This week, we welcome Splio to our series of interviews with emailing service providers. Splio could just as easily have found itself in the list of emailing routers but given the number of services they offer, that would have been a bit of a reduction. Michele-Jeanne Patry, Product Manager, answers our questions.
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Can you give us a brief history of Splio? When was the company founded, by whom, and has the business model evolved since the beginning?
Splio was founded in 2001 by Raphaël Jore and Louis Rouxel. Initially an IT development company, Splio soon specialized in marketing, and created its EmailForge and SMSForge platforms.
Generally speaking, what services does Splio offer (and not just emailing-related services)?
Splio is a SaaS marketing solutions provider, as well as a deliverability specialist, member of MAAWG since 2002 and preferred ReturnPath partner.
Our platforms handle the routing of transactional emails, marketing campaigns and SMS, via EmailForge 4.0 and Forward, as well as customer relationship management, from online and offline data reconciliation to loyalty program management, via Engage.
In addition to our platforms, we have a team of emailing specialists who act on a number of different levels, from creating static or responsive emails, to assisting with ReturnPath certification, to setting up solutions to optimize campaign placement in inboxes.
Among these services, which ones are related to emailing?
We recently merged EmailForge and SMSForge to create EmailForge 4. This new multi-channel marketing platform extends the possibilities, including sending multi-channel campaigns with scenario management, publishing campaigns on Facebook and Twitter, and all the associated statistics, so you can measure the reach of your marketing actions.
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There's also Forward, which handles the routing of transactional emails, and whose statistics are now accessible from EmailForge 4.
What makes Splio unique in your market?
We choose our customers based on their willingness to learn best practices in email marketing and deliverability.
We will do everything in our power to protect our customers, their deliverability and their marketing performance. Our teams evaluate each new database entered manually to ensure cleanliness, and monitor deliverability 24/7.
Our technical support team speaks 7 languages and covers most time zones.
What do you see as the 3 major challenges for the coming months in the world of email marketing?
- Mobile: The constant increase of smartphones and tablets on the market increases the number of screen sizes to be covered, as well as the number of screens a user owns. What's more, users are now multi-device: they'll be watching TV while using a phone or tablet, to use Facebook or go shopping, for example. The classic email is no longer appropriate. The message needs to be simple and direct, to capture attention in a matter of seconds. Finally, email needs to fit any screen width, and be able to adapt to rotating screens.
- Marketing pressure: the user is constantly solicited: promotional, transactional and informative emails, social networks, loyalty programs, SMS, in-app notifications, etc. One of the main challenges is to consolidate data, both online and offline: we need to be able to treat the user as a single entity for all channels, rather than treating each channel as a different entity, thus reducing marketing pressure and avoiding double or triple impacts.
- Personalization vs. mass-marketing: We've known that personalized email and segmentation work much better for some years now, but that's no longer enough. We need to add behavioral segmentation and real-time trigger sends, while managing marketing pressure, and above all, automating the process to save time.
What do you think of the French email marketing market? Has it reached maturity, or is there still room for innovation?
Emailing, whether used alone or combined with other channels, will always have a place to evolve. It is used as a common entry key for online registrations, receiving invoices and pay slips, dematerializing loyalty cards, coupons, show tickets and so on.
Email is our virtual identity card.
