This startup raised funding to better tell you when and where to send your newsletters

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Ever tried talking about your work to someone you just met at a big, crowded party somewhere? More often than not, you’ll have to repeat yourself two or three times, while the other person squints and leans in, trying to hear you over the noise that only a throng of 100-plus people in an enclosed space can produce. Sooner or later, your conversation buddy changes the subject or wanders away in search of more drinks.

Now multiply the noise several thousand times, and that’s you trying to talk about your work to the internet. Only the people you’re trying to reach are already constantly bombarded with unrelenting volleys of information. So how do you get through?

Singapore-based Ematic thinks it has a solution for your voice to rise above the din. The three-year-old startup provides applications and insights on email marketing, specializing in ecommerce. Its products are aimed at marketers who want to increase their company’s visibility and attract more customers, by streamlining their marketing methods.

Channeling the message

Paul Tenney, Ematic founder and CEO

“The way I look at marketing technology, it’s between campaign and channel,” Paul Tenney, founder and CEO of Ematic, tells Tech in Asia, talking about the methods available to marketers for reaching their intended customers. “There are tools that are great for campaigns and tools that are great for managing channels, and there have been attempts to do both with the same product. I don’t think that works very well.”

Paul founded Ematic in 2012, after coming to Singapore as the Asia-Pacific person for Silicon Valley email marketing firm Yesmail. The Stanford graduate had previously been a director for the company’s California-based business, working with clients like Hewlett-Packard, Macy’s, and eBay.

Once in Asia, Paul noticed that existing digital marketing solutions for local companies couldn’t work the same way as in the US; they were expensive and complicated, and took too long to implement. Paul wanted to start his own company to provide a better way to Asian businesses. Being in this space since 2004, he had considerable experience to bring to the table, as well as the help and expertise of a lot of his former colleagues. And so Ematic was born.

Hello, see you again soon

Ematic’s solution is a set of software tools that can plug into a company’s chosen campaign management method or its website. For example, a company may be using Mailchimp for its marketing needs. Ematic’s tools connect to it and provide recommendations and actions based on machine learning and artificial intelligence.

There are currently two apps made by Ematic that tackle different sides of its mission.

HiIQ is a tool that suggests when is best to say hi, and to whom. The system works with the user’s database to determine when to fire off emails and to which addresses, targeting (hopefully) the right people with the right message. This results in less time and energy wasted by the marketer, and less noise for the people the message is trying to reach.

ByeIQ is a piece of software that determines what messages and calls to action to display to a user about to leave your website, and when. The idea is to get the user to either subscribe to the website’s mailing list or to become a customer and make a purchase. Paul says this is done in a way that’s seamless and does not interrupt the user’s experience.

Raising money