We had the pleasure of interviewing Janis Rose, Co-Founder and CEO of Mailigen, a robust email marketing platform. In this interview, he shares his experience and reveals what people eager to start an email marketing business should know.
Janis, tell us a bit about the beginning of your career. When did you discover your passion for marketing and innovative technology? What other interests did you have?
It might sound very geeky, but at age 16 my first job was as a computer admin assistant at my high school. Then I moved to Denmark, where I studied multimedia design and business, and that sparked a new love for design and marketing in me. I started my first venture, a web design company, at age 19. Since then I've been pretty much submerged in web technology, design and marketing.
My passion has definitely been creating something — it may be design, web projects, software products, solving user experience problems, or managing teams of people. I love working with people. In whatever I do, I try to build a strong team that can set and accomplish their goals together.
You demonstrate great marketing and management expertise, and you enjoy sharing your knowledge as a regular speaker at small workshops and large conferences. Do you remember your first speaking experience? What was the topic you were presenting?
Actually, I didn't know I could be a speaker and that I had it in me — speaking to groups of people, opening up, sharing experience and knowledge puts you in a position where you're very vulnerable. Now I often speak at international events and conferences for audiences of up to 600 people. Still, I love working with small groups at professional workshops and even doing one-on-one consulting.
My first speaking experience was when I was 22, at the high school I'd graduated from a few years earlier. I shared with them my adventures studying abroad, working with amazing people and traveling the world. I tried to inspire them to be courageous and leave their comfort zone, to explore the world of the unknown. I left my house when I was 18, and over the following decade I've lived in 8 different countries. I've seen, heard, tasted and experienced a lot, so I love sharing this with anybody who is keen to try out what the world has to offer.
Professionally, though, I think my first speaking event was at a startup accelerator in Asia for a group of 70 people. I was talking about the struggles and victories of building your own SaaS business. Since then I've spoken at more than 50 events about business, email marketing, UX, life hacking, and more.
How did you come up with the idea to start an email marketing business? What were the main challenges Mailigen had to deal with as a newcomer to the market? Are any of them still relevant today?
Mailigen really is a story of 4 guys in a garage!
We were a team of 4, in a tiny 12sqm office, developing websites for clients and doing marketing for them. We worked from project to project, from paycheck to paycheck. One of the marketing disciplines we implemented for our clients was email marketing. Soon enough, we noticed a severe lack of email service providers that made using their platform a piece of cake — beautiful tools that are easy to use. It was a simple idea that we followed through to its logical conclusion. Within a couple of weeks we ran a few pilot projects, and within 4 months Mailigen's prototype was ready. The day it launched, we got our first customers, and that's how it all started.
Like other startups, we fell down and got back up many times. We experimented with things until we found what worked. We never gave up, and in doing so, we began to grow exponentially.
One of the main challenges for ESPs (Email Service Providers) is email delivery. We went the hard way and started building our own email delivery infrastructure. That was overwhelming at first and still brings its challenges, but it has paid off — we now offer top-of-industry email delivery rates and can scale our delivery infrastructure quickly to accommodate new large customers.
Of course, global competition is fierce; there's no time to rest on our laurels, and we have to innovate constantly and enter new markets. That's why we localize our platform and expand customer-facing teams in some of the largest emerging markets, such as Russia, China and Latin America.
We learned that mentorship and open communication were crucial to our success.
That's why we've put these things in place for our clients:
- A mentor that works alongside and guides you on your path
- A user-friendly technology platform that makes communication easy and clear
Over the years, Mailigen has grown into a versatile email marketing solution. Your system is integrated with dozens of platforms, including eCommerce ones. How does being connected to them help email marketing businesses? Can it be used to power new features?
As we were implementing email marketing programs for our clients ourselves early on, we saw that a standalone email tool isn't enough. Each of our clients has its own processes and tools in place to run its business effectively, so we had to make sure they could minimize manual work for email database synchronization between their CRM, CMS, eCommerce platform and Mailigen. That's why we built many native integrations — some of which allow creating, sending and getting reports directly within their own platforms. Solid CRM system integration and dependable connections to eCommerce platforms are what make this kind of synchronization possible at scale.
As part of our own platform, we added online surveys and SMS capabilities early on. This allows our customers to connect with their own customers in many more ways.
We listen to our users constantly, because we need to innovate and provide our clients with the tools they need. We have several new features in the pipeline, aimed at eCommerce clients and professional marketers who want an open, easy-to-use email marketing automation platform. I'm genuinely excited about what's ahead!
How do you envision email marketing evolving? Do you think any changes are coming?
There are 2 sides to email marketing. The bad side is that marketers ruin everything — we are responsible for decreasing open and click rates. Email marketing is often treated as an advertising channel rather than a relationship-building one. We don't always respect our subscribers, sending too many unwanted emails. People are becoming immune to straightforward sales and advertising. We want more — we want to be loved, respected and given individual attention.
I believe we're helping our customers stay on the good side of email marketing — using it to build human relationships, provide value, create loyalty, and only then sell. It's much easier to sell to people who love your brand.
So from a technology standpoint, I see more marketers gaining access to tools that let them personalize content for their customers far more accurately, and deliver emails at the moment when subscribers are ready to consume that content. Better data validation automation also plays a growing role here, since accurate customer data is what makes precise personalization possible.
That's our vision, and we're working to provide the tools and mentorship our clients need to achieve these 2 goals.
What inspirational words would you give to those thinking of starting an online business? What should they know or never forget?
As with anyone wanting to start an online business, remember that you need to solve a problem your customers have or help them get their job done. Real business is built on trusted relationships, whether online or offline.
For example, Mailigen isn't really in the "online business" — we're in the business of helping other businesses sell more and build more loyal customers by providing a powerful email marketing automation tool. This is where one of our core values comes into play: mentorship. We help our customers grow by telling their stories through email.
We want to thank Janis for taking the time to share his memories and insights. We enjoyed the answers a lot and hope you, our dear readers, did too. 🙂
Marketing manager, API fan, nerd, perfectionist, British humour enthusiast, literature and history geek.
