Qualified raises $5M to fuel Conversational Marketing vision

We’re excited to announce that we’ve closed a Seed Round of Financing with Redpoint Ventures and Salesforce Ventures.

Qualified raises $5M to fuel Conversational Marketing vision
Kraig Swensrud
Kraig Swensrud
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July 10, 2019
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min read
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We founded Qualified to solve a core problem that B2B companies have been grappling with for decades: why can’t I convert more of my inbound website traffic into pipeline for sales? 

This year CMOs will spend $6B running online campaigns.  Every targeted ad, every email drop, every keyword buy, every social post, and every dollar spent is designed to drive traffic to their company’s website. But if a prospect wants to talk to sales, they have to fill out a form that ends with "thanks, we’ll get back to you later." The problem? Buyers move onto other things and sales reps struggle to respond fast enough to engage the buyer and begin the selling process. 

By contrast, B2C companies provide a quick, seamless sales experience. When you go to any B2C website like Netflix or Spotify, everything is personalized and you can stream content instantly. When you visit Amazon, the site makes product recommendations for you that you can buy with one click. When you explore Apple, you can talk to an expert, buy a MacBook, and it shows up at your door by courier in under an hour.

It’s time for B2B websites to evolve.

Qualified is a new conversational marketing platform designed to help B2B companies connect with qualified buyers in real time and engage with them instantly in an online meeting, right on their company’s website. 

How does it work?

Qualified runs on a website and has a built-in rules engine that determines in real time which visitors are qualified to meet with sales. The qualification engine determines buying intent by evaluating campaign attribution, browsing behavior and matching visitors to the demographic and firmographic data from a company’s internal systems, such as Salesforce. 

When qualified prospects are identified, the sales team is alerted in real time and both parties can engage in a conversation instantly on the website using a full stack of meeting tools including live chat, voice calls, and screen sharing. When the sales team is too busy or the buyers don’t meet qualification criteria, automated chat bots step in to collect information and book meetings for sales.

Alex Bard, Partner, Redpoint Ventures

Conversational marketing is a once-in-a-decade opportunity for B2B companies to transform the way they engage with buyers and differentiate from the competition.  Our customers report increases in conversation volume (10X), qualified lead volume (+34%), and sales pipeline (+68%), the key metrics for any B2B sales and marketing organization.

Our Financing

Today we’re excited to share that Qualified has closed a $5M Seed Round of Financing, led by our long-time friends at Redpoint Ventures and Salesforce Ventures. 🎉

Our new resources will enable us to move even faster, deliver even more innovation, and take customer success to new heights. And with a strategic investment from Salesforce Ventures, we’re committed to delivering a conversational marketing solution that runs natively on the Salesforce Platform and is purpose-built for Salesforce CRM and Salesforce Pardot, undoubtedly a solution that Salesforce trailblazers will love.

Matt Garratt, Managing Partner, Salesforce Ventures

On behalf of our founding team, we want to say thank you. Thank you to our customers, thank you to our employees, and thank you to our partners. Thank you for helping us reach this critical milestone.  

Our former boss and business mentor Marc Benioff has always said “In business, you usually overestimate what you can accomplish in a year, but you radically underestimate what you can accomplish in a decade, and the impact you can have on the industry and the world in that period of time.” 

Here’s to the next decade.

Kraig Swensrud and Sean Whiteley, co-founders of Qualified

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