BOSTON, MA--(Marketwired - Nov 24, 2015) - Placester, a marketing platform that fuses technology and design to dramatically improve the home buying process for real estate consumers and professionals, today announced it has closed a $27 million funding round, bringing total investment in the company to $50 million. This Series C funding announcement comes just seven months after Placester's Series B round in April 2015. This funding round includes previous investors, New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Romulus Capital.
In 2015 alone, Placester raised $40 million in funding and inked national franchise contracts with real estate heavyweights Keller Williams and RE/MAX Integra. This led to significant user growth, with one in five real estate agents in the U.S. now using Placester's platform. In the same period, the company's employee headcount more than doubled from 43 to 105 employees. To continue serving real estate agents, brokers, and organizations, Placester will use this investment to further build its engineering team and continue to add new features and services to the platform.
"Enterprise sales tools and marketing software have become critical to the success of any business, and before we introduced the Placester marketing platform, real estate professionals did not have access to the quality and depth of this technology in their industry," said Matt Barba, CEO, Placester. "Placester's relentless growth comes from the real need for enterprise-level brokers and individual agents to develop deeper relationships with their customers online. With this round of funding, we're investing heavily in growing our engineering team to make our platform even better."
"Placester was created because founders Matt and Frederick recognized the enterprise opportunity to deliver real estate brokers and agents an industry-specific marketing and advertising technology," said Ravi Viswanathan, General Partner at NEA. "Annually, $25 billion is spent on real estate marketing and advertising, yet industry professionals experience fundamental roadblocks when connecting with consumers online -- where the search for a new home often begins. Placester's solution enables real estate professionals to effectively connect and engage with the people they serve."
The Placester real estate marketing platform begins with beautifully designed, responsive IDX websites for brokers and agents, which take less than 10 minutes to set up and include seamless integration into more than 95 percent of MLSs in the U.S. Placester also offers additional marketing solutions for real estate professionals, including CRM to manage leads; drip marketing to nurture prospects; online advertising through Google AdWords, Facebook and other channels; and coaching and support from Placester's experts to optimize their marketing efforts.
To learn more about Placester, visit https://www.placester.com.
About Placester
Placester fuses technology and design to dramatically improve the home buying process for consumers, brokers, and agents. Founded In 2011 by Matthew Barba, a former real estate agent, and Frederick Townes, a seasoned technologist, the Placester marketing platform provides real estate professionals with MLS integration, high-resolution visuals, responsive design, and mobile optimization, as well as lead management tools and marketing automation software for email, Facebook, Google AdWords, and other channels. Currently serving over 100,000 real estate professionals, Placester is the sole website provider for the REALTOR Benefits® Program, the official member benefits program of the National Association of REALTORS®. To date, Placester has raised $50 million in funding, and is backed by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Romulus Capital, and Techstars.
For more information, please visit placester.com.