Listen to this articleBelow is our recent interview with Matt Cooley, President and COO at Emotive:
Q: Could you provide our readers with a brief introduction to your company
A: Emotive is a conversational text message platform for eCommerce brands. Emotive enables you to talk with (not at) your customers. As a result, companies have the opportunity to supercharge revenue by automating two-way text message conversations that cut through the noise and feel human.
Up until now, all B2C marketing has been in the form of a one-way blast (over email, SMS, and other channels). Emotive, on the other hand, scales two way conversations that feel human – even though they are largely operated by bots. Human conversations convert 5x higher than a traditional blast.
It’s like a sales associate who greets you when you first walk into a department store – although it’s online. The online sales associate really didn’t exist until now. That’s what we’re trying to provide.
Q: Any highlights on your recent announcement?
A: Recently, Emotive announced several key additions to its executive bench, including my appointment as Emotive’s president and chief operating officer.
This comes about six months after Emotive’s $50 million Series B round, which put the company at a valuation of $400 million. I was also Emotive’s first major investor back in 2019, since which I acted as a go-to-market advisor to the company.
As an early investor in Emotive, I saw the potential for the company to disrupt the entire ecommerce industry – and placed an early bet on its success. SMS has more engagement and open rates than any other ecommerce channel. The company has experienced explosive growth in the past 24 months, and I believe that with the continued rise of ecommerce, there’s an even more significant opportunity ahead.
Aside from my appointment, other new additions to Emotive’s executive team include Oleg Pylnev as Chief Technology Officer, Adam Waid as Chief Customer Officer, Greg Brauner as SVP of Marketing, Joe Cuccinelli as VP of Product and Ben Peterson as VP of Finance.
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Q: Can you give us more insights into your offering?
A: Emotive’s text offering utilizes a mix of both artificial intelligence and real human customer service agents, so customers genuinely feel like they are able to quickly text back and forth with a human. …and the messages from Emotive campaigns are genuinely helpful. They’re nudges to customize your order before the cutoff date and pings regarding flash sales on items you love. For customers, Emotive is like having a personal assistant who provides useful reminders. Customers can get what they need and get on with their day. Companies can set up new campaigns in a matter of minutes. It’s like Emotive instantaneously adds more arms and legs to their teams. There’s also no down side when it comes to companies giving Emotive a test drive, which is another reason companies love us. In fact, Emotive guarantees a 5X ROI on money companies spend on Emotive.
Q: What can we expect from Emotive in the next 6 months? What are your plans as COO?
A: We have a global opportunity to serve companies of all sizes. Today we’re growing rapidly, predominantly addressing the small and mid size market in the US. We already have well over 1000 customers in only two years of existence, just focusing on domestic sales. Shopify customers are the ideal fit for Emotive and Shopify has roughly 3M customers on their platform. We’re at the tip of the iceberg. So for the next 6 months we’re doubling/tripling down on what’s working, hiring across all departments and setting the foundation for the next phase of growth. Longer term is to innovate into adjacent markets, prepare to go up market and address the international markets.
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A: As a firm, we believe text will become as big as email over time as brands increasingly become even more maniacally focused on their customers. Customers continue to require a higher bar of customized recommendations, personalized service, and attention to detail, so we expect to see the need for solutions like Emotive continue to grow. Conversational text messaging is something we do every day with our friends and family, but retailers and brands are still in the nascent stages of harnessing text as a way to assist their customers. It’s early days, as they say, which is why we’re so bullish about this space. The e-commerce brands that quickly uncover the value of crafting meaningful dialogues between their customers will win lifelong fans of their brands.
