附近上门

came out of stealth mode Tuesday with a $9 million Series A round to launch its direct mail platform for sales and marketing teams.

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This is the San Luis Obispo, California-based company鈥檚 first investment, which was led by .

, partner at Mayfield, is now on Postal.io鈥檚 board. (Editor鈥檚 note: Batra is also an investor in 附近上门.)

Postal.io helps scale direct mail workflows for sales and marketing, empowering companies to cut through online marketing clutter while improving offline conversion rates with automated direct mail, corporate gifting and charitable giving.

鈥淭he benefit of making sales and marketing digital is to operate with empathy for users, and Erik and Jed are taking this a step further,鈥� Batra told 附近上门 News referring to company co-founders and .

Said Batra: 鈥淭hey are bringing the benefit of digital to the offline side, which had not been done on the business-to-business side, and making it scalable and deeply personal. They are closing the empathy loop.鈥�

Although this is the company鈥檚 first investment, this is not the first company for the co-founders. This is actually Kostelnik鈥檚 fourth startup. Previously, he and Danner founded TextRecruit, which connected job seekers with employers. They exited the company nearly two years ago, Kostelnik said.

Kostelnik said he then moved to San Luis Obispo to start the company, which has enabled Postal.io to save 50 percent on costs and recruit top talent.

He told 附近上门 News that since most people are working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for solutions like Postal.io is particularly urgent, because email marketing shows a continued diminishing rate of return. According to industry experts, post-pandemic email marketing volume is up, while response rates remain at near or all-time lows, he said.

鈥淲e hope to build a $1 billion business here,鈥� he said. 鈥淥ur vision is to establish a new revenue source for local vendors to create a physical connection because they don鈥檛 have the foot traffic right now.鈥�

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