Sprout Social

History

In late 2009, current Sprout Social CEO Justyn Howard was employed at an enterprise software company and was looking for a tool that would help him use social media to connect and communicate with customers. He found that the current solutions in the market focused on consumers and lacked the business layer that would make social media really work for brands. Therefore, he decided to build a solution to that problem and worked with current Sprout CTO Aaron Rankin, current Chief Creative Officer Gil Lara and current Director of Web and Mobile Engineering, Peter Soung to do it.

Sprout Social, Inc. was founded in April 2010. The company has raised a total of $60 million, including an initial $1 million in 2010 from Lightbank, a Series B round of funding that brought in an additional $10 million from New Enterprise Associates (NEA) in February 2011, and a Series C round that raised $42 million from Goldman Sachs’ Merchant Banking Division and NEA.

In November 2011, Sprout launched S2, the second edition of the platform which is basis of the current model. This edition included personalized dashboards tailored to each user’s specific social media responsibilities, multi-user support, iPhone functionality, several integration options for strategic partners and other features.

In April 2015, Sprout launched in-app support of Spanish and Portuguese languages.

In August 2015, Sprout launched Bambu by Sprout Social, a social media advocacy platform for employees. Bambu enables organizations to curate selected content that employees can read and share using their personal LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook profiles.

In March 2016, Sprout launched Landscape by Sprout Social, a free tool that resizes images for seven different social networks as well as for custom dimensions.

Software & Services

Available via web browser, iOS and Android apps, Sprout Social’s namesake engagement platform is a web-based application that provides users the ability to manage multiple social profiles across a variety of social media networks from a single interface.

In 2015, software review site G2 Crowd named Sprout Social the top-rated social media management tool in customer satisfaction.

Social Media Marketing

Sprout enables teams and users to execute a social media marketing strategy by creating, scheduling and publishing content. The Sprout Queue enables users to schedule content while patented ViralPost technology distributes content at an optimal time. Sprout integrates with Google Analytics to provide insight into social media campaign ROI.

Social Media Engagement

Sprout’s Smart Inbox is a unified stream of messages that gives users a comprehensive view of incoming messages and actions across their social networks. This function allows users to monitor, respond and take action. Users can create custom brand keyword searches to capture and monitor all mentions of their brand. Users can tag and filter messages, assign messages as Tasks to their team members, identify sales leads and mark messages as complete.

Social Customer Service

The Social Customer Service function enables social users and customer care teams to connect with customers, view conversation history, solve issues and create brand advocates. Sprout’s tasking feature allows users to assign messages to the appropriate team member. Sprout’s Suggested Replies feature offers responses to incoming messages based on previous replies. The social CRM feature logs all conversation history between the profile and the user. Sprout integrates with Zendesk and UserVoice.

Social Media Analytics

The Social Media Analytics function provides audience intelligence and benchmarking capabilities. Sprout’s reports include Group, Engagement, Team, Task Performance, Facebook Pages, Twitter Profiles, Trends, Twitter Comparison, Twitter Listening, Instagram Profiles and Sent Messages, and incorporates Google Analytics and Bitly tracking.

Employee Advocacy

Bambu by Sprout Social is a platform for employee advocacy that provides employers a central platform where they can add, curate and organize content to update employees about company and industry news. Employees can then share approved content on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook and employers can track the types and impact of content shared.

Social Media Image Resizing

Landscape by Sprout Social is a free tool that allows streamlined image resizing for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, YouTube and custom sizes.

Network Integrations & Partnerships

Sprout Social’s partnerships include:

In November 2015, Sprout partnered with Twitter for its relaunch of the Twitter Official Partner Program, working together to further technology solutions for social customer service.

Additionally, Sprout Social integrates with:

Culture

In 2015, Sprout Social was named one of the Chicago Tribune’s Top Workplaces based on an employee survey conducted by a third-party. In April 2014, Sprout Social was named one of Crain’s Chicago Business’ Best Places to Work as the No. 2 Best Place for Millennials.

Sprout Social has grown quickly since its founding in 2010, outgrowing its office and moving into 64,000 square feet in Chicago’s Citadel Center in February 2014. Founder Justyn Howard cites “open communication creates progress” as his motto.

Jim Conti, Director of Talent, gives an explanation of Sprout Social’s approach to workplace culture: “[it] means that you are comfortable coming into work, that you're doing a job you're proud of and that you're doing it with people you really enjoy.”

Awards

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011