“The idea of EDMdesigner came to my mind while I was travelling by a train and started reading emails on my smartphone.” recalls Roland Pokornyik, the CEO of EDMdesigner.com. He adds, “I realized that newsletters and other commercial messages simply look awful on my mobile device. I called my best friend Gyula Németh, who’s now the CTO of EDMdesigner.com, telling him that we have to find a solution to this issue and change the way email templates are created. He fell in love with the idea, just like me. We were looking for a third guy who knows the ins and outs of HTML, CSS, especially email coding, and thankfully we found him and officially formed the team over some beers.” The “third guy” was Gergely Mécs, now the Chief Front-end Developer.
EDMdesigner is the “most flexible, responsive email editor API in the market, which is designed to be integrated into any ESP, CRM, CMS, ERP or any other SaaS system.” Roland tells about the journey of EDMdesigner – “We always wanted to change how responsive email templates are created. We wanted to create an email editor which can replace manual coding and get it to as many users as possible. At first we were building a standalone application, but it turned out that won’t be feasible enough for a business to stay alive. That’s when we “pivoted” to the email editor API position and decided to give away our technology to any software provider in the world. We never wanted to become a complex service provider, we want to be strategic partners of thousands of different companies and we are on a great track in this journey.”
Finding the third co-founder was the hardest challenge for Roland and Gyula. Once they got Gergely on board, they “started building our MVP part time” while Gyula was working already full time on the project. After 6 months of building the MVP, EDMdesigner secured $200,000 seed financing, “thanks to a great match with the investor.”
“The problem is that it’s really expensive to build and maintain a professional responsive email editor, but companies still have to do it or use old style WYSIWYG editors – which are not optimized for email.” Roland tells us. He adds, “This is the reason why our white-label, responsive email editor API is a real painkiller for thousands of software providers who don’t have to build their own solution, but still can get their hands on a world class technology.”
Yet, the “old style WYSIWYG editors” are EDMdesigner’s competitors since they are available free of cost. There is also a strategic question that the founders ask among themselves – “Will a company rely on an outside service provider or still rather build something on a budget in house?” ” Some may decide the second option nowadays, but we are sure that in the long run, even they will be open to replace what they have in place.” Roland tells us.
EDMdesigner plans to grow its user base through integration partnerships, even with huge companies like IBM and also via integrating its API directly into platforms like Heroku, Azure, Softlayer, etc. Its target audiences are developers and software providers. “The location is not limited, since we already have clients from Australia, UK, Nigeria, Brazil, USA, Russia and many others.” Roland says.
EDMdesigner’s business strategy is “built on three pillars” –
1. Direct sales – the team is building up its own sales infrastructure and reseller program as well.
2. Indirect sales – Content marketing, SEO, PPC.
3. API integration with PaaS providers (like Heroku, Azure, Softlayer).
4. Plugin development for software like Marketo, Salesforce, SugarCRM, Magento, etc.
StartupDope readers can avail a 1 month-free API usage using the code “1MfreeEDMapi”
Please visit http://edmdesigner.com/ for more information.
