INBOX, Easiest E-Mail Marketing Tool for Growing Businesses

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Emin Onur Genc, founder of INBOXMAIL Inc.
By TURKOFAMERICA -
According to Salesforce’s 2016 State of Marketing Report, “80 percent of marketers agree that email is core to their business.” Are you among them? INBOX offers advanced and responsive modules developed for all user needs. INBOX renders service to over 12000 in a year. Also, they send approximately 5 million emails daily. Onur Genc, successful entreprenuer and the founder of INBOXMAIL Inc talked to TURKOFAMERICA.


Can you inform us about INBOX’s infrastructure?

First, as the philosophy of our company, we apply DevOps methodology in all our works which provides us agility for the development of new products. In this way, while reaching to a high-standard of quality, the effectiveness of our work also enables us to attain marginal cost effectiveness. Therefore, we are able to keep our services relatively more economic -as compared to our competitors- for the customers and provide them with a non-stop premium experience. In this context, I can safely claim that we are highly competitive.

More technically, the distributed and independent architecture of our system (from ISPs, vendors and such); which is also automated by end-to-end tests, gives us resiliency. We have managed to establish this by using microservices architecture. Thanks to this infrastructure, we can take actions faster and more effectively when it comes to adding new modules and features to INBOX services. Most importantly, we apply our flexibility to customers’ needs and always meet their expectations.

As we have specialized and become more experienced in email marketing, we have developed algorithms to keep our deliverability rates at the highest level possible; since this data is -as commonly accepted- the most important input in analyzing email marketing campaigns. The goal has always been the best return rates for our customers and that we have reached. The algorithms we have developed helped to increase the reputation of our IP addresses that are crucially important to climb over the filters applied by email service providers and different applications. Thereby, we deliver the emails sent from our servers to the inboxes of target receivers without any problem. In other words, we guarantee our clients the highest possible outputs for their campaigns if run by INBOX.

How did the idea of starting INBOX come up? Who was your first customer and when did the company become a success story?
We have first started our journey as a web-design company under the name of “Genc Dizayn” in 2009. For a year, until 2010, we mostly did business for web design and SEO. As widely known, web design is among the hardest professions of the digital world; because you must always interact with people and keep them satisfied with your work! Personally, I knew that such efforts were not sustainable and there would be an end. So, I had been in search of new business opportunities and even had some trials. Unfortunately, most of them were failures. Then, I chewed over the most important digital communication method for a while and realized that it would only be the oldest but ageless method: email. Later, when I decided to create something related to ‘email’, INBOX was born automatically. It keeps getting better ever since. For the last year, we have been working on the application of artificial intelligence on email marketing.

The increasing importance of email marketing for business has made it a more competitive sector. How do you make difference?

Of course, there are many similarities between INBOX and its competitors; however, there are quite important differences as well, I must say. Nevertheless, since these differences are technical in their nature, it is almost impossible for the clients to make notice of them.

To me, INBOX distinguishes from its competitors with the infrastructure developed completely from scratch by our own engineers. It is unique to us. There are two things we have created: first, the platform that the clients interact with, generally the interface; second, the infrastructure and server software that actually do the job by sending millions of emails every day and collects the data in its aftermath. Besides establishing world-class systems in both, I believe we have succeeded to create an interface that is more user-friendly and faster than all its competitors. Also, we are one step ahead of almost all the companies when it comes to email deliveries. That is the result we get since we use the latest technologies in our systems. In addition to all this, considering the service presented to clients, our prices are competitive worldwide, not only in Turkey.

You have managed to position INBOX well in Turkey as a domestic company. What are your objectives now?
We would like to achieve what we have achieved in Turkey in a global context. Recently, we have incorporated in the United States. The American company is an infant; yet we are an old and experienced company in this sector. Our goal is to open ourselves to global markets and develop special modules and features for different marketing cultures in different regions of the world.

Are there any domestic or multinational companies that want to buy INBOX or become a big partner? How do you see the future of your business?

We have been offered many investments; but I rejected them. We are a company that is growing day by day and in fact we do not need any extra money to do that. For instance, we still do not have marketing and sales departments. In this sense, it would not be wrong to say that we conduct our business as a government office do. Instead of marketing and advertising, we invest all our efforts and money to the products themselves. Just like Apple… I believe, if one can develop a product to a level that is unapproachable, that product would not need any advertisement at all.

How many clients does INBOX serve and how many emails do you send monthly?
For now, we render service to 780 clients monthly and over 2000 in a year. Also, we send approximately 5 million emails daily.

What are your plans in the United States?
Personally, I loved the States. It is much easier to live here as compared to Turkey. In my opinion, everyone should be living in equal conditions with the people living in what we consider the prosperous states. Most people accept the fact that the United States is the best example of such a social balance. At least it gives the opportunity to everyone.

Now we have offices in two countries. We are very new in the United States. In the long run, I am planning to render service on a global scale from the office here in the United States. My answer to the question of “Why the US?” is that I find it easier to run and grow my business here thanks to judicial and managerial amenities. For a company, having a branch in the United States makes the process of opening globally more smooth.

Can you inform us about the service packages you provide?
Well, with the question you have asked, you have given me an opportunity to tell what I consider our biggest difference from our competitors. When the web-sites of almost all the email marketing companies are visited, a potential client sees a subscriber-based pricing model. INBOX, on the other hand, has limits for delivery quotas. Actually, it took some time for us to take this decision and quite frankly it was hard to realize. That is because the quota packages are heaven for spammers. To prevent the spammers, we have developed a software backed by artificial intelligence applications that stops any such delivery before the emails are sent. Hence our IP reputation remains at the highest level possible. Consequently, we keep our systems well-functioning and render a service that is preferable for the clients.

Besides, I do not think a subscriber-based pricing model is fair anyway. Let’s take two client profiles as examples. The first one is a logistics company and the other one is a restaurant. Both has 10.000 subscribers.

The logistics company sends emails 2 – 3 times a day according to the locations of the ships. On the other hand, a restaurant would not want to annoy its clients and sends email to its subscribers 4 – 5 times a month. In this case, a logistics company ‘must’ send 600 thousand emails; while a restaurant ‘may’ send 40 thousand in a month. Do you think it would be fair to charge both companies the same amount? This system is unjust. Frankly speaking, I don’t really know why email marketing companies provide service with a subscriber-based pricing system like they have pledged all together. I guess, INBOX will displease the others when we open to global market.

Is there anything you want to add?

Doing a lot of work with a few people is what we take as a basic principle here at INBOX. This is not because we hate our employees of course; but we believe the computers can do more. Even now, with the artificial intelligence algorithms we have developed, we make all our tests and periodic checks by robots, not by our employees. In short, we want to automate everything we can. Also, we do not like bureaucratic proceedings in our company. As long as an employee does his/her job well, that person should not be asked what time s/he came to work and left. Accordingly, when we came here to incorporate in the United States, we have left a team of 8 employees in Istanbul who do not have a boss.
Last modified onSaturday, 06 May 2017 10:07