Moving is inconvenient. Everyone agrees on this, but would a concierge service designed to set up your utilities for you and provide you with vetted vendors and coupons help?
After all, the average homebuyer spends just over $10,000 in products and services within 90 days of moving.
When Scott Oakley worked for one of the largest utility call centers in the country, he and his team were managing up to 12,000 calls a day. Customers would call in to get their utilities connected due to their moves, but after the team did so, there was no way to further support them.
Oakley originally built a platform to gather moving consumer discounts that homebuyers may need during the moving process — think pod rentals, moving trucks, and boxes.
After seeing success internally at two companies, he decided to commercialize the technology and founded MooveGuru, an email marketing solution for the moving industry.
“We have a dedicated mover for every one of our moving customers to help them connect to all their utilities and give discounts from trusted sources,” Oakley tells Hypepotamus.
“Those discounts always looks like they’re coming from either their real estate agent or mortgage loan officer that they’re working with or their power company.”
Oakley conducted a study with the University of Colorado, where they surveyed 100,000 moving consumers on the products and services they buy or lease during the moving process, as well as their timelines.
The study revealed that a light bulb goes off 18 days before the move and the consumer finally starts planning in earnest.
The AI-powered platform triggers an email to upcoming moving consumers 20 days out with discounts on boxes, for example. Throughout the moving process, all the way until the boxes are unpacked, MooveGuru shares available local resources and coupons.
The MooveGuru platform obtains all new homeowner data from the real estate agent. As they input sale or rental data about the house into the MLS, the information automatically goes to the mortgage loan officer, title company, and MooveGuru.
“That’s why we’ve been able to onboard new real estate brokerages every week, because the real estate agent doesn’t have to do anything different than what they’re already doing,” says Oakley.
MooveGuru’s concierge service connects the utilities for the homeowner through a personal concierge and shows what providers they have available for TV, phone, and internet, including pricing comparisons. It also provides them with real-time coupons on other needed services.
“These local businesses can get in our program to get their product in front of the moving consumers who are about to change their buying habits,” says Oakley. “If you move more than two miles from your current location, you’ll be changing where you buy groceries, get prescriptions, buy your pet food, get your car fixed — everything changes.”
The white label platform has dashboards for utility companies, vendors, and real estate agents. The moving customer only receives emails or phone calls for discounts.
MooveGuru operates on an advertising model. Revenue comes from the vetted companies in the marketplace, both the large corporations and the geo-located local businesses, using the platform.
Current customers include real estate brokerage companies like Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, ERA Sunrise, Berkshire Hathaway, Century 21, and others.
According to Oakley, MooveGuru is currently onboarding five to 10 real estate brokerages per week.
The Atlanta-based startup recently raised a $1.9 million Series A round, led by Atlanta Technology Angels. They had remained bootstrapped to this point and validated their concept with nearly half a million movers.