A small Bandon, Co Cork-based company that supplies Web-based software for creating permission-based email newsletters has reached the €1 million revenue mark in British contracts.
Newsweaver (www.newsweaver.ie), a privately held company employing 10 people in Cork town, provides software and newsletter design services to European clients including Bosch, the British Heart Foundation, 3M, Convergys, RR Donnelly, ABN Amro, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants and Diageo.
Irish accounts include Siemens, AIB, several Government departments, Ticketmaster and Unilever.
Newsweaver managing director Mr Andrew O'Shaughnessy said that the firm has been growing rapidly as companies increasingly use email newsletters to communicate with customers, trading partners and employees. "It's early days yet in this market. The competition is fierce in the US but more limited over here", giving Newsweaver a clear shot at this niche market, he said.
The newsletters are predominantly used as a business-to-business tool and have the capability of harvesting a range of information from readers. They can be used as both a communication and marketing tool, he said.
The newsletters arrive in html format and readers are taken to a website when they click on a link to read a particular story.
"We create a whole microsite around the email, which is hosted on its own server," said Mr O'Shaughnessy.
As readers move through the site, a company can see which readers were interested in which stories and what type of content, and when stories were read.
The newsletter content can also be automatically reformatted for readers from different geographical areas, including switching to different languages. They can also target an individual based on information known about that person - interests, products owned, regional location, and so forth - he said.
The attraction of newsletters to clients is "staying front of mind and providing product knowledge or any added value they can give to their customers," he said.
"They also cut print costs but the main thing is that it's two-way communication."
The widespread move to higher-speed internet connections has made html newsletters - once considered a bandwidth-hogging intrusion by many people - the format of choice. Newsweaver's software allows readers to switch to a text-only presentation but less than 5 per cent choose it, according to Mr O'Shaughnessy.
Newsweaver provides support so that newsletters can be produced entirely in-house. However, clients can also choose to have Newsweaver design and manage the newsletters.
Mr O'Shaughnessy said the software enables sophisticated customisation and data gathering but noted that only a handful of clients are using the software "to the full level that can be done".
He expects the newsletter software market to grow rapidly over the next five years with particularly steep growth in the next three. This will see a degree of consolidation and buyouts, he believes.
Newsweaver's clients are currently split equally between Ireland and Britain but this year the company has made moves into continental Europe. Mr O'Shaughnessy said the company had external support through private investors and would not be seeking further funding for the next 12 months.
Founded in 1996 as E-Search, the company initially created subscriber-based email newsletters and placed advertising in them, before restructuring to provide software and services.
