotels and online travel agencies were totally under-utilizing this as a way to stage the right marketing programs based on which stage of the trip customers were at.”
Using the smartphone and hoards of historic and real-time data, MobileRQ built a way for enterprise customers to send relevant marketing content to travelers at the right time — for example, offering a seat upgrade when passengers arrive at the airport. The startup has since expanded to retail, hospitality, shopping and loyalty verticals, offering new customers similar ways to build real-time mobile campaigns.
“Time spent on mobile and mobile transactions are cannibalizing the web,” McKinley said. “Marketers who don’t tap into mobile now will lose to the ones that do.”
