GapMinder VC, €300K investment in Cartloop, an ecommerce startup

Cartloop is a conversational marketing platform that has a 3-5x higher efficiency than its competitors in helping online merchants persuade customers to return to the site and buy products from the "cart" if they left without completing the order.

The platform is using a proprietary  technology to automate and personalize to a high degree the process of answering customers’ questions such as “Does this product have a guarantee?”, “How does this product work?”, “Can I return the product if it doesn't fit or if I don’t like it?”.

And this is used in combination with a reduced human intervention. Specifically, when a customer who agrees to receive support and marketing via SMS begins the process of completing the order, but abandons, Cartloop’s experts contact him/her via text message to understand the reason for giving up and assist him/her if needed.

The Cartloop platform was launched in April of this year by Andrei Negrău and Lisa Popovici, with the intention of bringing the online experience closer to that of a physical store. Since launching, Cartloop has generated $400,000 USD in revenue for its customers.

“Channels like SMS Marketing have a bad reputation because for many years brands have been using them in the wrong way: purely automated, without any true personalization and with no human touch. By using our platform, brands connect with customers on a 1:1 level at scale, without causing surges in support tickets. Imagine being able to text your favourite brand and get an instant re-ply, just like you would text your best friend. That’s exactly what Cartloop enables — and we believe the future is more about personalization and less about automation. Brands that build better relationships with their customers will win in the long run. GapMinder investment will help us build a marketing platform that enrich the online shopping experience”, says Andrei Negrau, co-founder and CEO of Cartloop.

Hundreds of brands around the world are currently using Cartloop, as the platform is currently available for English-speaking countries only: United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia. The startup plans to expand globally in mid-2021, starting with Europe. The first targeted countries are Spain, France and Germany.

“For 2021 we are looking to reach over 2,000 brands from all over the world. We also have a new round of financing in mind for the upcoming period, but until then, our focus is on building the plat-form”, says Lisa Popovici, co-founder and COO of Cartloop.

“Cartloop is 3x-5x times more efficient than existing offerings and helps online stores to find out the reasons why people give up orders while platform combines technology with the human side. The emotional component, the personalization, the dialogue, the idea that someone makes an effort to please us - these are the reasons that make us become loyal customers", says Dan Mihăescu, founding partner of GapMinder VC.

Cartloop has a remote team in Romania and the United States. The startup wants to expand its team in the next few months in areas like development, product design and marketing.

Cartloop customers are small and medium-sized stores in verticals such as fashion, electronics, gadgets, nutrition or food delivery. The platform supports a 1-click Shopify integration, but integrations with popular online shopping carts like Magento, BigCommerce and WooCommerce are planned for 2021.

"We are currently addressing SMEs, but from 2021 we also want to attract customers from the Enterprise area. The most successful Cartloop merchants are the brands that sell products around which customers often have questions or hesitations before buying. For example, fashion brands, cosmetics, home decor, gadgets or appliances”, explains Andrei Negrău.

Cartloop converts between 15-30% of the customers who abandon the order, compared to traditional SMS or automated emails that reach a 4-8% conversion rate. The company's plan is to help brands integrate conversational marketing into the entire online shopping lifecycle: from personalized promotional campaigns to placing an order directly through messages.

Cartloop is a marketing platform that allows online stores to increase their sales through personalized SMS conversations. The founders want the platform to become a personal shopping assistant for consumers in order to create a communication interface between them and their favourite brands. Cartloop complies with GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).