Despite kicking off client-facing operations under a year ago, cloud service provider Black Pearl Mail already boasts over 20 000 active users and reckons it will have ten times more by year end. It proves a branding, management and analytics service which unifies email presentation and signatures across multiple devices and platforms. As a handy byproduct, Black Pearl Mail also turns plain old email into a marketing channel.

Founder Nick Lissette said it has solved a problem that no other company in the world has yet addressed. “Until now it hasn’t been possible to create emails and email signatures that have a consistent appearance, given the diversity of devices and servers globally. With over 17,000 delivery permutations, this was an incredibly difficult problem to tackle.”

Solving it has resulted in a pending patent, he added.

Interviewed by iStart, Lissette said Black Pearl has been a long time in the making. “The idea was to create an online signature which would automatically deploy ‘hands free’ to every email, regardless of device or email client being used. We spent two and a half years testing and doing R&D before starting to trade. [Now that we’re trading] we’re attacking both ends of the market: enterprise, as well as SMEs through online direct sales,” he said.

Addressing the SME space has a particular advantage for all users of Black Pearl’s software, added Lissette: it has to be simple to use. “We’re the only service provider which allows users to design their own email signature and set it up themselves. In the SME market, it has to be DIY and really easy. If it isn’t, the cost of sale becomes prohibitive.”

By adding custom headers and footers, signatures can amplify marketing messages as emails are sent out to the world. Employees’ email branding is centrally controlled, so there is no deviation in format.

While this particular feature isn’t unique, Black Pearl has built in analytics to track and report on message success. “It’s not abnormal to see two and three percent clickthroughs. When the average user is sending 10 000 emails per year and that’s multiplied out across a business, it becomes a significant reach in its own right,” Lissette said.

Already, the young company has Westpac New Zealand on board, which he described as ‘a good win on the local stage’ and is in trial with two international brands. “We have 20 000 users on the system now and expect to grow that to 200 000 within the next six months,” Lisette noted.

Much of that growth is expected to come from Australia, where Black Pearl has just opened an office; it says it has some 100 prospects lined up with which it is ‘engaged in discussions’ and which have between 10 and 50 000 employees apiece. Lisette added that the next destination being eyed up for an office is Zurich, from which it will target the European market.