#1 on TechCrunch for 6 Months

That is correct.  WrapMail has had the #1 ranked pitch on TechCrunch since June of 2008 with 1,166 ‘up’ votes. Second place?  Smug Mug, a 6 year old company with 346 ‘up’ votes. There’s not much else to say when you’re #1…so as they say “lets go to the tape”…

Dave Kustin – CMO, WrapMail

Latest Email Research – Validation!!

A study just released this week from Forrester Research shows that:

 ”emails between people that know each other is the most trusted source of information.”

This research, interestingly, came out in a study focused on the concept of trust and blogs, with focus on the fact that most people do not trust the information on corporate blogs.  You can read more here: http://blogs.forrester.com/groundswell/2008/12/people-dont-tru.html

Here are some of the findings:

So, what does this mean to you and maybe more importantly to WrapMail?  Well, first of all, and most importantly, the respondents thought that corporate blogs ceased being what they used to be a number of years ago and that is, an open book of sorts or a conversation from corporation to customer.  Most corporate blogs today are an outlet for companies to shout about how great their products are services are.  We have tried to take a position on marketing issues while still being fair, and have tried to be open about our corporate news and products/services.  In other words, we have tried to deliver value here.

So, what it means for WrapMail is, total and complete validation of our business concept. What is means for you is that WrapMail is the source or tool for you to take advantage of the FACT that your email to someone you know is the most trusted form to deliver information about your company. Period.  We are working even harder now to capitalize on this opportunity.

Wrap on…

Dave Kustin – CMO, WrapMail

WrapMail, web statistics and Google Analytics

WrapMail offers full reporting as far as what recipients are clicking on what element of a wrap (a wrap is the html surrounding the text that is delivered via a server so clients do not need to install software on any desktop or cell phone).

In addition to the reporting offered through WrapMail’s control panel clients can also find WrapMail’s unique links (that all start with t0.wrapmail if shared solution) in the referrer list when they check their website statistics using any statistics tool including Google Analytics.

regular emails deliver website traffic

Statistics will show how many new visitors were driven to the clients website directly from a sent email. For those who are not WrapMail clients these statistics are not available/possible.

We all send emails every day, why not use them to promote our own business?

Independent Professionals Unite!

WrapMail will be launching a new service, WrapMail Lite, within the next 30 days targeted to independent professionals. Please allow me to define independent professional.  An independent professional may be someone that works in network marketing (Arbonne, Avon, Mary Kay, etc…), as an eBay seller, a real estate agent or any other professional typically associated with a group affiliation.  See below for a preview of the sign up page:

Why do this?  There are tens of millions of people currently working as independent reps for various network marketing groups and the vast majority, if not all of them, use a web based email address to email their prospects and clients.  WrapMail Lite will be the only web based email system specifically designed for independent professionals.  Users will be able to preview and choose a professionally designed Wrap for their affiliation, customize it with their picture, link(s), contact info and send wrapped emails from a unique email address (@wrapmail.com).  Why use Yahoo, AOL, Gmail or the others when you can use this to push your store out with every email?

Wrapped emails will have the designated affiliation’s images along with the users image embedded in the email which will always show up – never a red x – and will be clickable back to the users unique web page(s).  The system tracks all clicks and reports back to the sender WHO is clicking on WHAT and WHEN.  The cost will be $4.95 per month or $49.95 for the year which is an incredible value in these trying economic times.

Dave Kustin – CMO, WrapMail

30 New Accounts in October

Not a record month, but still very good.  That’s 30 new companies representing hundreds of employees sending thousands of wrapped emails every day instead of plain black on white ones.  I am beginning to think of wrapped emails as being ‘PROACTIVE’ versus ‘PASSIVE’ or ‘ELECTRIC’ versus ‘ACOUSTIC.’  Whatever the analogy, wrapped emails do something – they inform, brand, conduct research, up sell, cross sell – they are an extension of your staff. I can’t think of another marketing/communication tool that is as active and subtle at the same time as WrapMail.

Wrap on…

 

Dave Kustin – CMO, WrapMail

Intellectual property protection

Every company should strive for the development of propriety technology, processes or products which are often supported with patents. This is especially true for those that operate in a commodity driven business. Thankfully WrapMail does not operate in a commodity business and is alone in a $60BB market.  That of course does not mean we have not pursued our own set of patents, one of which is for the WrapMaker.  We have filed a patent for the WrapMaker which is the main tool for our customers to implement their own Wraps.  Customers can use the templates to upload their own images, resize and crop them, add hotspots for links.  Beyond that, customers can rotate all of their Wraps, create a sender specific Wrap, create group specific Wraps and even insert an RSS feed into every wrapped email.  Yes, very cool.

What is really cool about this, is the fact that we have something that the ‘big boys’ of technology will not have.  This is even the case for our free email version which will further distinguish us from Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and the like.  And as emails move closer and closer to inclusion of HTML, not only will our image embedding technology make us attractive, which also is patent pending, so will our WrapMaker.

Needless to say, we look forward to negotiating a license of our technology

Dave Kustin – CMO, WrapMail

College eMail Advertising Network is Shaping up

WRAPedu to be specific, which is the name of our new division that will be focusing on the development of the College eMail Advertising Network. We are still waiting for final, final legal approval from Broward College, but in the meantime, we have met with two other South Florida colleges, both of which have a student body of around 25,000.  Further, we have a meeting next month with another South Florida college that has a total of 160,000 students at all of their campuses.  Wow.

All of the colleges thus far have shown a great deal of interest in the program for a number of reasons and we expect to add one of these schools, at a minimum, within the next 60 days. It is amazing how this program has all the makings for everyone to win.  The colleges will have an extremely targeted and effective tool to promote themselves AND will realize new revenue at no cost, advertisers will be able to reach the desirable 18-24 year old demographic, students will receive special offers and coupons. And finally, WrapMail will generate revenue and the creation of an entirely new type of display advertising business.  Win, win, win.

Another element that is beginning to take shape here is the specific demographics that may be derived from the student bodies.  For example, one of the colleges we recently met with has a significant number of students that are in graduate school.  Another school has a substantial Hispanic student population.  Given that a large number of the emails are student-to-student, this opens the window for even more targeted offers/advertising.  Advertisers like that.  A lot.

We will be launching http://www.wrapedu.com very soon with more information, so stay tuned!

Dave Kustin – WrapMail, CMO

Former President of Nortel Joins WrapMail Board

Past President of Nortel Networks North America Brings Significant Industry Experience to WrapMail

FORT LAUDERDALE, FL — September 28, 2008 — WrapMail Inc., a global provider of innovative person-to-person email marketing software has announced that Dion Joannou, past President of Nortel Networks North America, has been named to WrapMail’s Board of Directors.

“Dion Joannou brings significant technology experience, knowledge and insight to WrapMail’s board,” said Rolv E. Heggenhougen, Chairman/CEO. “We are extremely excited to have Dion on our Board and look forward to working with him and benefiting from his contributions as we continue to grow our business globally.”

Over the course of 13 years at Nortel Networks, Joannou held a number of leadership positions in the Wireless and ATM/IP businesses culminating in being appointed as President of Nortel North America in August of 2005. While serving in that capacity until the end of August 2007, Joannou was responsible for overseeing 50% of Nortel’s revenues of between $5-$6 billion derived from both the enterprise and carrier markets.

Joannou holds a Bachelor of Arts – Marketing from Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville, Illinois and a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Miami in Miami, Florida.

Dion is also on the board of Dialogic a recent WrapMail client. Welcome to the team Dion!

Dave Kustin – CMO, WrapMail

Around the Wrap

Just a quick update on some WrapMail news and happenings.  WrapMail has had the good fortune of showing up on a number of blogs recently, here is a quick list and where appropriate, VOTE!!:

click

click

click

On the new client front, we had 40 new clients sign up during the month of August. One of those clients was GeneralSports Venue who is the distributor of the athletic playing surface AstroTurf and was recently featured in Inc.. Below is an image of their Wrap, which features their many product lines, as well as a link to Archie Manning who is their spokesperson. 

Wrap it up!

Dave Kustin – CMO, WrapMail

Letter to Governor Charlie Crist

Governor:

I read in the Sun Sentinel on almost a daily basis how more funding is needed for the public school system and believe that I have an “outside the box” solution. I have always been an entrepreneur of sorts and as such look for alternative ways to make money. When I look at government anywhere in the world then the mentality is pretty one of “taking money” – read: tax. I would love somebody in Government to look at the other side of the equation: make money. All government institutions have opportunities to make money, some in more obvious ways than others and deploying such new ideas combined with more efficiency could result in lower taxes, better schools and happier people.

You notice how this email is “wrapped” in an interactive letterhead which consist of images with embedded links to various portions of our website. WrapMail currently performs this service for Broward College and every email sent from faculty or staff brands the college, promotes the many different educational programs, the foundation etc and links back to various portions of BC’s website. The basic principle behind WrapMail (which has been developed in-house in our Fort Lauderdale headquarter) is to connect two obvious dots: organizations have websites and employees that send emails. WrapMail turns every email into a branding tool for the organization, drives people to the website AND turns into a research tool as the system matches up sender and receiver when a link is clicked (telling our clients who is interested in what and when). WrapMail is server based so nothing is installed on any desktop or cell phone, i.e. senders have no new routines to learn.

Here’s where I’d like to connect the opening statement and the quick overview of WrapMail and Broward College:

BC has about 2,000 faculty and staff, in addition they have close to 150,000 student email accounts.

The NEW idea: Solicit advertising from major corporations to be in the BC wrap. Imagine what it would be worth to say, Apple, to be featured in every external email sent from broward.edu. We believe it is worth about $5.00 per click or 5 cents per impression. The reason these ads are worth much more than banner ads is the fact that they appear in an email between people that know each other. WrapMail is not a mass email system, it is all about using the emails employees send every day anyway – why not use these to promote your own organization. Another potential advertiser in the BC wrap is also very obvious: The State of Florida.

The numbers:

BC sends about 200,000 emails daily
5 cents per impression of one advertisement: $10,000 daily “revenue” or $2.5M per year (and that’s only for one advertisement).
Even with some hefty discounts this could become a major funding source for Broward College.

Imagine rolling this program out to all public educational institutions in Florida.

WrapMail would be willing to provide the technology for free against sharing the advertising revenue.

There’s more: you will notice on the bottom of this email that there’s an amber alert for a Florida missing child. We feed these alerts automatically into all of our emails to increase the impressions of missing kids in the hope that more visibility increases the chances of finding them.

The bottom line is that I wanted to make you aware of our little technology company down here in Fort Lauderdale and how this technology combined with some outside the box thinking could provide great opportunities for the entire State.

I would love to discuss this in more detail so feel free to contact me at any time.

Thank you

________________
Rolv E. Heggenhougen, CEO
305 S. Andrews Ave., Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301
US Office: (954)-376-4750