Urban Airship Soars into 2015 with Expanded Executive Team, New Funding
Company poised to accelerate record customer adoption and leading market share position in mobile app engagement and experience optimization
PORTLAND, Ore., – February 20, 2015 – On the heels of doubling its customer base in 2014, Urban Airship, the global leader in Mobile Relationship Management, today announced appointments for three new executive roles and the completion of its $21 million Series D follow-on financing. This financing round brings the total raised by Urban Airship to $67.6 million, and included new and existing investors: August Capital, Foundry Group, Franklin Park Associates, QuestMark Partners, True Ventures and Verizon Ventures.
New executives joining Urban Airship include Erin Hintz as CMO and Mike Musson as SVP of strategy & business development. Brent Hieggelke, whose three-year tenure as CMO helped Urban Airship become the market and mind share leader in mobile app engagement, is now the company’s chief mobile evangelist. In this role, Hieggelke will be responsible for uncovering and inspiring innovation with customers, app development and agency partners, mobile platform providers and the industry-at-large.
Erin Hintz brings a wealth of enterprise, SMB and consumer marketing experience to Urban Airship, where as CMO she will be responsible for the company’s market growth strategy, demand-generation, communications and product marketing. Previously, Hintz served as the vice president and general manager of global marketing and ecommerce for the Citrix SaaS Division, driving all global marketing activities to grow revenues from $350M to $700M. Prior to Citrix, Erin led the worldwide marketing organization of Symantec’s Norton consumer business, growing revenues from $350M to more than $2B dollars during her tenure.
As senior vice president of strategy & business development for Urban Airship, Mike Musson will utilize more than 25 years’ experience in assessing technology markets, developing strategic points of view and identifying and executing partnerships and acquisitions. Previously, Mike was vice president of business development at the Citrix SaaS Division where he led teams responsible for strategic partnerships and M&A activity, completing eight acquisitions and expanding the division’s addressable market opportunity by $10B over eight years through solution expansions and new market entry into China and Japan. Prior to Citrix, Musson was the co-founder and CEO of Tournabout, Inc. (sold to Novint Technologies) and held executive-level positions at Oracle, Applied Materials, Software.com and Openwave.
“With today’s executive appointments we’re expanding our leadership capacity to focus more deeply on our customers and the market as we scale our business globally,” said Brett Caine, CEO and president, Urban Airship. “We’re bringing on executives with strong, proven leadership to drive mobile-first innovations that re-imagine consumers’ mobile experiences and the business results they achieve for our customers.”
Analysis of SDKs embedded in App Store apps in January 2015, shows Urban Airship’s market penetration to be four times higher than all of its primary competitors combined (Tweet this). In addition, VB Insights estimates the mobile marketing automation industry to double or even triple in size in 2015, stating: “From an enterprise standpoint, there is almost certainly no better-penetrated mobile marketing software than Urban Airship… Urban Airship developers utilize mobile marketing automation features to a greater degree than just about any other solution on the market” (“Mobile Marketing Automation: How the most successful apps drive massive engagement & monetization,” VB Insights, February 5, 2015).
About Urban Airship
Urban Airship enables brands to build relationships with their constantly connected customers through Mobile Relationship Management. Its solutions streamline the creation, delivery and management of highly targeted cross-platform mobile push messages, in-app messages, rich app pages, Apple Passbook passes and Google Wallet cards. With billions of messages and tens of thousands of passes delivered each month, Urban Airship's technology sparks exceptional consumer experiences, drives app engagement and increases customer loyalty and lifetime value for the world's largest retail, media & entertainment, sports and travel & hospitality brands. For more information, visit www.urbanairship.com and follow us on Twitter @urbanairship.