This startup raised funding to better tell you when and where to send your newsletters

Image credit: Pixabay

Ever tried talking about your work to someone you just met at a big, crowded party somewhere? More often than not, you’ll have to repeat yourself two or three times, while the other person squints and leans in, trying to hear you over the noise that only a throng of 100-plus people in an enclosed space can produce. Sooner or later, your conversation buddy changes the subject or wanders away in search of more drinks.

Now multiply the noise several thousand times, and that’s you trying to talk about your work to the internet. Only the people you’re trying to reach are already constantly bombarded with unrelenting volleys of information. So how do you get through?

Singapore-based Ematic thinks it has a solution for your voice to rise above the din. The three-year-old startup provides applications and insights on email marketing, specializing in ecommerce. Its products are aimed at marketers who want to increase their company’s visibility and attract more customers, by streamlining their marketing methods.

Channeling the message

Paul Tenney, Ematic founder and CEO

“The way I look at marketing technology, it’s between campaign and channel,” Paul Tenney, founder and CEO of Ematic, tells Tech in Asia, talking about the methods available to marketers for reaching their intended customers. “There are tools that are great for campaigns and tools that are great for managing channels, and there have been attempts to do both with the same product. I don’t think that works very well.”

Paul founded Ematic in 2012, after coming to Singapore as the Asia-Pacific person for Silicon Valley email marketing firm Yesmail. The Stanford graduate had previously been a director for the company’s California-based business, working with clients like Hewlett-Packard, Macy’s, and eBay.

Once in Asia, Paul noticed that existing digital marketing solutions for local companies couldn’t work the same way as in the US; they were expensive and complicated, and took too long to implement. Paul wanted to start his own company to provide a better way to Asian businesses. Being in this space since 2004, he had considerable experience to bring to the table, as well as the help and expertise of a lot of his former colleagues. And so Ematic was born.

Hello, see you again soon

Ematic’s solution is a set of software tools that can plug into a company’s chosen campaign management method or its website. For example, a company may be using Mailchimp for its marketing needs. Ematic’s tools connect to it and provide recommendations and actions based on machine learning and artificial intelligence.

There are currently two apps made by Ematic that tackle different sides of its mission.

HiIQ is a tool that suggests when is best to say hi, and to whom. The system works with the user’s database to determine when to fire off emails and to which addresses, targeting (hopefully) the right people with the right message. This results in less time and energy wasted by the marketer, and less noise for the people the message is trying to reach.

ByeIQ is a piece of software that determines what messages and calls to action to display to a user about to leave your website, and when. The idea is to get the user to either subscribe to the website’s mailing list or to become a customer and make a purchase. Paul says this is done in a way that’s seamless and does not interrupt the user’s experience.

Image credit: Ematic Solutions

“We basically boil down email marketing to a three-metric approach,” Paul explains. “How many new subscribers you can add to your database, how much engagement you are able to drive, and how many conversions you are able to drive.”

Raising money

Ematic announced today it has raised S$1.5 million (US$1.07 million) in a seed round led by venture capital firm Wavemaker Partners. 500 Startups and Convergence Ventures also joined in. The startup says it’s continuing to seek additional investment in this round.

Most of the funding will be put toward product development, Paul explains. The rest will be used for “strategic growth” within Southeast Asia. Other markets will follow later through subsequent funding rounds, as Ematic aims for more territories around the world.

Paul is pretty happy with these particular investors. Wavemaker has the desired expertise on how to help a business-to-business-focused company like Ematic, he explains. As for 500 Startups and Convergence, he finds there is a strong culture fit with the startup, while the latter offers a valuable local contact when it comes to partnerships within Indonesia.

The startup won’t disclose numbers, but Paul says it is ahead of its targets in terms of revenue at the moment. It has cleared the 50-customer mark throughout Southeast Asia, including Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia, boasting clients like cosmetics ecommerce website Luxola.

Editing by J.T. Quigley and Terence Lee

This startup raised funding to better tell you when and where to send your newsletters

Shutterstock Raised to "Hold" at Zacks (SSTK)

Zacks upgraded shares of Shutterstock (NYSE:SSTK) from a sell rating to a hold rating in a research report sent to investors on Monday, MarketBeat reports.

According to Zacks, “Shutterstock, Inc. is a global marketplace for digital imagery. It provides licensed photographs, vectors, illustrations and videos to businesses, marketing agencies and media organizations around the world. The Company’s online marketplace provides a freely searchable library of commercial digital images that the users can pay to license, download and incorporate into their work. Shutterstock, Inc. is headquartered in New York. “

In other news, CEO Jonathan Oringer acquired 100,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, August 28th. The stock was bought at an average cost of $34.02 per share, for a total transaction of $3,402,000.00. Following the acquisition, the chief executive officer now directly owns 16,256,327 shares in the company, valued at $553,040,244.54. The acquisition was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link.

Shares of Shutterstock (NYSE:SSTK) traded down 0.33% on Monday, hitting $30.14. The stock had a trading volume of 843,752 shares. The company has a 50-day moving average of $32.33 and a 200 day moving average of $54.95. Shutterstock has a 52 week low of $28.96 and a 52 week high of $84.06. The company has a market capitalization of $1.09 billion and a price-to-earnings ratio of 52.06.

Shutterstock (NYSE:SSTK) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Thursday, August 6th. The company reported $0.31 earnings per share for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.30 by $0.01. The firm had revenue of $104.40 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $105.36 million. During the same period last year, the company posted $0.25 earnings per share. The firm’s quarterly revenue was up 30.1% compared to the same quarter last year. On average, equities research analysts predict that Shutterstock will post $1.16 EPS for the current year.

SSTK has been the subject of several other reports. Cantor Fitzgerald reaffirmed a buy rating and set a $100.00 price target on shares of Shutterstock in a research report on Sunday, July 12th. Morgan Stanley started coverage on Shutterstock in a report on Tuesday, July 14th. They set an underweight rating and a $40.00 price objective for the company. Topeka Capital Markets assumed coverage on Shutterstock in a report on Thursday, May 28th. They issued a buy rating and a $92.00 price target for the company. Jefferies Group lowered Shutterstock from a buy rating to a hold rating and dropped their price objective for the company from $90.00 to $39.00 in a research note on Friday, August 7th. Finally, TheStreet downgraded Shutterstock from a hold rating to a sell rating in a research report on Friday, August 7th. Two equities research analysts have rated the stock with a sell rating, five have given a hold rating and four have given a buy rating to the company. The company currently has a consensus rating of Hold and an average price target of $64.70.

Shutterstock, Inc. (NYSE:SSTK) runs a worldwide marketplace for commercial digital content, including images, video and music. The Organization ‘s commercial digital imagery consists of video clips and accredited photos, illustrations that companies use inside their visual communications, for example corporate communications, digital and print marketing materials, Websites, books, publications and video content while commercial music includes music tracks. The need for music and commercial digital vision comes from businesses, advertising services and media organizations. It reaches new customers through a set of marketing channels, including email marketing, print advertising, tradeshows, online display advertising, direct mail, affiliate marketing, public relations, social media and partnerships. The internet marketplace of the Company’s provides a freely searchable number of commercial digital imagery and music that download its users can pay to license and incorporate into their work.

To get a free copy of the research report on Shutterstock (SSTK), click here. For more information about research offerings from Zacks Investment Research, visit Zacks.com

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Shutterstock Raised to "Hold" at Zacks (SSTK)

How one author raised $11000 to publish the book that has since helped nearly triple his income

Ryan HanleyRyan Hanley with his book and his one-year-old son, Duke.

In early 2013, Ryan Hanley decided he wanted to write a book.

Outside of his career in the insurance industry, he had been writing about content marketing on his website and running a podcast on the same subject since 2011.

“I started to hear the same story over and over again,” he remembers. “There were all these great books, but there was a step missing — they were tactical, here’s-how-you-do-it-and-make-it-work books. I thought they were missing the first step.”

To raise the money he needed to self-publish an appropriately professional-looking book, using professional cover editors, interior designers, and story and copy editors, he estimated he’d need $8,000-$11,000.

He was earning about $55,000 a year living in Albany, New York, and left his job to focus on his own business the same month his campaign went live: July 2014.

To get the extra cash, he turned to Publishizer, an online fundraising platform specifically for authors. In only 21 days, he’d raised the $10,000 he asked for, finishing the month and the campaign just shy of $11,000.

As to what made his fundraising so successful, Hanley credits the philosophy behind the book: That a content marketer is always building his audience. 

“The whole philosophy is that you’re always building your audience, whether or not you have a product that exists yet,” he explains. “You need to provide as much value as you can.”

Ryan HanleyThe book that Hanley self-published.

Hanley started the campaign with a simple picture of his as-yet-nonexistent book and a blurb about what it would be, then bulked up his appeal with a video, and a “blooper reel” with outtakes from the first video shoot.

“It’s not super professional,” he admits. “My wife helps me and is making fun of my pink shirt, which showed ‘here’s an actual human being, not someone who is untouchable."” He then included a fully edited section of the book “so people could get a feel for what they were actually purchasing.”

A lot of the campaign’s success, he says, is due to his audience: an email list of about 5,000, 10,000 followers on Twitter, 12,000 connections on Google Plus, and a podcast audience of about 10,000. “The podcast is an unbelievable platform,” he explains. “I don’t have a direct metric, but I can tell you from going through the 157 people that contributed, at last 60% are podcast listeners.”

In part thanks to his now-published book, ‘Content Warfare: How to Find Your Audience, Tell Your Story and Win the Battle for Attention Online,’ Hanley estimates that his income has nearly tripled since the days before authorship. He once again holds a day job — in fact, he was only on his own for a month and a half before he got an offer to capitalize on the knowledge he shared in his book doing content marketing with an insurance firm.

It was an offer he couldn’t refuse. “It allowed me to leverage up from a 15-person, one-location agency to this national organization,” he explains. “It’s been great because now I’m putting all the concepts in the book to a scale that’s helping a lot of businesses.”

On top of that, Hanley speaks about content marketing around the country (he has nine events scheduled over the next few months for $1,000-$2,000 each), which he estimates makes up 15%-20% of his income. He makes another 5% through affiliate marketing, and about 10% directly from the book.

He’s just starting to make plans for another one — and he’s considering funding it online.

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How one author raised $11000 to publish the book that has since helped nearly triple his income