User-generated content marketing platform Yotpo picks up $22M Series C

Yotpo, a platform that lets companies solicit content from their users and customers in the form of reviews, Q&As, and photos and videos, for use across various marketing channels, has picked up $22 million in Series C funding.

Leading the round in the Tel Aviv and New York-based startup is Bessemer Venture Partners along with participation from existing investors, including Innovation Endeavors, Marker LLC, Vintage Investment Partners, Blumberg Capital and Access Industries. It brings total funding for Yotpo to $50 million.

Unlike vertical UCG platforms that focus on one area, such as Trustpilot for reviews, Yotpo is building out a platform to cater for all of a company’s UGC marketing needs. That, says the startup’s co-founder and CEO Tomer Tagrin, is in response to UGC becoming an important weapon in an enterprise’s marketing arsenal.

“We are taking a platform approach as we see that UGC is becoming more and more important to the CMO or VP Marketing who will want one unified platform instead of dealing with 4-5 different vendors,” he tells me. “So that’s one unique thing — all forms of UGC under one roof”.

Tagrin also says that Yotpo is taking a “mobile-awesome approach” and has created what he claims is the only mobile-first user-generated content experience, though various competitors will likely disagree.

“Because 60 per cent of our content is submitted via mobile devices, it’s not enough for a business’s website to be mobile-ready, they need to have an end-to-end mobile-first customer experience,” he adds.

To that end, the Yotpo platform enables companies to solicit any type of UGC (user-generated reviews, user-generated Q&A, user-generated photos, and user-generated videos) and then market themselves through that content via integrations with Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.