Iris Mobile helps brands message individual users with tailored conversations

Chicago-based Iris Mobile is launching a new cloud-based platform today that helps brands have targeted conversations with mobile users.

The company, started in 2008 by three ex-Motorola engineers, initially launched an on-premises version of the platform. It received $3 million in Series A funding last year.

“It was purely a push platform,” said new CEO Marc Grabowski, whose previous experience includes a stint as VP of Media Sales at Yahoo.

Today, the new, software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform is being released following an internal beta phase.

It adds a pseudo-conversational flow, CRM-integrated profiles, and predictive analytics for sending users customized content and messages, all oriented around the phone number.

When users send messages back to the brand, Iris Mobile’s platform parses for keywords and responds with what the platform considers appropriate replies. Two different users, replying differently to the initial brand messages, will have a different “conversational” flow. (See image at the top of this story.)

“Iris stands out [because] it allows advertisers to capture mobile phone numbers and [relate] data around that number,” he told VentureBeat.

That phone number, Grabowski emphasized, is provided by users and not used until there has been a double opt-in.

He pointed to clothing retailer H&M as an example of how users provide their phone numbers.

“They had [point-of-sale displays] in their stores,” he said, and customers were asked to provide information, including a cell phone number, in exchange for a 10 percent discount. Those that did so were asked to confirm again their intention to provide the number, and more than 400,000 customers did so.

The phone numbers are maintained in the customer company’s database, in this case H&M, and the Iris Mobile platform is used as a tool for that data. Iris Mobile itself doesn’t keep the data.

Because of this double opt-in, Grabowski said, there’s “a very high response rate.”

“Our intent is not to generate a new set of customers,” he pointed out, “[but] to upsell to existing customers, people who have opted in.”