A/B Testing Service Leanplum Raises $4.8M Series A Round, Adds Marketing Automation Tools
Leanplum, an A/B testing service for iOS and Android apps, today announced that it has raised a $4.8 million Series A round from Shasta Ventures. Previously, the company had raised an $825,000 angel round …
Context & Ripple Effects
Leanplum's move from an A/B testing niche into marketing automation comes on the back of a $4.8 million Series A from Shasta Ventures, following an earlier $825,000 angel round. For a company whose entire public footprint before this was a small angel raise, the pickup was unusually broad: the story ran same-day not just on TechCrunch but in the Wall Street Journal, VentureBeat, Gigaom, VatorNews and Pocket Gamer.biz — mainstream business press paying attention to a sub-$5 million round signals how hot mobile developer tooling looked in mid-2014.
The strategic content of the announcement matters more than the dollar figure: by adding marketing automation tools to its iOS and Android testing service, Leanplum is arguing that experimentation and engagement belong in one platform rather than separate vendor relationships.
First-order effects
- Leanplum gains the capital to build out its new marketing automation layer, letting app developers run tests and trigger lifecycle messaging from a single SDK instead of stitching together point tools.
Second-order effects
- Rival mobile A/B testing and analytics vendors face pressure to bundle automation and engagement features of their own, since a standalone testing API becomes easier for developers to replace once a competitor owns the whole engagement loop.
Third-order effects
- If the bundling pattern holds, mobile developer tooling consolidates from discrete testing products into integrated marketing platforms, with funding rounds rewarding vendors that own the full user-engagement stack rather than single-function tools.
The trend: Mobile A/B testing vendors are expanding from experimentation point-tools into full-stack marketing automation platforms, with venture capital accelerating the consolidation.