MessageDance: Making Newsletters Go Viral
Brands would kill to make things go viral. Everyone wants to create a viral. In an age where sometimes marketing overshadows the product itself, MessageDance promises to do it for you. E-mail marketing has been around for long which mainly involves marketing a commercial message to a group of people using the electronic mail. It usually involves using email to send ads, request business, or solicit sales, and is meant to build loyalty, trust, and brand awareness. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing.MessageDance has taken a long term view on the evolution of email marketing and their mission is to fix the link between email and social media thereby making it work for marketing organizations.
Prabhjot Lamba, the founder at MessageDance says that the link between the two is awkward and mostly broken. “A lot has changed in recent times. iPhones, iPads, Facebook and many new technologies have come up. They have changed our behavior and our relationship with email in many ways. There are almost two separate worlds now – the world of email and the world of social media.”
A BITS Pilani graduate, Prabhjot and Brij Singh currently run MessageDance. “Now we feel that the market is ready as social media adoption has gone one full circle. Personally I found MessageDance interesting and worth pursuing. So we thought that going after the multi-billion dollar market of email marketing was worth a try,” says Prabhjot.
Services Offered
A Facebook application that allows companies to take their newsletters to their Facebook page is currently underway. “This allows a social virality to the newsletter that helps in getting more leads and subscribers. We have also built an iOS SDK that allows mobile app developers to integrate subscribe form and showcase their newsletters from inside their apps, allowing deeper engagement with their app users.”
Although the company is in the phase of expanding and acquiring customers, the early response seems positive. “Facebook app is now out of beta as of last week. Based on that success we launched our SDK program by first targeting the iOS platform,” Prabhjot adds.
Pricing, Revenue and Marketing models
Regarding the product’s pricing, Prabhjot says, “We are keeping in line with the value we offer. Our starter package is 29$/month and we plan to keep it at that level even though we are constantly adding new features to the platform.” For larger marketing organizations however, the pricing would be customised as engagements tend to get very specific.
The marketing strategy as of now is on a word of mouth basis and plain old formulae are being used to wow customers. “It's working very well. Our customers like our product and they are recommending us. Eventually our goal is to tie-up with digital agencies and email marketing firms,” says Prabhjot.
As is the case with any new technology, educating potential customers on the capabilities of a product would prove a major challenge. “Whoever we have shown the product to, has loved the idea. We have made a lot of effort to make the product experience as frictionless as possible. Still long way to go but we are obsessed about making this simple to use.”
Capitalizing on the distribution channels of social, mobile and local technologies is what the company aims for in the future. “At the end of the day, what we want to achieve is a system which allows companies to gain better returns on their investments in email marketing with a better integration with the Post-PC devices,” Prabhjot adds, signing off.
Catch them marketing emails at: http://www.messagedance.com/
