Emily Chang - eHub Interviews

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Visit Campaign Monitor, originally added to eHub on Sep 27, 05.

eHub Interviews Campaign Monitor

Thanks to Dave Greiner and Ben Richardson of Campaign Monitor for this email interview posted October 22, 2005.

eHub: What is your web application/service about?

Campaign Monitor: Campaign Monitor allows designers to send email newsletters, manage their subscribers and see reports on sent campaigns for themselves and their clients. Unlike competing products, it’s been built just for web designers and includes a number of unique features that makes sending permission based email campaigns a breeze.

eHub: Why did you start this project?

Campaign Monitor: This project was started through sheer frustration. We tried vendor after vendor in search of email newsletter software that did everything we wanted, but there was always something missing. We decided to build something that had all the features we wanted and none of the bloat. As it turns out, thousands of other designers around the world were looking for the same thing.

eHub: How much time do you devote to its growth? Do you have a day job?

Campaign Monitor: Sure do. When we’re not improving Campaign Monitor, we’re running our consulting business at Switch I.T. It’s probably a 50/50 split between our products (Campaign Monitor and a new service we’re currently building) and our consulting work.

eHub: How large is your team and what are your backgrounds?

Campaign Monitor: We have a full time team of 4, but only 2 of us work on the Campaign Monitor side of things. Before we developed Campaign Monitor, we were doing web design and software development full-time, which provided a great base for the move over to web app development.

eHub: What is your design philosophy?

Campaign Monitor: We focus on simplicity and the little details. What label should I give that input field? How can we reduce the steps to complete that task? We put a lot of thought into every single screen in Campaign Monitor and only ever add features that are truly needed.

eHub: What technologies are you currently using?

Campaign Monitor: Campaign Monitor was developing on the .NET platform, but if you’re looking for a few buzzwords, we offer a simple API, RSS reporting and shock horror, we even have a blog).

eHub: If your project is live, what are the most requested features from your users/community?

Campaign Monitor: Almost every feature we’ve added to date is because of repeat customer requests. New features have to work pretty hard to be included. Just recently we added lots of new functionality to our API and right now we’re looking at adding list segmentation. This will make it easier for our customers to better target what they’re sending their customers. That’s something that won’t be too far off.

eHub: Does your user base reside in a primary geographic location or is it distributed?

Campaign Monitor: A good chunk of our customers are in the US, but we’ve got active customers in more than 50 countries. Our software supports any character set, so anyone can use it.

eHub: Where do you see the project heading in the next 6 months? The next 2 years?

Campaign Monitor: We tend not to look that far ahead. We’ll continue adding, removing and tweaking features based on customer requests and our own gut feeling. Right now, we’re growing at around 30% each month so we’ve also got to ensure scalability is never an issue.

eHub: What is the greatest challenge to your success?

Campaign Monitor: I’d say the biggest challenge would have to be future of email. It’s currently a tool that we all use, but spammers are trying their best to slowly strangle it. There are a number of exciting initiatives in motion now that will hopefully reduce the significance of the problem in the long-term, but there’s a long way to go. Right now we’re doing all we can to reduce the problem by writing articles on best practice and putting a number of measures in place to ensure every email sent with Campaign Monitor is 100% permission based.

eHub: What is the one thing you need to get to the next phase of the project?

Campaign Monitor: Right now we’re banking on $100 million in venture capital coming our way ;) Luckily, if that fails, we’ve got a backup plan. Nothing! We honestly don’t need a thing! We plan on continuing to enjoy our strong growth, listen to our customers and do everything we can to ensure we offer the best email newsletter software to designers.

eHub: Do you have a business model? If so, what is it?

Campaign Monitor: Sure do. We’re 100% privately funded and have been profitable from the get go. Basically, our customers pay us a small delivery fee and 1 cent per recipient for every email campaign they send.

eHub: If you’re able to disclose this information, how much traffic or usage do you see on an average day?

Campaign Monitor: As well as delivering newsletters and managing lists, we offer lots of reports on the success of an email campaign. Because of this, a good chunk of our thousands of customers are coming back daily to check on the progress of their campaigns.

eHub: What is the one thing you’re most proud of about the project?

Campaign Monitor: Definitely the incredible feedback we get off new and existing customers every day. We pour a lot of time and energy into building something truly useful, so it’s incredibly gratifying when our customers tell us we’ve done just that.

eHub: How would you describe the shift that’s occurring with the web right now to future generations?

Campaign Monitor: Honestly, I don’t think I’ll be looking back at 2005 in 20 years time and coining it as “the year it all changed”. I’m excited to see attitudes shifting and some great new (and not so new) technology being used effectively, but I’d hope there are more exciting and significant things on the horizon that really do change the way we interact with the web and each other.

eHub: What site(s) do you visit everyday other than your own?

Campaign Monitor: Signal vs Noise, Digg, Business of Software, 9rules.

eHub: How many hours of sleep do you get a night?

Campaign Monitor: Plenty. Wait! Is that the wrong answer? I think a good work/life balance is pretty critical to producing quality software. We work hard when we’re at work, but we also love to surf, travel and hang out with friends and family.

Thanks to Dave Greiner and Ben Richardson of Campaign Monitor for this email interview posted October 22, 2005.

Visit Campaign Monitor
Originally added to eHub on Sep 27, 05

» More eHub Interviews

eHub Interviews is a series with the creators of Web 2.0 applications and services by Emily Chang, author of eHub, designer, and co-founder and principal of Ideacodes, a strategic web consultancy in San Francisco that she co-founded with Max Kiesler.

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