Yotpo: Innovation in User Generated Content (UGC)

Background

Company: Yotpo

Who is Yotpo?
Yotpo is answering the need enterprise businesses have to effectively optimize feedback from their customers as a means of increasing traffic, trust and sales. Partnerships with companies like Google, Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest, allow Yotpo to seamlessly connects businesses with their customers wherever they are, boosting ROI across all of their marketing channels. 
Founded in Israel in 2011 by CEO’s Tomer Tagrin and Omri Cohen, Yotpo currently has offices in Tel Aviv and New York.

The Role of the Israel Innovation Authority
With financing and entrepreneurial guidance from the Israeli Innovation Authority’s Incubator Incentive Program, as of 2016, Yotpo secured $50 million in funding from existing investors, including Innovation Endeavors, Marker LLC, Vintage Investment Partners, Blumberg Capital, Access Industries as well as a number of angel investors. This also includes $22MN in a fresh round of Series C funding in 2016 led by Bessemer Venture Partners.

Successful Innovation

The Challenge
Reviews are one of your most powerful marketing tools.  They have the ability to drive more traffic to your site, increase your SEO  and build customer trust in your brand. However, when other sites own and control your reviews, you lose control over the process of storing and displaying your own user generated content, and thus sacrifice the direct traffic and SEO benefits associated with them.  At the same time, when you allow another company to own your reviews, you forfeit the ability to access the important data those reviews provide and use it to help you make smarter business choices going forward.

The Innovation
The Yotpo platform is an innovative reviews and marketing solution for E-commerce that enables full control over your reviews so you can display them, use them in marketing, or share them on social media in the way you prefer. At the same time, unlike vertical UCG platforms that focus on one area, Yotpo’s platform utilizes a technology that allows users to write content directly from their mobile device with a simple 1-step content generation experience. This enables E-commerce businesses with the tools to easily collect authentic reviews, photos, and other types of user-generated content to leverage them across their marketing efforts, thus increasing traffic, sales, and customer retention.

The Global Impact
Yotpo was rated as the third-fastest growing company in Israel (Click here for the full article)  by Deloitte in 2016, and is leading a global marketing movement currently serving 140 million consumers monthly. In addition to signing various enterprise clients, Yotpo has established partnerships with leading distribution channels.  CEO Tomer Tagrin announced that the recent round of funding would help “begin our global expansion with multiple offices outside the U.S. and Israel” as well as to “explore strategic acquisitions.”