ReplyYes, the mobile messaging platform, is to enter the mobile ticketing market after partnering with Universal Music Group (UMG).
The Seattle-based firm’s platform is used by brands to engage and transact with their customers. Leveraging artificial intelligence and human-assisted AI, ReplyYes sends personalised product and content recommendations to create a unique customer experience for both brands and their customers.
ReplyYes is most renowned for its successful ‘The Edit’ vinyl platform, through which people are offered records via SMS and simply reply “yes” to purchase.
ReplyYes will create a host of new engagement opportunities for UMG artists and their fans worldwide, including for music, tickets and artist merchandise. ReplyYes said the deal is its first foray into the “lifestyle space”, providing brands with a white-label e-commerce over mobile messaging platform to directly engage and transact with their customers.
“At UMG, we want to empower our artists and labels to leverage new technologies that help them build deeper relationships with their fans. ReplyYes helps us accomplish exactly that,” said Peter Sinclair, UMG’s senior vice-president of consumer engagement.
“Our recording artists, songwriters and labels benefit from these exciting new forms of fan engagement and merchandising that are created by conversational commerce. We are excited to work with ReplyYes, and even more excited for the millions of fans around the world who will experience this new and direct way of interacting with their favourite artists.”
The move comes as ReplyYes also announced the raising of $6.5m in a funding round.
ReplyYes said the funding, led by Madrona Venture Group, Cross Culture Ventures, Lowercase Capital, Muse Capital and Arnold Venture Group, will allow it to “reinvent how brands personalise audience engagement, find new ways to reach their customers and deliver individualised and relevant recommendations over text and Facebook messaging”.
“The ReplyYes mission is to help people discover and purchase the things that they love. Our platform enables brands to engage and transact with their customers where they increasingly are – on their mobile phones messaging,” said Dave Cotter, chief executive of ReplyYes. “Through this latest investment, the world’s leading lifestyle brands will be able to leverage the ReplyYes platform to offer frictionless e-commerce over mobile messaging, allowing their audience direct and personalised engagement with the brands they love.”
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