Tech startup Attentive.ly is pitching a new way for campaigns to generate engagement from supporters on their email lists. An enhanced social media monitoring tool, Attentive.ly launched Tuesday and essentially turns a campaign’s list into an infographic using intelligent tracking.
The company’s pitch: in the face of increasing email unsubscribes and decreasing open-rates, it’s no longer enough to just rely on email for online outreach. Attentive.ly’s cofounders say the system is designed to sift through the online clutter, match names with networks and prioritize the most influential supporters for targeting purposes.
The service, also offered to businesses and nonprofits, gauges the social media influence of individual email subscribers while aggregating their Twitter and Facebook content, identifying trending topics and hash tags and singling out the interests of high-Klout users.
The bet is that email use will see a slow decline in the coming years, forcing campaigns to identify new avenues for communicating with top supporters and donors.
“I see the move away from email being sort of glacial,” says Rosalyn Lemieux, who cofounded Attentive.ly along with Cheryl Contee. “I think it’s going to be important for another decade, but it’s not the full picture anymore and you can’t get away with it being the full picture anymore.”
Attentive.ly, Lemieux notes, isn’t being pitched as an email alternative. Rather, it’s a supplement to engaging supporters through email. The Attentive.ly dashboard tracks trending terms over time, and campaigns can search and filter list results. By matching subscribers to their social networks, campaigns can estimate their reach, and a news feed allows them to see how their email list’s social influence is evolving at any moment.
Tech firm NGP VAN is an early partner. The company intends to offer Attentive.ly to its customers at a discount. Users can use their NGP VAN logins to access a custom version of the product, and Attentive.ly has established partnerships with other vendors, including Salsa Labs.
One other aspect of the company Lemieux thinks will help it stand out in a tech startup space she says is dominated by white males—Attentive.ly’s vision is driven by women.
“There are a lot of good ideas and potential from the other half of the population that’s not typically getting the funding,” Lemieux says. “We can be an example to show that, when you invest with women, you can be just as successful.”