Attentive Inc. is a marketing technology company focused on personalized SMS marketing solutions. Their key platform, Attentive, helps brands engage customers through targeted messaging. Founded in 2016 and based in New York City, they serve various industries including retail and e-commerce.
Founded: 2016
Headquarters: Hoboken, New Jersey, United States
Revenue: 100m_1b
Employees: 1k_5k
Website: https://www.attentive.com/about
Attentive is an American AI-powered mobile marketing platform that provides marketing automation designed to help businesses personalize consumer engagement across SMS, email, RCS, and push channels. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in New York City, it operates in the SMS marketing, email marketing, and marketing automation categories. The platform is used by more than 8,000 businesses globally and targets consumer-facing brands in retail, e-commerce, media, travel, and related verticals.
Attentive (also known as Attentive Mobile) is an AI-powered omnichannel marketing platform that enables brands to engage customers through personalized SMS, email, RCS, and push messaging [1]. The company's product suite is built around subscriber lifecycle management, offering tools for subscriber acquisition, campaign automation, triggered journeys, audience segmentation, and two-way conversational messaging [3]. A flagship capability is its patented "two-tap" mobile opt-in technology, which allows consumers to subscribe to a brand's text messaging program directly from a website call-to-action without manual data entry [15]. Attentive Signal, the company's identity resolution layer, uses server-side technology and cross-device matching to identify website visitors and build unified customer profiles for personalization [5]. The platform targets consumer verticals including retail and e-commerce, media, travel, restaurants, and sports [5], and as of 2024 the company reports operating across more than 70 industries [43].
Attentive was founded in 2016 by Brian Long and Andrew Jones [4]. The founders had previously co-founded TapCommerce in 2012, a mobile app advertising startup that was acquired by Twitter in 2014 [15]. In February 2018, the company raised a $13 million Series A led by Bain Capital Ventures [15]. A $40 million Series B followed in 2019, and a $110 million Series C was raised in April 2020 [55]. The Series C was extended by an additional $40 million in April 2020 [15]. In September 2020, Attentive closed a $230 million Series D led by Coatue Management, bringing its total raised to $394 million and its valuation to $2.2 billion [15]. In March 2021, the company raised a $470 million Series E, bringing total funding to approximately $863–866 million [15][14]; the Series E round valued the company at approximately $6.9 billion [56]. Notable investors include Sequoia Capital, Coatue, and Bain Capital Ventures [18]. CB Insights recorded that Attentive acquired Privy in June 2021 [58], and Owler records an acquisition of SaveMySales, Inc. also in June 2021 [16]. In June 2023, Amit Jhawar was named CEO after serving as president since January 2021 [15].
Attentive operates in the SMS marketing, marketing automation, and RCS business messaging software categories as classified by G2 [32]. The platform reported more than 8,000 brand customers as of 2023 [4], including Urban Outfitters, Steve Madden, Crate & Barrel, GUESS, CB2, and Dickey's Barbecue Pit [15][43]. Attentive has been named to the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 for four consecutive years (2021–2024) [43]. In 2024, it ranked in the top 25 on the Forbes Cloud 100 list for the fourth consecutive year [42]. In 2021, it ranked third in North America on the Deloitte Fast 500 and twelfth on the Forbes Cloud 100 [4]. Gartner named Attentive a "Cool Vendor in Conversational Marketing" in 2018 [4]. A commissioned Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact study found that a composite Attentive customer experienced $10.11 million in total benefits over three years, representing a 181% return on investment [43]. CB Insights included the company in its 2020 list of future consumer unicorns [15]. The platform has expanded to more than 20 countries, with reported revenue growth of 128% in the United Kingdom and 125% in Australia as of 2024 [43].
Attentive's primary direct competitors in the SMS and omnichannel marketing space include Klaviyo, Postscript, Yotpo, Emotive, Braze, and Iterable [8][11]. Attentive and Klaviyo are the two most frequently compared platforms in the SMS and email marketing category [28]. On G2, reviewers rate Attentive higher in quality of support (9.3 vs. Klaviyo's 8.4) and bulk SMS capabilities (9.1 vs. 8.6), while Klaviyo scores higher in segmentation (9.0 vs. 7.5), email personalization (9.0 vs. 7.1), and automated email responses (8.9 vs. 7.2) [32]. Third-party analysis positions Attentive as a more specialized SMS solution suited to larger enterprises, while characterizing Klaviyo as stronger for email-first businesses and those seeking a CRM-like unified data layer [27]. Postscript is generally positioned as an SMS-focused alternative for Shopify-native merchants [26]. Platforms such as Braze and Iterable are noted as broader customer engagement alternatives that extend beyond SMS and email to additional channels [54]. Attentive's managed-service model, white-glove onboarding, and enterprise-grade compliance tooling are frequently cited as differentiating attributes in third-party comparisons [22][27].