It is with great pleasure and excitement about the future that I am writing today to announce that SharpSpring is now a part of SMTP, Inc. (NASDAQ:SMTP). In SharpSpring’s short time to market (essentially just this year), more than 200 marketing agencies have signed on as SharpSpring partners and have used the platform to bring the benefits of marketing automation to their clients.
Many of these agencies have come from really great competing solutions like Hubspot, ActOn, Marketo, and InfusionSoft. The idea that our small company has been so competitive versus these giants is, quite frankly, very humbling. We’ve heard over and over again from our agency partners that they have chosen us because of our ease of use, attention to user experience, agency-focused pricing model, and our unlimited support. We remain amazed by, and appreciative of, the support and enthusiasm we’ve received from the agency community.
Every person on our growing team recognizes and appreciates the trust that our customers place in us when they chose SharpSpring as their marketing automation partner. Simply put, the complete dedication to customer success that our team members show every day is what makes me most proud.
As our agency partners know, we have been developing at a blistering pace. We are nearing the completion of a Gmail and SMTP email integration built right into SharpSpring– enabling every communication with a lead to be tracked seamlessly in a single platform. In the last 90 days alone, we have launched Sugar CRM integration, our API with Zapier integration, Shopping Cart integration, Dynamic Web content, Multivariate Testing, and dozens of other features.
Many of these features do not exist in platforms that literally cost ten to twenty times as much as ours, and require long term commitments and additional service/training costs. All of these features are built into a platform created by designers and programmers with ease-of-use at the forefront. But we can do even better….
Did I mention we are now an SMTP Company?! Here is how SMTP makes SharpSpring better:
Rock solid email delivery – Needless to say, email delivery is core to what we do, and SMTP knows email. SMTP brings us literally decades of email delivery expertise. In my opinion, they are simply the best email delivery company on the planet – and for good reason. In the nineties, SMTP was the very first company to offer a web–based mail client for commercial and consumer use (they were known as Emumail back then). Today, SMTP is one of the only companies using the super-powerful Momentum platform for third party high-volume email delivery. SMTP’s core competency is email delivery, and SharpSpring will be even better with SMTP in our corner.
Resources – SharpSpring, in collaboration with our agency partners, is an idea machine. We’ve been amazed with the ideas that we’ve generated together. With the added rocket fuel of SMTP, I couldn’t be more excited about our future roadmap. SMTP is traded on the NASDAQ with ample access to capital. As we grow as a company, we will be able to use our deeper pockets to build the very best marketing automation solutions for agencies using the same recipe that’s worked for us so far: listening closely to and learning from our customers, and innovating with them.
More of the same – You may have noticed that I have mentioned “agency” a few times in this blog post. We will continue to strive to be the very best solution for agencies – hands down. Or business model will not change. Our pricing model will not change. Our dedication to agencies will not change.
But some things will be different – 24/7 support, international presence, localization – As of this announcement, SMTP is in 130 countries with 14 physical offices around the world. We will immediately begin work to expand our support hours, eventually offering 24/7 technical support to our agency partners. We will also begin localizing our product into various languages for some of our international partners.
You can tell that I’m really excited about our merger with SMTP, and for good reason. Together, our mission is to provide our customers with the best and fully integrated suite of powerful, affordable marketing solutions. The same, only much, much better. For more info on this merger, please visit our FAQ page.
I want to close by saying how grateful I am to everyone that is involved with SharpSpring. Here, I don’t want to make a distinction between our team of employees and our agency partners, because to date, both groups have been equally invested in and responsible for our success. It has been a humbling experience for me personally, and I cannot wait to see what we build together in the coming days, months and years.
Appreciatively,
Rick
