Yotpo raises $22 million to help businesses grow user-generated content

Yotpo has closed $22 million in funding for its platform to help businesses ramp up user engagement through contributions such as user-generated videos. The startup has built a marketing platform that makes it easy for companies to enable such content.

The whole idea is to let your customers do your advertising for you. As businesses struggle to compete in an increasingly noisy landscape and on a growing number of consumer platforms, user-generated content has become a necessity for enterprise marketing teams, Yotpo argues.

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The funding comes from Bessemer Venture Partners, and it brings the total amount raised by Yotpo to $50 million. Yotpo is also announcing that it has hired Jeff Dibartolo, a former executive with Salesforce Marketing Cloud, as a new vice president. BVP partner Adam Fisher is joining Yotpo’s board.

Israel-based Yotpo said it will use the money to grow its global and enterprise sales and accelerate product development. Yotpo said it has seen triple-digit growth from a year ago across all metrics, including revenue, volume of content collected, and number of customers. The company said it is also experiencing increased interest from enterprise businesses.

“With this funding, we’ll be able to build out our platform to include more features, more integrations, and more forms of user-generated content,” said Yotpo CEO, Tomer Tagrin, in a statement. “In the upcoming months, we’ll begin our global expansion with multiple offices outside the U.S. and Israel. This funding also gives us the option to explore strategic acquisitions.”

Other investors included angels and existing investors: Innovation Endeavors, Marker, Vintage Investment Partners, Blumberg Capital, and Access Industries.

“Yotpo is answering the need many enterprise businesses have to collect and amplify content from their customers as a means of increasing traffic, trust, and sales,” Fisher said, in a statement. “We’re excited to join Yotpo’s team as they expand globally and across the enterprise market.”

Yotpo said it already has more than 150,000 customers for its customer-generated marketing platform. It helps users create videos, reviews, and photos and drive interest in a company’s website and products. It also has tools to help drive search engine optimization.

Yotpo has 100 employees in Tel Aviv and 60 in New York.

Once a business enrolls with Yotpo, the company uses data to identify optimal methods for convincing a user to generate his or her own original content across various media. That means Yotpo already “knows” (and keeps learning) how to engage specific customers post-purchase (when to do email targeting, when to request a review) to have the best chance at getting them to write a review or share a photo or video.

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