Extole pockets $10M for social marketing platform

Shasta joins Norwest, Redpoint, Trident in funding consumer-to-consumer marketing

The consumer-to-consumer social marketing platform, Extole announced Wednesday that it has secured a $10 million Series C round of funding.

This latest round was led by Shasta Ventures with participation from the three existing firms: Norwest Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, and Trident Capital. The company's total funding is now $22 million.

Extole is focused on helping companies of all focuses and sizes better leverage their social media presence and online audience to generate leads and sales. The new capital on board will be focused on fueling growth, scaling operations, and producing additional products to compliment the social marketing platform in existence. 

The CEO of the company, Brad Klaus spoke with me about the rapid growth that his company has been experiencing and just what a difference control and awareness of online audience can do for a brand.

“Brands, now more than ever, can tap into and harness their online impact if they have the right knowledge and tools to do so,” Klaus told me. “With Facebook content doubling year-over-year, it is crucial for companies to locate their audience and provide them with content so that they can refer people, write testimonials, engage in social promotions, etc.”

Extole’s C2C platform helps well-versed companies and newbies alike in tracking their online audience and converting them into sales and megaphones for the brand. Klaus explained to me that, while the platform to manage online social media is easy to use, Extole also offers best-practices and additional support for users to get the most out of their services.

Currently, Extole’s has acquired more than 200 customers across retail, e-commerce, media, technology, entertainment, automotive, and more.  

The two-year-old company plans to have an increased focus on new analytics that users can factor into their brand campaigns and outreach as well as have the flexibility to start the system or add features and get them up and running in a matter of days.

The San Francisco company has also experienced exceptional growth over the past year -- with a 400% increase in revenue and a 300% growth in the customer base.

In recent months, several companies have received funding or been acquired for similar functionality.

Back in March, Salesforce announced the acquisition of Radian6, a Canada-based social media monitoring platform, for approximately $276 million in cash and $50 million in stock. The benefit for Salesforce is nearly was to incorporate the management of social media into every business with a simple integration on its platform.

Then, back in December, VerticalResponse acquired the social networking marketing platform Roost. VerticalResponse had specialized in email marketing, online surveys, event marketing, and direct mail marketing solutions for small businesses, and now will be expanding its services into the realm of social networking, after acquiring Roost.

Even though many companies have been using social media to increase their business for more than two years, the focus (as of late) has been to assure that all the time spent advertising on these sites eventually increases the sales -- and more sophisticated analytics and tracking devices are helping them do this.