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02 May 2023

The Club degli Investitori invests in TextYess, the start-up rediscovering SMS

The ecommerce sector in Italy is growing steadily. According to data from the Netcomm B2C eCommerce Observatory, it is estimated that consumer sales will exceed EUR 45 billion in 2023, an increase of 14%.

However, despite the fact that statistics speak of a growing market, less than 15 per cent of companies earn one euro per hundred from online sales.

This is because the last few years have seen a gradual increase in online advertising costs, which has made the two channels most exploited by companies to approach customers – email marketing and online adv – increasingly competitive.

Channels that, meanwhile, are approaching saturation, forcing companies to rethink their customer acquisition strategies.

TextYess is the start-up that was created to provide brands and eCommerce businesses with a ‘new’ tool that is rich in potential and waiting to be rediscovered: text messaging.

By allowing eCommerce users to place an order by simply replying ‘YES’ to a message, TextYess aims to simplify the shopping experience to the nth degree and waste as little time as possible for both brands selling online and customers interested in their products.

“Through my work experiences over the last few years, I have realised that for companies selling online, acquiring and especially retaining customers is becoming increasingly complicated. There are so many promotional e-mails that everyone receives every day and ads on social media are becoming more and more expensive. After conducting some tests, we realised that the average conversion rate via a text message is three times that of an email marketing campaign: TextYess was created to offer a solution that restores value to simplicity and is as undemanding as possible, both for companies and for users,’ explains Riccardo Russo, co-founder and CEO of TextYess.

Founded in January 2023, TextYess has already partnered with more than 20 brands – 30% of which are international – and simplified the way more than 500 users shop.

Founded in January 2023, TextYess has already completed a $450,000 investment round.

Despite its very recent market launch, TextYess has already been successful and attracted the interest of investment funds and numerous business angels, which enabled the start-up to complete a $450,000 investment round in April 2023.

Participants in the round include Exor Seeds, the Exor Group’s early-stage startup investment fund led by the Agnelli family, and Club degli Investitori, the association of entrepreneurs, executives and professionals who invest in startups and scale-ups with high growth potential, Delirus Capital (Riccardo Pozzoli’s fund) and Moonstone Fund (founded by Jacopo Mele), and a pool of leading business angels, including Raffaele Terrone, (co-founder of Scalapay), Marco Porcaro (CEO of Cortilia), Riccardo Schiavotto (general manager of Alma and founder of Lanieri), Francesco Zaccariello (Startup Investor and founder of eFarma) and Marco di Pietro (former director of Yoox).

“It makes us extremely honoured to have investors with in-depth knowledge of the eCommerce world on board. Thanks to their experience, our goal is to continue to improve the service which, data in hand, has brought interesting results to our client companies: through TextYess, for every euro an eCommerce invests in advertising, it gets a return of around €13.” adds Russo.

Founded in January 2023 by Riccardo Russo and Edvaldo Gjonikaj, TextYess has already expanded its team, welcoming on board Ilaria Carofiglio (ex Charles) and Pietro Di Chio (ex TAG and Scalapay).

Already collaborating with 20 brands and SMEs mostly in the food, pet food, supplements and beauty sectors, the startup’s goal is to end the year by collaborating with at least 100 companies and to leverage the funds obtained from the investment round to expand the team and improve the technology and commercial aspect of the service.

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