Sprout Social, a social media engagement software vendor, has raised $42 million from Goldman Sachs’ Merchant Banking Division and New Enterprise Associates. The company has now raised a total of $60 million across five rounds of funding.
The investment will help the company expand its product range and cater to the growing business demand for social media management tools.
Justyn Howard, CEO and co-founder of Sprout, said in a press release, “As social becomes central to everyday business, brands require tools that are as capable as they are intuitive. Sprout meets those demands, and we’ll continue to improve every aspect of our products and business to create the most compelling social tools for our customers.”
The Chicago-based company runs a platform to help businesses engage with their target audience, publish content and gather analytics. Some of the brands using the company’s tool are Hyatt, Microsoft, Zipcar and Uber.
“We’re excited to add another world-class investor to the Sprout team,” said Howard. “Our decision to work with Goldman Sachs was based largely on its team, who share our passion for helping businesses succeed as social evolves and reaches further across organizations.”
With social media gaining momentum for businesses to connect with customers, Sprout is quickly emerging as one of the most popular platforms to gain insights and leverage the potential of this powerful medium.
While some of its clients are certainly corporate giants, Sprout does have services within the range of small businesses too. The company offers a Deluxe package for $59 a month which some small businesses may find affordable. The package includes features such as all-in-one social inbox, comprehensive reporting and real-time brand monitoring, among others.
“Organizations are doing things with social that are very different than what they were doing just a couple years ago,” Howard told the Chicago Tribune. “As these organizations start relying on social for more and more, we just have to level (our products) up.”
In the past few months, Sprout has focused extensively on bringing more product innovation to the market.
Last summer, Sprout introduced Bambu, an advocacy platform that lets employees spread their company’s owned, earned and relevant content across social networks. By doing so, Bambu helps businesses boost brand awareness on social media, drive employee engagement and amplify marketing reach.
The company also expanded its partnership with Twitter last year to boost its technology solutions portfolio for social customer service.
According to Jason Kreuziger, a Vice President in the Merchant Banking Division of Goldman Sachs, who will join Sprout Social’s board of directors as part of this investment, “The business performance of Sprout meets or exceeds that of best-in-class SaaS companies, while the product’s ease of use and scalability has led to its adoption in customers ranging in size from SMBs to Fortune 500 enterprises.”
Founded in 2010, Sprout currently serves more than 8,000 small businesses, 5,000 mid-market and enterprise customers and 3,000 agencies.
[“source-smallbiztrends”]
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