There are plenty of solutions to help companies send emails – my favorite for sending newsletters is Mailchimp, and we also use their sister product Mandrill for sending transactional emails (emails triggered by user actions, which differ from newsletter emails in that each email is customized and sent on a 1-to-1 basis). However, Kiwup, the startup behind SimpleMail, thinks that innovation in the email marketing space has stagnated, and they might just be on to something. https://twitter.com/simplemailfr/status/559989794554789888 The startup announced a round of €1.3 Million, raised from Xange, Kima & Nestadio Capital, will allow the startup to continue to push its email marketing solution to clients like Lagardère, Leclerc, Intersport & Palais Omnisports de Paris Bercy. Speaking with Co-founder & CEO Vincent Martinet about the fundraising, I pushed him about whether the company could really find wiggle-room in an already saturated marketplace. Martinet says the company looks to different itself on two axes – its business model and customer service. For the former, the company does not charge the traditional per-email pricing that is ubiquitous in the market, and for the later, the company has taken a bottom-up approach, treating every client the same, regardless of the plan they are on, helping them to use SimpleMail better.
“If we look at our competitors (local and international ones), it’s pretty clear that nothing has changed in the market for years. No proper innovation and nobody takes into consideration the current tendencies and challenges. So we want to be the ones shaking up the emailing market! It goes without saying that we do not believe in « the end of emailing » but we do believe that it needs to adapt its form. In order to do that, we plan on developing very cool and innovative features to make email « smart » and we’re convinced that this is going to change the way people do email marketing.” – Vincent Martinet, CEO @ Simplemail
The startup currently only operates in France; however, Martinet says that internationalization is a priority following the fundraising. I pushed back on how the tendency in tech is to move away from email – CRMs offer embedded email clients, Slack (need I say more?) – Martinet says that email needs to get more intelligent, and needs to go where users are going, which means deep & intelligent integrations with various CRMs & CMSs for eCommerce players.