Like many startups, Atlanta-based Voxie was created to solve a problem that founder and CEO Bogdan Constantin himself faced.
In Constantin's case, it was his previous tuxedo rental startup Menguin (eventually acquired by Generation Tux), where he said he needed to market a product with a six to nine month sales cycle, as customers usually weighed several options. for their weddings.
Email marketing, Constantin said, would produce "worse and worse" open rates over time. So one day, he decided to try to send a message to everyone who had signed up, introducing himself as "your personal stylist here in Menguin". Unsurprisingly, it got a lot more answers.
The challenge, of course, is to have these kinds of text conversations on a large customer base. And that's why Voxie - which announces it has raised $ 6.7 million in Series A funding - offers tools to help companies automate and manage that process.
Constantin said that compared to other text marketing tools, messages sent through Voxie feel like a real, personalized conversation, even though 80% to 90% are actually automated, with the rest of the messages being written by people. Additionally, Voxie will allow businesses to send their messages from a regular 10-digit phone number (rather than the more common five-digit numbers used for marketing).
Voxie was initially created for large enterprise customers, but Constantin said that during the pandemic, the company built a low-cost version that is now used by "many retail store brands, restaurant franchises, brands. major roadways who are struggling right now. "
He added: "We are working with brands that have hundreds of locations across the country who needed a better way to engage their customers: ask for their names, ask how many children they have and store that information at the individual profile level."
Voxie's current clients include LG, Danone, Massage Heights, and Buff City Soap.
The funding, meanwhile, was led by Noro-Moseley Partners, with the participation of Circadian Ventures and Engage Ventures, as well as Atlanta entrepreneurs Wain Kellum, Andy Powell, David Cummings and Fred Castellucci.
"Voxie leads the market as the only platform that enables brands to have personalized customer conversations on a large scale, which we believe will be key for its target customers to succeed in a post-COVID world," said John Ale. by Noro-Moseley in a statement. "Businesses love Voxie as they see a significant increase in revenue and content personalization means customers find the messages useful and highly relevant to their needs."
Subsequently, Constantin said the company will launch the "reply to purchase" feature, allowing customers to place orders directly from their text conversations. And while Voxie is currently focused on SMS messaging, he said his vision is broader: "We want to deliver the right message at the right time through the right medium."
