Marketing teams today are expected to produce a high volume of content quickly that can be used across a growing number of channels. In order to do this, organizations turn to tools that will allow them to collaborate on and streamline the development of creatives. Stensul is a creative generation platform that automates the creation of marketing assets with a focus on email marketing and landing pages. The platform can be used for teams between 3-3000 in size to collaborate in real-time with guardrails in place to ensure that all assets developed are consistent with brand guidelines and compliance requirements for heavily regulated industries. Stensul is integrated with popular martech, email, and storage platforms, ensuring that workflows are seamlessly integrated into an organization’s existing stacks. Founded in 2016, the company works with leading clients like Blackrock, Equifax, Siemens, Reuters, and Cisco to drive down the time it takes to produce email campaigns while also improving email performance.
AlleyWatch caught up with Stensul CEO and Founder Noah Dinkin to learn more about the business, the company’s strategic plans, latest round of funding, which brings the company’s total funding raised to $57.5M, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
The funding round was led by Sageview Capital and includes existing investors U.S. Venture Partners (USVP), Javelin Venture Partners, Uncork Capital, and Lowercase Capital, along with participation from new investor Edith Harbaugh, LaunchDarkly’s Executive Chair and Cofounder.
$34.5M was raised in this round, which was a Series C.
Tell us about the product or service that Stensul offers.
The Stensul Marketing Creation Platform empowers marketing organizations to create marketing assets, like emails and landing pages, easily and efficiently. Reduces the time it takes to create such assets by as much as 90%. It’s no-code/low-code approach allows even novices to quickly produce high-quality marketing assets – that are always on-brand by virtue of the platform’s robust, programmable guardrails.
What inspired the start of Stensul?
I was involved in email marketing and felt that there had to be a better way than the complicated, time-consuming, and costly process I was wrestling with and that the overwhelming majority of markets continue to use today.
How is Stensul different?
Instead of taking two weeks or more to get a marketing asset like an email out the door, the Stensul Marketing Platform lets you do it in minutes. It allows for democratized creation and centralized control to ensure brand standards and regulatory compliance are maintained.
What market does Stensul target and how big is it?
Stensul pursues B2B and B2C companies of the enterprise and mid-market size. The market size can be framed in terms of billions of dollars.
What’s your business model?
It’s a SaaS model with direct sales.
How are you preparing for a potential economic slowdown?
We are extremely careful in how we manage our finances – even with a new round in hand – and like our platform, we drive efficiency throughout our company. Members of Team Stensul work smart and efficiently.
What was the funding process like?
The funding environment, as anyone will attest, has been difficult. However, we found supportive investors who were 1) human and 2) aligned with our growth vision.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Having people see the market we see and that our approach is demonstrably viable.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
Our approach is being embraced by a growing number of companies that are seeing massive benefits by using the Stensul Marketing Creation Platform.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
Accelerate the transformation of marketing creation among enterprises where the need to change from the status quo is greatest.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Continue to believe in your vision. Execute flawlessly. Take care with how you get and spend money day-to-day.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Seeing our footprint grow with existing enterprise customers while gaining new relationships with other players in their categories. For example, Stensul currently works with five of the top ten U.S. banks. Our experience in that area will be very useful.
