Attentive Mobile

Market position

Attentive describes itself as an AI-powered mobile marketing platform serving more than 8,000 businesses and supporting trillions of interactions across more than 70 industries, with named brand customers including GUESS, Urban Outfitters, and Steve Madden. It was included on a 2020 CB Insights and Fast Company list of 50 projected future unicorns and named to the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. Customer commentary positions the product as an alternative to Klaviyo.

Publicly stated differentiators include a single customer identifier that resolves the same customer across channels, identity resolution and lifecycle orchestration, AI models trained on a brand's own top-performing messages to preserve tone, enterprise-grade compliance and deliverability, and a customer success team recognized on G2. A referenced customer testimonial claims Attentive outperformed comparable Klaviyo journeys in head-to-head tests.

Technology

The platform combines marketing automation and journey orchestration with AI models applied to customer, brand, and behavioral signals. Marketed capabilities include real-time personalization of message content, tone, and timing; AI copy generation trained on a brand's own top-performing messages; automated audience selection using historical and real-time data; a single customer identifier for cross-channel identity resolution; deliverability infrastructure for peak sending periods; and compliance tooling. Supported channels are SMS, email, RCS, and push, with more than 100 integrations to ecommerce, customer service, loyalty, and data systems.

Go-to-market

Attentive markets directly to brand marketing teams via demo requests and self-guided product tours on its website, supported by published customer case studies, seasonal content programs around Black Friday/Cyber Monday, and consumer and marketer research reports. It sponsors industry conferences such as eTail Palm Springs and Digital Travel Connect US, maintains an agency partner program referenced in public sources, and relies on an ecosystem of more than 100 integrations with ecommerce, customer service, loyalty, and data platforms.

Consumer-facing brands and retailers running direct-to-consumer and ecommerce marketing programs, spanning more than 70 industries; named customers include GUESS, Urban Outfitters, Steve Madden, Clove, and amika.

Geography

Headquartered in New York City, with offices in San Francisco, California; London, England; and Sydney, Australia. Wikipedia also lists the company under privately held companies based in New Jersey. The platform supports customer engagement in more than 20 countries.

History

Attentive was founded in 2016 by Brian Long and Andrew Jones, who had previously founded the mobile app advertising startup TapCommerce in 2012 and sold it to Twitter in 2014. The company raised a $13 million Series A led by Bain Capital Ventures in February 2018, a $40 million Series B led by Sequoia Capital in August 2019, a $70 million Series C led by Sequoia and IVP in January 2020, a $40 million Series C extension in April 2020, and a $230 million Series D led by Coatue Management in September 2020 that brought total funding to $394 million at a $2.2 billion valuation. A $470 million Series E followed in March 2021, taking cumulative funding to $864 million. Amit Jhawar, president since January 2021, became CEO in June 2023. The company reported surpassing $500 million in annual recurring revenue in 2024 and was named to the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 in 2021 through 2024.

Risks & controversies

The Wikipedia article on the company carries a maintenance notice flagging promotional content, indicating that publicly available descriptions may reflect company-supplied marketing language. Operating an SMS and messaging platform makes regulatory compliance and deliverability central concerns, which the company addresses with built-in compliance tooling. No litigation or other controversies are documented in the available sources.