Exclusive | Email marketing is growing over 100% Y-O-Y: Email Vidya's Sahil Chopra

The growth of  social media and web behavior has been the most popular online marketing trend that has seen an increase in marketing investments in 2012 compared to the previous years. Along with this growth what has also significantly come into play is Email Marketing programs where we have now companies are into this specialized activity. Also gaining momentum along with this trends are personalized e-mails & dynamic content serving on the basis of customer behavior & specific demographic values. 

 

iCubes is one of the specialized email marketing companies that has been active in this space since two years and has made a notable progress since inception. Promoted by Sahil Chopra and Jacob George both digital industry veterans, iCubes seeks to fill an important gap where Indian companies were dependent on local technology companies or US/ Europe based companies for email marketing. Says Jacob George, Co-Founder, “There was a huge gap between the expectations of the email marketers and the solutions/services available and obviously resulted in us launching iCubes & later Emailvidya.com, Asia’s first educational portal on email marketing. 

 

When the venture began, e-mail marketing was at pretty nascent stage. Apart from online companies not majority of brands could acknowledge the potential of this emerging e-marketing tool. “However the scenario is changed now, e-mail marketing is growing to over 100 percent y-o-y for the last 2 years with more diversified categories of companies have increased their marketing spend towards e-mail marketing which includes sectors like Retail and Distribution (including online retail and ecommerce), Media and Entertainment, IT and ITES, Services and Consulting (including marketing agencies) and Education,” says Sahil Chopra, Co-Founder and head sales & Marketing. The surge is due to the growth of  Internet usage in India which has almost tripled over the last three years, there are approx. 100 million Internet users and 800 million mobile connections in the country. 

 

iCubes has revolutionized the e-mail marketing space with not just providing innovative end to end e-mail marketing solutions to its customers but by creating immense demand for the same in the Indian market. The promoters have also launch their second initiative - E-mail Vidya, through which more than 100 plus tier 1 brands/Corporates in the country have been educated about the right approach to e-mail marketing and about the effectiveness of the medium. Adds, George, “Email Vidya addresses the opportunities and challenges of integrating email into a brand’s overall marketing strategy, the practical issues involved in planning and implementing an email campaign, and a step structure for planning your very own campaign design.” 

 

But why should a brand want to spend on e-mail marketing? 

 

Replies Sahil, “With e-mail marketing brands can easily meet various marketing objectives at reasonable cost in no time unlike other traditional media. It helps brands to customer acquisitions, product promotions etc. We at iCubes are delivering best innovative campaigns to our customers, which are being processed strategically in order to target the right consumer at right point of time.”

 

Email Marketing pricing starts from Rs 20,000 per month and it varies on the basis of multiple aspects like consulting services, training, deliverability services from a team of global experts etc. As for range of services, iCubes provide end to end e-mail marketing solutions to brands from training to campaign creation and optimisation, campaign execution to reporting, HTML designing, deliverability consulting et al. 

 

iCubes has been witnessing over 400- 500 percent YoY growth. We aim at achieving $ 5 to 6 million turnover by end of March 31’ 2013.  On future strategy, says George, “Our future strategy is to establish a stronger client base and operations system in the Middle East, North Africa and South East Asia.” As far as India is concerned, it has made rapid strides in its two years of existence. Adds Sahil, “We are glad to have almost every prominent e-commerce portal in the industry as our customer today including Snapdeal.com, Dealsandyou.com, Mydala.com, Myntra.com, Indiamart, MTS, Ibibo Group And Fetise.com.” Besides iCubes has a diversified customer base with which it has been working on since inception.