Deals + social marketing: Closely secures $3.6M

Possibly led by Comcast Ventures, new round reaches a new social promotions company

Social marketing company Closely has raised $3.6 million in equity, according to an SEC form filed earlier this month.

We’ve reached out to the company to confirm the funding as well as to glean more details.

In the meantime, we’ve scrapped together some information about the round using the SEC filing as a guide: if the Michael Yang listed as a director is the same who serves as managing director at Comcast Ventures, then it’s probably safe to assume that they led the round.

Other names on the form include Perry Evans (founder and CEO); Kendall Fargo (San Francisco-based investor and advisor); Curtis Fletcher (board member); and Richard Blair (board member, consultant and investor). The company’s most up-to-date list of angel investors can be found here.

Comcast Ventures, which also goes by the name Comcast Interactive Capital (CIC), has previously invested in a new TV advertising solution (BlackArrow), an ad-supported documentary site (SnagFilms) and a voice messaging startup (Bubble Motion). In general, the firm is eager to support new entertainment and communications models, which means Closely could definitely fit into its portfolio.

Closely sits at the powerful but frothy crossroads between daily deals, social promotion and mobile marketing.

With Social Select, Closely lets businesses offer pre-purchase private deals to their customers. The way it works is that a manager actually prints a physical offer card and passes it along to the best customers while they’re visiting the business. Using the card, a customer goes online and unlocks a private deal, which is made available immediately for purchase but expires in 24 hours. If the customer buys the deal, they are strongly encouraged--through incentives--to share with friends.

It’s social marketing and daily deals, wedded perfectly.

As with any social marketing model, the ultimate goal of Social Select is to help Closely’s clients expand their social network and identify loyal followers and prospective new customers. Besides Social Select, Closely also provides a dashboard for easy sharing of promotions across Facebook, Twitter, Google and search services.

Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Colorodo-based, Closely is still a very small team looking to make new hires.