The customer engagement platform is used by more than 8,000 businesses for omnichannel marketing and interacting with customers across channels including email, SMS, push, and RCS.[5][6]
Attentive was founded in 2016 by Brian Long and Andrew Jones. Previously, in 2012, the pair founded TapCommerce, a startup focused on targeted advertising campaigns for apps, which was acquired by Twitter in 2014.[8][9][10] With Attentive, they aimed to develop a text communication platform for businesses, enabling retailers to personalize mobile messages as part of a targeted and interactive strategy.[11][12]
In February 2018, Attentive raised $13 million in a Series A funding round, led by Bain Capital Ventures.[13] In August 2019, the company raised an additional $40 million in a Series B funding round, led by Sequoia Capital.[6] In January 2020, the company raised $70 million in a Series C funding round, led by Sequoia and IVP.[14] In April 2020, the company announced it had extended the Series C by an additional $40 million.[15] In September 2020, the company closed a $230 million Series D funding round led by Coatue Management, bringing its total amount raised to $394 million, and giving it a $2.2 billion valuation.[16] In March 2021, the company raised an additional $470 million in a Series E funding round, bringing its total amount raised to $864 million.[17][18]
In April 2022, Attentive opened its first international office, in London, England.[24]
In June 2023, Amit Jhawar was named CEO after serving as president since January 2021.[25] In November 2023, Attentive drove $1.8 Billion in online sales for its customers during Cyber Week.[26]
In January 2025, the company announced that it had surpassed $500 million in Annual Recurring Revenue in 2024[14]
Today, Attentive supports enterprise-grade deliverability, utilizing an AI engine trained on trillions of data points and 110 billion messages across more than 70 industries.[13]
During the 2025 Cyber Week, the Attentive platform drove nearly $2 billion in revenue for brands through its SMS, email, and push campaigns.[27][28] Data published on December 2, 2025, showed that brands employing the platform’s coordinated omnichannel features experienced strong gains in customer engagement and purchasing behavior. The same data indicated that the platform sent over 5.7 billion messages (a 46% increase year-over-year), while brands leveraging AI tools saw twofold faster revenue growth, with revenue per brand increasing by 42% on SMS and 29% on email.[27][28] This occurred as overall consumer spending on Cyber Monday reached a record $14.25 billion, according to Adobe Analytics.[29][30]
Products
The company's first product was patented two-tap™ mobile technology, a patented technology that allows mobile users to opt in by tapping on a call-to-action button on a brand's website, which deeplinks to the user's mobile messaging application with a prepopulated message for the user to send to confirm their sign-up for SMS messaging from that retailer.[31][32]
The Attentive platform is designed to address challenges in mobile messaging strategy by helping retailers build opt-in text subscriber lists and enabling the delivery of personalized, relevant messages to individual consumers.[33] Its messaging tools support features including cart abandonment reminders, A/B testing, subscriber segmentation.[31] The software integrates with customer service and email software such as Zendesk or MailChimp.[34]
In June 2022, Attentive presented Concierge to deliver people-powered, personalized SMS conversations that enabled brands to build one-to-one VIP mobile shopping experiences with customers at scale.[35]
In 2023, the company introduced Attentive Email to integrate email functionality with its existing SMS capabilities. This development marked a transition of the platform to a conversational marketing service that supports unified messaging strategies across SMS and email.[14]
In March 2023, Attentive introduced Attentive AI, an artificial intelligence engine trained on a large SMS marketing dataset, intended to assist marketers with content generation, campaign automation, and ROI maximization.[36]
In April 2023, Attentive presented Attentive Concierge™ as a two-way AI conversational platform designed to engage customers in real time.[37]
In March 2024, Attentive introduced AI Journeys and AI Pro, features that use AI to help brands deliver personalized experiences through hyper-personalized SMS and email interactions.[38]
In March 2025, Attentive and Google presented Rich Communication Services (RCS) Business Messaging in the U.S. RCS enables enterprises to integrate commerce directly into the messaging experience, supporting native video, carousels, suggested replies, and in-chat purchasing.[39]
Software and service integrations and partnerships
In July 2020, Attentive named a Shopify Plus Certified App Partner.[41]
In October 2021, Attentive was named BigCommerce's preferred partner.[42]
In January 2023, Attentive presented its integration with SalesForce Marketing Cloud.[43]
In November 2023, Attentive and Bazaarvoice established an integration partnership to allow brands to incorporate User-Generated Content data into the SMS communication channel.[44]
In March 2025, Attentive and Google announced a collaboration for the U.S. launch of Rich Communication Services (RCS). This technology is intended to enable AI-powered brand-to-consumer messaging.[39]
In May 2025, Attentive introduced a bi-directional integration with Snowflake Inc. on the Snowflake Marketplace. This integration is designed to allow joint customers to use data for activation, insights, and optimization, which supports advanced personalization and platform capabilities.[45] Attentive has been named “One to Watch” in Snowflake's annual “The Modern Marketing Data Stack” in 2025 and 2026.[46]
In May 2025, Attentive presented the Signature Agency Program, an invite-only initiative intended to formalize partnerships with agencies that demonstrate expertise in integrating SMS, email, and AI marketing strategies.[15][47]
In August 2025, Attentive was named Yotpo's preferred SMS and email partner. The partnership connects customer reviews and loyalty data from Yotpo with Attentive's platform to support personalized and unified engagement campaigns.[48]
In September 2025, Attentive established an integration partnership with Tapcart, a mobile commerce platform for Shopify stores. This collaboration allows Attentive customers to manage mobile push notifications, SMS, and email campaigns centrally within the Attentive platform.[49][50]
In October 2025, Attentive launched new platform features, including push notifications for in-app messaging integration. The update also included enhanced AI product recommendation models for SMS and email, alongside a new analytics dashboard for cross-channel performance tracking.[51]
Awards
2018
Attentive was named a Gartner Cool Vendor in Conversational Marketing[52]
It was named Mobile Marketing Company of the Year by DMN[53]
2019
Brian Long, Attentive Co-founder, was named to the DMN - 40 Under 40 list[54]
2020
Attentive was recognized on the Forbes America's Best Startup Employers 2020 list[55]
It was ranked #8 on the LinkedIn Top 50 Startups list[56]
It was included on the CB Insights - The New Retail and Consumer Unicorns of 2020 list[57]
2021
Attentive was ranked #2 on the Crain's NYC Unicorn List[58]
It was ranked #3 in North America and #1 in the Tri-State area on the Deloitte Fast 500 list[59]
Brooke Burdge was named a Luxury Woman to Watch by Luxury Daily[60]
It was included on the DA Davidson Top Private US Tech Companies list[61]
It was listed on the LinkedIn Top Startups List[62]
It was ranked #12 on the Forbes Cloud 100 list[63]
It was named one of the 10 Best Tech Startups in NYC by the Tech Tribune[64]
It was included on the Inc. Best Workplaces 2021 list[65]
It was ranked #213 on the Forbes America's Best Startup Employers 2021 list[66]
It won a Glossy Award for Best use of SMS with Supergoop[67]
It was included on the Growjo Fastest Growing Companies in the World - 2021 list and was ranked #2 in NYC[68][69]
↑"DMN 2018 Award Winners". Archived from the original on 2019-01-26. Retrieved 2025-11-20.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
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