Toronto-based Rover, a location-based mobile marketing platform, announced $1.1 million in seed funding.
BDC Capital, 500 Startups, SaaS and marketing tech angel investors were all participants in the round. Rover plans to use the funding to continue development on its location-based marketing platform and accelerate hiring, particularly at its Toronto office.
“Our vision for the future of proximity marketing goes beyond sales and extends to the customer experience,” said John Coombs, Rover’s CEO. “To help the market realize the full potential of this technology, we are eliminating hurdles to adoption, putting marketers in the driver’s seat and enabling engaging experiences because that’s what ultimately drives not just ROI, but also loyalty.”
Rover’s platform uses beacon hardware to deliver location-relevant information to app users to influence their behaviours on-site. With Rover’s CMS, mobile marketers can easily build and deploy campaigns within minutes without coding knowledge, while the platform provides engagement metrics that inform future campaigns. The company counts Procter & Gamble and the Pittsburgh Penguins among its users, and also has an office in San Francisco.
Since completing the 500 Startups program in 2014, the company has engaged more than 7 million customers per month using location.
“Location-powered engagement is the single biggest trend taking shape in mobile right now and Rover is at the forefront of this market,” said Stuart Wheldon, partner with investment firm Wheldon Brothers and former vice president at Eloqua. “Rover has a strong ‘location-first’ vision combined with advanced technology and a great team. They are well positioned to lead this space.”