Over the last 12 months Flutteroo has focussed very heavily on its marketing strategy, whether it was embracing Facebook where it now has c3,000 fans from a standing start just over a year ago, through to online marketing and retargeting. Hence, developing and building out its email capability was a natural next step. It plans to use Emailvision’s technology to build a much deeper relationship with its customers over the next year, being able to communicate better to them in more relevant, topical and innovative ways.

The company’s ranking is based on $40.9 million in revenue sales and reflects a 27.4 per cent year-on-year growth between 2008 and 2009. Emailvision has been named in the top 10 growth chart of companies in the $30 – 50 Million in Revenue category.

Already making a strong start to 2010, Emailvision has reported a 46 per cent growth in the first half of the year. The email service provider recently unveiled its plans to accelerate global sales expansion and product development following its partnership with Francisco Partners, one of the world’s leading technology funds.

The UK cancer charity is working with Europe’s leading email service provider to create and send campaigns as well as track responses. As a charitable organisation, the ability to monitor a campaign’s success is particularly important as it helps to ensure cost-effective communications.

Breast Cancer Care opted to switch from its previous in-house solution to Campaign Commander as it allows for the creation of segmented and highly personalised campaigns. Communicating in an appropriate way is essential to the organisation especially as campaigns are sent to a varied audience, ranging from donors and volunteers to nursing professionals and breast cancer patients.

By introducing the on-demand solution, Breast Cancer Care has also been able to reduce some of the workload of its digital team. In the past, this department was fully responsible for campaigns but this can now be shared between commissioning teams, who know their audiences well, with oversight from the digital specialists.

Breast Cancer Care has been using Campaign Commander since November 2009 and is already seeing benefits from the solution. The main advantage is that teams can now monitor response rates for different types of approach to see what works. For example the charity has recently been able to determine that one regional fundraising e-newsletter immediately generated a high response rate from individuals wanting to host a Strawberry Tea fundraising event. This is an opportunity for people to raise money to support people affected by breast cancer by hosting an afternoon tea in their living room, local school or workplace.

When asked to clarify who or what Biz Stone is only 11 per cent identified him correctly as the founder of social networking site Twitter. Other popular answers included a type of mineral and an indie band front man.

Other areas leaving marketers flummoxed were the UK websites that attract the most users. As many as 92 per cent of respondents failed to identify Facebook as having the highest user figures. Surprisingly, Wikipedia was named more frequently by 23 per cent of people, although it attracts 310 million users in comparison to Facebook’s 510 million.

A saving grace for marketers was that three quarters of those questioned correctly identified Mark Zuckerberg as the founder of Facebook.

[1] According to a poll of 562 marketers conducted by Emailvision at the Online Marketing Show 29 – 30 June, 2010

Francisco Partners is leading a consortium that already controls 86.7 per cent share in the company, which is the world’s fastest growing email service provider (ESP).

The partnership will enable Emailvision to strengthen its presence in existing markets, as well as expand into new ones – making its offering truly global. It will support the company’s ambition to reach over 10,000 clients worldwide over the next 3 years.

The fund will also help accelerate the development of Campaign Commander, Emailvision’s pioneering software service for email marketing. Emailvision is now accelerating investments in talent and resources across all departments of the company.

CEO Nick Heys, General Manager Guy Porré, and the existing management team will continue to lead the company. Deep Shah and Neil Garfinkel from Francisco Partners will replace the outgoing Venture Capital and independent board members.

Accelerated growth in the second quarter

Emailvision’s first-half revenues grew to €19.3 million, an increase of 46 per cent compared to the first half last year.  At constant exchange rates, first-half revenue growth was 44 per cent.

This second consecutive quarter of higher than expected growth led management to raise its 2010 full year revenue growth objectives to 40 per cent, compared to over 35 per cent previously announced.

The group won 486 new clients during the half-year, bringing its total number of clients as at 30 June 2010 to around 2,500.

Good visibility

With a backlog of €47.8 million as at 30 June 2010, increasing by 48 per cent compared to 30 June 2009. Emailvision enters the second half-year confident in its growth perspectives.

International expansion

All countries contributed to the accelerated growth, confirming the international technological leadership of Emailvision. Version 7.4 of the Campaign Commander software service, launched in May 2010, contributed to the strong second quarter. Its robust service and advanced features allow over 5,000 marketers around the world to successfully plan, create, deliver and automate their email marketing campaigns.

The retailer has a strong digital presence and the ability to integrate social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook into ongoing email campaigns is essential. Campaign Commander supports the sharing of email promotions, offers and newsletters via Social Networks. Additionally it can help identify and track top influencers in mailing lists.

Additionally, the on-demand email marketing platform offers Filofax an intuitive user interface, which is easy to use and replaces an existing bespoke in-house solution. It will also help the retailer to identify new marketing segments within existing customer data sets and to build lists based on demographic and behavioural characteristics.

It was Emailvision’s support and service teams on the ground in the seven markets Filofax operates across that proved decisive in the retailer’s decision to partner with Europe’s largest email service provider. In addition to the UK Filofax also has subsidiaries in France, Germany, US, Italy, Denmark and Sweden.

Filofax UK will be launching a new Product and Fashion edition of its newsletter to be split by gender when it goes live in May. The newsletter will feature amongst other things special offers and discounts for online customers. It will also encourage customers to contribute their personal Filofax stories while showing them some of recent conversations other customers have had on Facebook et al.

Europe’s largest email service provider will also host a roundtable during the summit discussing why user-generated content (UGC) is so powerful, how to encourage it and the effective use of storytelling in email. Emailvision’s Nick Heys, Jess Stephens, group e-marketing manager at Filofax, Simon Hills, marketing manager at uSwitch.com and John Sadowsky, a guru on storytelling, leadership and marketing, will debate the following:
•    Learning to use our stories in email and in marketing in general
•    How to use links between email and social marketing to spread stories
•    Using email to build user communities

Further information on the roundtable, which starts at 11:45am on May 20, 2010, can be found here.

Version 7.4 of Emailvision’s email marketing application includes a new Strategic Campaign Planner for planning and analyzing campaigns in a calendar view mode. It offers a visual representation of all scheduled and sent campaigns and one-click access to response reports.

Emailvision has simplified the campaign-building process with the addition of Speedy Campaign Builder, which enables marketers to create highly personalized campaigns in five simplified steps. A new interface gives users improved quality controls and message validation. The new Campaign Builder allows marketers to create and schedule campaigns in the time zone of their choice.

Emailvision has also enhanced its inbox preview tool with 11 new domains across six countries including Norway. It has also expanded Asia-Pacific regional coverage with new domains in India, Hong Kong and New Zealand while also adding the Africa region with two domains in South Africa.

Campaign Commander V7.4 has further increased its integration with Salesforce.com, allowing users to manage and track campaigns through the CRM platform. Emailvision users can access their full library of email templates through Salesforce.com in order to send campaigns that integrate Campaign Commander’s advanced functionality.

The handbook turns the email service provider’s extensive experience, gained through its work with more than 2,000 brands globally, into seven short chapters of practical advice.

For a limited time only, marketers can claim a free copy of the book by visiting the Emailvision website.

Email plays an important role in marketing strategies and no more so than in customer loyalty schemes. Recent figures show that email now accounts for 17 per cent of digital marketing spend, up from 14 per cent last year[1].

Areas covered range from how to build retention email strategy to the common pitfalls, as well as offering advice on delivering and maintaining targeted customer communications.

The guide has been published as part of the For Dummies series, which offers easily-recognisable reference guides and turns complex subjects into plain English.