Sydney-based email marketing software startup Campaign Monitor has announced the launch of an app store and certified partner program to provide customers with new tools and resources to help further their marketing efforts.
The app store includes over 200 apps and integrations, giving customers easy access to the likes of WordPress for signup forms, Unbounce for landing pages, and Shopify and Magento for ecommerce. The Shopify integration, for example, will give users access to pre-built segments, enabling them to target email campaigns based on specific criteria, such as high spenders, first time customers, and repeat customers, so users can automatically trigger campaigns based on customer behavior.
The app store includes curated collections that suggest to customers a set of apps based on their business and industry needs.
Kraig Swensrud, CMO of Campaign Monitor, said, “Today, there are thousands of different technologies that marketers use to execute and track the success of their digital marketing programs.”
“The new Campaign Monitor app store provides prescriptive collections of certified apps and integrations that marketers need to simplify the martech landscape and build a custom marketing technology stack.”
The launch of the app store and partner program comes after the startup’s major competitor MailChimp introduced the ability for small business customers to integrate automatic product recommendations into their emails.
Usually the domain of ecommerce giants like Amazon, who have the data science teams and infrastructure to build such a feature out, MailChimp now gives small business customers the same opportunity. It works by having these users connect their store to MailChimp, which then analyses sales data and individual customers’ buying history. The user then inputs the Product Recommendations block into their campaign, and sends.
Campaign Monitor, which has been profitable since launch, has stated it has two million customers across more than 150,000 businesses, with big names including Facebook and BuzzFeed among them.
With the likes of BuzzFeed on its books, the startup launched Campaign Monitor for Publishers last month, which allows customers in the publishing space to use industry-specific product integrations to grow email lists and drag and drop tools to allow all content contributors to curate content, and automation features that allow for the delivery of highly personalised emails.
These launches have been fuelled by a huge capital injection, with the startup raising USD$250 million in funding from a number of US-based venture capital firms in 2014, still the largest round raised by an Australian tech startup. But, as the AFR highlighted last month, this has meant company is under enormous pressure to grow faster, with its debt having been downgraded by Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s due to competition in the space and weaker profits, therefore giving the company a high risk profile.
As founders Ben Richardson and Dave Greiner pointed out however, they made a conscious decision to invest in global expansion, which they expected would have a short term effect on their bottom line for long term gain. It will be interesting to see what else Campaign Monitor and its competitors come up with as the space continues to heat up.
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