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Ongage |
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February 4, 2013 Issue |
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The Most Powerful Name In Corporate News and Information |
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Ongage is making a Real Change in the way Email Marketers Work with Email Service Providers (ESPs) – Connecting to Multiple Providers Using their Revolutionary SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) OngageConnect™ Optimization Platform |
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Ongage was founded in 2010 by a team of email marketers with over 7 years of extensive experience in email systems, infrastructure, APIs, ESPs and MTA gateways.
Ongage used their expertise to develop OngageConnect™ an advanced email marketing optimization platform which helps organizations increase deliverability and ROI. |
Business Services Email Marketing
Ongage White Plains, NY, 10601 866.593.2980 |
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Interview conducted by: Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor, CEOCFO Magazine, Published – February 4, 2013
Mr. Shani: The vision of Ongage is to make a real change in the way that today the world of email marketers and the work with email service providers (ESP) is done. In this world today, usually an email marketer has an email service provider it uses. Ongage opens this world by enabling email marketers to work with one or more email service providers of their choice from the Ongage platform. This vision sees all email marketers using Ongage, connected to all of the email service providers out there with lots of the added value applications attached to this platform, creating a whole marketplace for these entities to interact. That is kind of the vision Ongage had when we started it.
CEOCFO: Where are you now? Mr. Shani: From an initial idea that was on a piece of paper in a room, today we have established a working platform that is connected to more than twenty-five email service providers, and is serving a few dozen of email marketers. Therefore, it is alive and kicking. We are progressing month by month to enlarge this operation; enhance it with more email services providers connected, and more email marketers using the system. We have advanced quite a lot from the day it was an idea on the table.
CEOCFO: What are the advantages for the email marketing companies? Why do they want to be in the same place with all of their competition? Mr. Shani: It is important to explain and differentiate that because we are a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) platform, which is a gateway, we are not in competition with the email service providers. We have an API layer that connects to the email service providers. Going back to your question regarding the email marketers, there are two key notes as to why they would want to use Ongage, and there are other side benefits as well. The first key note is that Ongage enables you to optimize your email sending by working with more than one email service provider, and optimizing the segments you send so you will be delivering it through the email service provider who performed best for that segment. A segment can be a region in the world, a segment can be a specific ISP; it brings a whole new dimension of email marketing optimization. There are many things you can do, and you need to do in order to optimize your email marketing performance, but this is a new dimension that Ongage puts on the table, and enables it. In fact, there are companies who were doing this in the past, but they were always doing it manually. That means that you would need to first uploads lists, created content, schedule campaigns on multiple vendor platforms, and then manually retrieve all statistical data from each vendor platform, and then painstakingly join and aggregate that data in-house in order to do a comprehensive analysis of your email operations across the multiple vendors you were using. That is one key note. The other key note is that there are many email services, which are known as cloud SMTP relay services, that provide robust email sending functionality, but do not have user interfaces, or have limited interfaces, and they are more investing into the infrastructure of sending emails and email delivery. Ongage, with built-in connectivity to these types of SMTP services, Ongage offers a feature rich interface so that customers can use and enjoy the quality, and cost effectiveness that SMTP services provide, and the richness of functionality that they have in the Ongage interface. These are the two main points. When you use Ongage, you of course immediately get very easy redundancy to your email operation, because if you have a problem with one vendor, you can easily set up another vendor; or if you work with two, than you have an online redundancy, so that is another aspect that you can look at. The whole issue of researching, testing, and trying new vendors in this area is much easier when you are working through Ongage.
CEOCFO: Why do the actual email companies want to be involved with Ongage? Mr. Shani: Ongage is a good source for the vendors to find customers, to let customers test their service and their deliverability and win those customers. For some of them it is really a top essential, because if they do not have an interface and Ongage is the interface, then there is a whole range of customers who were not accessible to them before. Now they are. But, even those email service providers who do have an interface, it is just another good source to recruit customers and retain customers. Usually, our relationship with them is in those terms.
CEOCFO: Can you tell me a little bit about the email marketing industry? Are there many players? Is it still as robust as it was given many of the mobile and digital applications that people are using? Mr. Shani: This is a great point, because in the last couple of years when somebody wanted to make a kind of hype, he or she would issue an article, “Is email dead?” which was a nice slogan. What we found out in the last couple of years is that the email market is enjoying a really huge surge. There are new things being invented in it, like dynamic advertising in emails, which had been introduced, or many, many services that surround email marketing. The market itself is in the growing mode. The various companies that surveyed the market showed that it is a growing market. It is growing from capacity. Innovations are coming into it and it seems that it is enjoying the fact that the mobile and social are things that are striving. The email marketing enjoys that. It is really a market that many things are happening in. You can also see it by acquisitions, and things like that that the current market in the last couple of years. It is really a vivid market to work with. Another note that may be important to say is that the world by fighting SPAM also loses some of the innocent good guys, and recent surveys show that more than 20% of legitimate emails never reach the inbox because of all the mechanisms around the spam filtering. That is why delivering your email into the inbox has still a great impact, and there are many things you can do to improve that and using Ongage is one of them.
CEOCFO: What was the hardest part to put together once you had the concept on a piece of paper? Mr. Shani: There were two things: one is—always when a new company starts; getting its first customers is always a challenge. It was not different with us. Especially when you are introducing a new concept you cannot go to the customer and say, “Look, I am like Joe, but I am better at this and this and this.” You have to explain the concept for people to understand it. It is more difficult in the sales process. Also, the technical implementation of the infrastructure to the vendors is always a challenge, because it is not a standardized world. There is not one protocol in which this is the way you engage with vendors; each vendor has its own proprietary protocol, and consolidating all of that into one platform is a challenge.
CEOCFO: Is this the first time an approach such as yours has been tried? Mr. Shani: In the form that we came out with, yes. We have not been able to find another service like it. There are some software solutions in various angles of the affiliate world who actually implemented connecting to more than one vendor, but they are more oriented to the affiliate world. We are approaching the email marketing world and saying, “Here is a platform where you can start your email operation when you are small and your needs are small, and you can grow without changing platforms and interfaces, without developing new APIs, but just getting the right vendor each time you are ready for a change” is something that is completely new that we are not aware of having an exact offering out there today.
CEOCFO: What is the revenue model for Ongage? Mr. Shani: The main model is that the email marketers that pay for our service, on top of what they are paying to their email service providers. Of course, we have our price line to adjust to that, so it would not be too much of a burden, but that is the main source of revenues. We have also some referral connections with some of the vendors, so that is another source of revenue.
CEOCFO: What types of companies are using your services today? Is there a typical customer? Mr. Shani: That is an interesting thing, because this platform has a wide range of offering, we find our customers to be very diverse. It can be from a small operation that wants to use an Amazon simple email services, and were just looking for an interface to do that to a very complex and heavy email marketing operation, which utilizes a few vendors and is looking to optimize their email delivery. You find the ranges of small and large, you find the ranges of new people who are just starting in the marketing, and veterans who have been doing marketing for a long time. It is also hard to say that it is not directed to a certain vertical in the business world. Email marketing is common with many verticals in this world, so it is really a diverse community of customers.
CEOCFO: How do people find you? Mr. Shani: Like any company, we do our marketing work; whether it is advertising online or doing some social activities, being present in conferences and stuff like that. One of the things we feel as time passes by, it is like a snowball; that more and more people hear about us, and I guess they spread the word and interact with others, so now people hear about us from other people, and it is like a growing snowball.
CEOCFO: How is business? Mr. Shani: Business is good. It is at a starting point. We are fairly new in the live mode, but business is going well. It is growing by the month, and we are very happy with it.
CEOCFO: What surprised you most as you developed the business? Mr. Shani: The cooperation and the enthusiasm that we received from the various angles of the market. We were happy with our idea when we invented it, but running into and talking to people from various angles, from email marketers, to consultants, to vendors, I find the common reaction is like a “Wow!” and “How was this not thought of before?” and whether it is true, or other words that describe that this is a refreshing thing out there. It was really surprising to get that warm feedback from the outside.
CEOCFO: Why should investors and people in the business community be paying attention to Ongage?
Mr.
Shani:
Ongage is one of those companies that has great potential. It
is not a solution that is fighting its way along other solutions, and just
showing some advantages like better features, or some nice gimmicks. It is a
whole new concept that can really make a change, and really blowout to be a
big business. It is very intriguing. |
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“The vision of Ongage is to make a real change in the way that today the world of email marketers and the work with email service providers (ESP) is done. In this world today, usually an email marketer has an email service provider it uses. Ongage opens this world by enabling email marketers to work with one or more email service providers of their choice from the Ongage platform. This vision sees all email marketers using Ongage, connected to all of the email service providers out there with lots of the added value applications attached to this platform, creating a whole marketplace for these entities to interact. That is kind of the vision Ongage had when we started it. - Ofer Shani |
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