- Cloud platform company Signpost announced it raised $52 million in late-stage financing from HighBar Partners and BMO Bank of Montreal
Signpost — a cloud platform that makes marketing easier and effective for local businesses around the country — announced it raised $52 million in late-stage financing from HighBar Partners and BMO Bank of Montreal with participation from previous investors Georgian Partners and Spark Capital.
This round of funding will enable Signpost to scale its footprint and extend its leadership in technology for local businesses. And thousands of local businesses already use the Signpost platform to engage with their customers, improve their online reviews, and drive revenue.
“While large corporations have used powerful marketing technology to drive extraordinary growth for years, local businesses — which make up 99.7% of all U.S. businesses and account for nearly half of GDP — have been left behind,” said Signpost founder and CEO Stuart Wall. “Signpost puts the power of the world’s largest marketing departments in the hands of local business owners and empowers them to instantly capture their customer data, get better online reviews, and win new repeat business automatically and effortlessly.”
Currently, businesses rely on customer reviews in local searches on Google Maps, Facebook, Yelp, and others for driving new and repeat revenue. And today at least 82% of smartphone shoppers conduct ‘near me’ searches and 90% are likely to click on the first set of results, according to Search Engine Land. And of those, Google pointed out that 76% call or visit the business within 24 hours.
Local businesses that do not have reviews many not show up in these results and could lose critical revenue. Plus many business owners struggle to capture customer contact information or market to them effectively.
“Local business owners struggle to manually create and maintain a customer list and to send consistent marketing communications,” added Wall. “Too often, they don’t have the time or resources to devote to marketing, which can make the difference between the success or failure of their business.”
This round of funding comes following a period of intense focus and strong performance. Signpost achieved cash flow break-even in early 2019 ahead of schedule, supported by 43% year-over-year growth in its core product, and less than 1% customer churn. Signpost is also moving its New York headquarters to 275 Seventh Avenue in early July 2019. And the company is going to be adding employees in all three of its office locations: New York, Austin, and Denver.
“HighBar’s investment is a vote of confidence in the right approach to applying technology to level the playing field for local businesses,” explained HighBar managing director Brian Peters — who is joining Signpost’s Board of Directors. “The turnkey setup and level of automation in Signpost’s platform, as well as their ability to follow through on reviews and engage the modern customer well beyond their first interaction is what really sets them apart. When we consider the strength of the team, their focus on execution, and the magnitude of the market opportunity that sits before them, we couldn’t be more excited to partner with Signpost.”
By using Signpost’s smart CRM and automated text and email marketing, local businesses improve their ratings by 34% and increase their revenue by 14%, on average.
“The decision to support Signpost was an easy one,” noted Justin Lafayette of Georgian Partners. “They’ve identified key issues facing local business owners – specifically, the lack of time to collect customer data and engage their consumers. They’ve developed a best-in-class technology and are leveraging a unique dataset to deliver outstanding results.”
After a five-minute onboarding process, Signpost connects seamlessly to local businesses’ phone systems, email services, and other key business platforms. And it also gathers all their customer contact information without business owners needing to lift a finger.
Signpost has gathered behavioral data from over 70 million US consumers across all its local business customers, which gives the company unprecedented insight to send automated, personalized messages to local businesses’ contacts throughout their purchase journey and convert prospects to become new customers, drive repeat business, and generate new reviews.
“We are excited to be working alongside Signpost – they have created an innovative solution to help small businesses compete and drive revenue growth,” commented BMO Bank of Montreal’s Managing Director of Technology & Innovation Banking Devon Dayton. “The company has experienced a lot of momentum and we are looking forward to continuing this journey with them through their next phase of growth.”
Signpost enables small business owners to capture customer contact information (grow your customer list automatically at 330% on average — whenever prospects and customers call, text, email, or buy your products or services), engage customers (automatically send texts and emails to drive more feedback, new customers, better reviews, referrals, and more repeat business), make payments effortless (Supercharge performance with Signpost Payments, a complete card payment solution, with free equipment), set marketing to autopilot (get the benefits of better reviews and more revenue automatically without any data entry or manual marketing), and consult with experts (equip your business with digital marketing expertise from Signpost’s Customer Success Managers to drive more reviews and increase revenue).
Canaccord Genuity acted as exclusive financial advisor to Signpost for the transaction.
