Lavender Announces $13.2 Million in Funding to Create Email Intelligence Category for Sales Teams

Company to expand team and introduce new AI-powered features

NEW YORK, Feb. 2, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Lavender, provider of the leading AI-powered sales email coaching platform, today announced it has raised $13.2 million in funding which includes an $11 million Series A that closed just weeks after a $2.2 million seed round. Norwest Venture Partners led the Series A with participation from Signia Venture Partners. Signia led the seed round with participation from CapitalX and Position Ventures. Other angel and seed investors include Arash Ferdowsi (Dropbox), Alex Lieberman (Morning Brew), Troy Osinoff (JUICE), and Braydan Young (Sendoso).

"Lavender's platform goes beyond basic AI-generated writing to augment?rather than automate?sales outreach and humanize every interaction. It supercharges sales reps by reducing their time spent writing emails so that they can focus on building relationships and selling products," said Scott Beechuk, partner at Norwest Venture Partners. "We were blown away by the 'customer love' for Lavender's product, which is a testament to the founding team's deep understanding of their end user and the tight-knit community of sales leaders it has already built. We're excited to partner with this team on the journey ahead."

Lavender will use the funding to expand its team and introduce new AI-powered features that help revenue teams not just understand why their messaging is falling flat but also provide actionable coaching to improve productivity and generate faster responses.

"The impact of Lavender has been enormous. Our sellers are writing emails in half the time and getting twice as many replies?and our managers are now coaching strategically instead of on the basics," said Kyle Coleman, SVP of marketing at Clari.

Lavender's email assistant integrates with a user's email workflow to provide everything they need to get more replies in less time, including relevant research on a recipient and their company. Lavender assigns an email a score of 0-100 and provides specific ways to optimize the email to get more replies, coaching sales reps on how to build meaningful relationships and close more deals. By combining deep learning on email data with communication and behavioral psychology, Lavender's AI writing assistant identifies and implements ways to increase reply rates. An average sales rep spends over 15 minutes writing a personalized email, but with Lavender it can be done in 60 seconds or less. Compared to the industry standard reply rate of under 5%, Lavender users see an average of 20% or more.

Other notable Lavender features include:

• Coaching Dashboard: The Lavender coaching dashboard provides at-a-glance insights on team and individual email scores, open rates, reply rates, and writing time. It also detects "at-risk" reps that may need additional support or coaching to meet their goals. This data is more granular than what is available in current engagement platforms. It shows what is working and why, and helps managers onboard new reps faster.
• AI for Sales Emails: Lavender's "Start My Email" uses generative AI to draft impactful outgoing email messages based on just a few bullet points to streamline the creation process. The technology also takes in the context of an email thread to suggest responses to inbound messages. This feature can be especially helpful for new sales reps and overcoming writer's block.
• Personalization Assistant: Easily and quickly research your recipient and personalize your email. Lavender brings in social data, personality insights, news, events, job listings, funding announcements and more right into your workflow. The Lavender AI will suggest personalized intros to tailor your email and make it relevant to the recipient.

"The first time I met Scott, I knew we were going to work together. We couldn't be more excited about this new funding and to have Norwest as our partner," said William Ballance, CEO and cofounder of Lavender. "Using Lavender is like giving every seller on the team a dedicated coach, making them more effective, more efficient, and more confident in their job."

Customers including Twilio, Sharebite, Sendoso, Segment, Lucidworks, and Clari currently use Lavender to increase email reply rates, decrease rep onboarding time and improve sales pipelines. This is especially important in the current market, where many teams are expected to maintain growth while lowering headcount. Lavender makes each seller more effective and more efficient.

"This funding quickly accelerates our ability to build the best email experience for sellers around the world," said Ballance. "Most importantly we're creating new jobs as our team of #EmailWizards rapidly expands."

Lavender has tens of thousands of raving fans on LinkedIn and a growing base of customers that are passionate about how it's helped their organizations succeed:

• "We have spent a lot of time and resources enabling the team to efficiently send great personalized sales messages. Lavender preserves that investment! It reinforces everything we want them doing." - Ryan Swearingen, director, sales development strategy at Twilio
• "Lavender is delivering exceptional value to our customers. Their integration provides real-time email assistance to help Salesloft customers build and deepen their relationships with prospects through better emails. We share in the mission of helping sellers be loved by the buyers they serve." - Devin Schiffman, vice president of global alliances at Salesloft
• "Lavender has been a game changer with the sales team. Our business would not be the same without Lavender." - Braydan Young, co-founder of Sendoso

Lavender integrates natively with Gmail, Outlook, Outreach, and Salesloft, and it also works on top of LinkedIn, Google Docs, Salesforce, and others through its universal version: Lavender Anywhere. Learn more about Lavender and install it for free today. Lavender is free to get started, can be installed quickly by individuals and teams, and is free for jobseekers, students, and entrepreneurs.

About Lavender

Lavender provides the leading AI-powered sales email coach that helps teams humanize the sales process and write better emails faster, resulting in a better experience for buyers and sellers alike. Lavender empowers reps with email intelligence, personalization assistance, recipient research, email scoring, coaching and more, helping thousands of sellers around the world get more replies in less time. Founded in 2020 and based in New York, Lavender's customer list includes Clari, Lucidworks, Segment, Sendoso, Sharebite and Twilio. Lavender has raised more than $13 million in funding from investors including Norwest Venture Partners, Signia Ventures, CapitalX, and Position Ventures. Learn more at www.lavender.ai.

SOURCE Lavender