• by Jess Nelson , August 11, 2017

Appboy reeled in a $50 million Series D investment this week to offer an alternative to marketing cloud vendors like Salesforce.

Led by ICONIQ Capital and with participation from previous investors, the financing round brings total funding in the marketing platform to just shy of $100 million.

The funding comes on the heels of a steady growth period for Appboy, and the company earned its strongest bookings quarter to date during second-quarter 2017. Appboy now sends tens of billions of messages per month for more than 400 clients across six continents, including Domino’s, ABC News, and DraftKings. 

The company also increased total message volume by 700% year-over-year, and added notable clients Airbnb, Citi, Lyft, Microsoft, and Postmates.

Appboy is gearing up to lead “the charge to replace the incumbent marketing clouds in email,” according to a press statement.

Founded in 2011 as a startup offering a free mobile software development kit (SDK) for app developers, Appboy has since grown into a full-fledged cross-channel marketing solution.

The company now bills itself as a lifecycle engagement platform, and Appboy’s software aims to humanize brand-customer relationships via personalization. The company’s CRM software helps marketers unify consumer behavioral and engagement data, thus enabling a single view of each customer. 

When they have a better understanding of their customers, marketers can provide better customer service and more tailored promotions. Appboy’s marketing automation platform orchestrates these data-driven messages across channels and in real-time. 

Appboy offers a number of email marketing features, including A/B testing, segmentation, and predictive analytics. Cash-back shopping app Ibotta partnered with Appboy to leverage the latter company’s multivariate testing capabilities, boosting email open rates by 43%.

The company has 175 employees in offices in New York City, San Francisco, and London.