I'm using a fictional name and agency for the post below as requested by the interviewee. He has agreed to share his story on the basis that I do not use his actual company's name for strategic business reasons.
I've recently noticed a flurry of activity on our BlinkCampaign logs from a particular region. New accounts were being setup once every 2 -3 weeks and all were using a different email from a same domain. I Googled the domain a bit, came up with the agency's website and got in touch with Dan Riker, a professional web designer and now business owner of SpeakOut Communications.
We exchanged a few emails and finally, had a chat over MSN to talk about how his agency has been using BlinkCampaign to grow his online marketing services. Why I was really interested in his story was that not only did he use BlinkCampaign as a platform to sell email broadcasting services, he was actually selling the entire platform to companies, who's individual regional marketing departments wanted the convenience of setting up and sending their own email campaigns. Each instance of Dan's platform went out to the companies at a cool five figure rate and "license" renewable on an annual basis. Read on to find out how he's been doing it.
BC: Hi Dan, firstly, thanks for sharing your success story with us. The team is really happy to hear how you've been using BlinkCampaign for your agency. How long have you been using BlinkCampaign?
DR: The first account that I've signed up for was in late May this year. I was looking for a quick-fire solution for my designers to quickly create and turnaround email campaigns.
BC: What has kept you on the platform so far?
DR: Firstly, I really like the fact that its features are specifically tailored for designers and agencies like my own. BlinkCampaign is not the first email marketing platform that I've been using. However, for the previous platforms, they were either too complex for my designers and account executives to use, or too minimal to fully meet all my clients' design and campaign requirements. They were also all very marketer focused.
BC: We're really glad to hear that! Now besides offering email design and broadcasting services, how did the idea come about to sell the whole platform to your clients? How did you package it and pull it off?
DR: Sometime back, I had a client who wanted me to build an email broadcasting platform for them which they could then manage themselves. It just so happened that the corporate HQ required a "master console", and sub accounts for their regional offices. It hit me that the basic platform structure was exactly like how BlinkCampaign was built. Only that you guys termed it "Agency" and "Clients". The ability to create custom domains allowed me to mask the entire application with my client's domain as well. Thus, seemingly looking like an installed application.
BC: So you actually used our feature set as a pitch to your client? What were their main concerns with what was already available in BlinkCampaign?
DR: Well firstly, they wanted a product which they could install on their own servers. I countered that with a quick 101 in deliverability and the real costs of infrastructure setup and maintenance.
BC: They were fine with you "hosting" their information?
DR: Yes, I cited the hosted services as one of the factors contributing to the low "setup" cost. Even the entry-level software would set you back around the same price. And that's without the cost of a tech department installing and setting it up properly. With regards to subscriber information security, I also discouraged them from uploading their entire CRM data into BlinkCampaign as it simply was not necessary. They did not require very advanced subscriber profiling. We stuck with a simple name and email address field.
BC: How did you marry BlinkCampaign's pay-as-you-go structure with packaging the entire system to your client?
DC: We did wreck our brains a little on that aspect. Firstly, we needed a way to hide the agency module and online payment functions. We setup a new BlinkCampaign account under our client's name, went in and created the multiple client accounts, which in essence is one account for each of our client's regional offices. This was also quoted as part of the "setup" costs to them. Annie, who is our account executive servicing this client would be the sole contact point and administering the entire system on their behalf. Therefore, our client was never exposed to the agency module and Annie would simply be providing them an overview of all the campaigns, from the agency dashboard.
Since BlinkCampaign was never meant to compare campaigns amongst clients, we created our own custom report and compiled all the campaigns from all the regional offices into a quick overview chart.
For the credits, we estimated their database size and frequency and pre-purchased a ton of credits to enjoy the bulk rate pricing. We also charged them a low monthly "maintenance" fee to ensure that there were sufficient funds from their side for credit purchases. It was a well crafted game of balance.
With the power of email marketing, we
BC: Impressive! I would've never thought of selling it that way myself. But I'm sure glad that its definitely an option.
DR: I must say that I've taken credit and charged for all the hard work that you guys have been doing! But its definitely opened many doors. We're now in talks with 2 more companies that a looking for a similar setup. I'm seriously considering doing this reseller thing full-time!
BC: Thank you very much for your time Dan. Best wishes to you and your team. We'll definitely be looking into features that could help people generate more revenue as a platform for services as well as an entire platform.
BlinkCampaign was developed solely with the designer and agency in mind. We're constantly looking for ideas and features that could help designers and agencies generate more revenue by using BlinkCampaign.
If you've got a BlinkCampaign success story, we'd love to hear about it. Or visit the BlinkCampaign website if you'd like to find out more about how BlinkCampaign can help you generate more revenue through online marketing.
Check out this related post on How To Charge Your Client for Email Marketing Services.
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Posted by: | July 23, 2009 at 02:01 AM