Hearsay Systems

Hearsay Systems (formerly Hearsay Social) is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) digital marketing platform for financial services that uses predictive analytics to help financial advisors automate marketing tasks. The service operates by using social networking services such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, as well as advisor websites, compliance-friendly text messaging, and email as ways for clients to market to various customer bases. Clients include large companies such as Allstate as well as smaller local companies.

The company was founded in 2009 by former Microsoft employee Steve Garrity and Starbucks board member Clara Shih. They initially intended Hearsay Social to be used to help larger companies promote their local branches via social media but has since described the company as a more general “social selling platform”.

In 2013, Hearsay raised $30 million in a Series C round, for a total of $51 million. Investors include NEA and Sequoia Capital. The company is currently headquartered in San Francisco, California, with international operations in Europe and Asia.

Hearsay's technology centralizes digital client communications in one dashboard. Its predictive algorithms suggest clients to contact based on what they're saying online and predict clients’ future actions. For the enterprise, Hearsay works in conjunction with financial firms’ core enterprise systems, including compliance archives and corporate CRM systems.

In May 2015, Hearsay announced its Universal Supervision dashboard for compliance and supervision teams to review advisors’ digital activities and enforce compliance rules. In August 2016, Hearsay announced Hearsay 360, a tool that gathers the data that are exchanged through text, social media, advisors' websites and email, and analyzes that information in order to suggest to an advisor what he or she can do next to interact with that client.