Hearsay gets $18M from NEA, unveils new features

The enterprise social marketing company adds a suite of new features to its product, Hearsay Social

Hearsay Corporation, creator of the enterprise social marketing tool Hearsay Social, announced Thursday that it has closed an $18 million Series B round of funding led by NEA, with help from existing investor Sequoia Capital.  And never one to settle into a comfortable routine, Hearsay also unveiled a suite of new features to aid large enterprises in their social marketing quests, including integrated social campaigns, a regional management console, and the rogue page finder.

After launching back in February, Hearsay Social has been catching the eyes of huge global corporations and demand has been phenomenal, according to CEO Clara Shih, who tells me that by the end of the year, the company expects both the number of employees and the number of users it serves to double.  To recap, Hearsay Social allows large franchises and businesses with regional branches to speak directly with local customers via social media sites like Facebook by creating regional pages and allowing local employees to serve as representatives.  To maintain control over the content that is published, businesses can receive alerts when profanity is used, alter posts, and post company-wide updates.

One of the new features speaks directly to this need for corporate control: the rogue page finder tracks down pages that represent a company’s brand but don’t operate within the company’s control.  Since those pages could contain content that might potentially pose a liability threat to the company, this feature could prove to be very handy.

In a similar vein, the regional management console allows corporations to get a comprehensive snapshot of their management hierarchies, who has access to certain roles and functions, and what kind of results they’re getting by region and sub-region. 

And finally, the integrated social campaign feature allows marketing departments to create elaborate social marketing campaigns for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in one integrated campaign.  Marketers can set a rollout schedule, such as a tweet on day one, a Facebook post on day three, and so on, and can launch the campaign with one click.

In addition to the new features and the funding, Hearsay is also welcoming NEA partner Jon Sakoda to its board of directors.

“Jon really blew us away with his insight as both an investor and an entrepreneur.  Before joining NEA, he founded IMlogic, which was later acquired by Symantec,” said Clara Shih.

The company plans to use the new capital from this round for hiring, accelerating growth, and pushing out new products.