Product
Background
BoldFish is the first company to tackle the e-mail problem on an Internet
scale and at speeds, which will support even the largest of electronic
mailing and distribution sites. The company has developed a number of
advanced technologies for delivering, managing, personalizing, and commerce-enabling
vast numbers of e-mail messages.
BoldFish
is an extremely advanced system that allows organizations to e-mail-enable
their database for high volume outbound e-mail campaigns. BoldFish integrates
seamlessly with an organization's web site, database, and existing IT
infrastructure to provide enterprise-class capabilities for reaching customers
in a responsive, personal way. Whether sending out e-mail newsletters,
promotions, product announcements, stock alerts or news releases, BoldFish
will deliver the message faster than any other opt-in mail delivery system
on the market today.
Product
Strategy and Trajectory
BoldFish has recognized the shift in Internet marketing from the typical
banner on a web page to 'opt-in e-mail' marketing, which is cheaper, and
tends to reach more individuals. The number of Internet enabled mailboxes
will reach approximately 700 Million before the end of 2001. This coupled
with another 500 Million wireless access users with the ability to reach
their mailboxes remotely,
makes e-mail marketing the wave of the future.
BoldFish
has placed itself in the forefront of opt-in e-mail delivery systems.
Technology Evaluation's testing of the product found it to be a reasonably
complex installation and configuration, however once properly configured
the system is truly impressive. The user interface is made available through
a web browser and with very minimal training even an administrative assistant
could handle daily mailings due to an easily navigable and well thought
out interface.
One
of the issues concerning high-speed delivery e-mail systems is the fear
of 'spam machines'. BoldFish's licensing program is tied to an expiration
date, which enforces a rigid spam policy which limits any potential abuse,
by clients.
BoldFish's
Anti-Spam Policy (Source: BoldFish)
BoldFish, Inc. is aware of our responsibilities as a good Internet citizen
and are dedicated to protecting the privacy rights of other Internet citizens.
We are violently against the sending of unsolicited e-mail (Spam) and
have made every effort within our power to discourage and prohibit the
sending of Spam.
BoldFish
does not allow anyone to use their products or services for the purpose
of sending Spam. BoldFish has and will continue to refuse business from
known spammers. If a current BoldFish customer uses BoldFish products
or services for the purposes of spamming anyone, their product license
and/or service contract will be voided.
BoldFish
is sensitive to the privacy of each of the subscribers on the lists that
BoldFish hosts and will not make their name, address, or any other information
that they have provided the company available to anyone without the subscriber's
express permission. BoldFish requires that each message sent out include
an easy way for the subscriber to remove themselves from the list and
in cases where the subscriber cannot remove themselves from the list for
whatever reason, BoldFish support staff will help them remove themselves
from the list.
Product
Strengths
- Highly
personalized message creation
- Unparalleled
high-speed delivery - 500,000 mail merged messages per hour
- Complete
recovery - Even if there is a power outage the system will pick
up exactly where it left off
- Efficient
management of bounced e-mail, with automatic retry for soft bounces
and removal of addresses for hard bounces
- Click-through
offers to specific locations on a Web site draw customers to track
response rates of the campaign
- Seamless
integration with web site, shopping carts, e-commerce systems and
databases to let customers complete transactions immediately.
- Detailed
campaign reports track e-mail delivered, opened, bounced and unsubscribed
for each campaign sent.
- Click-through
tracking lets marketers identify and measure each recipient click
for particular offer links (URL).
Product
Challenges
- Name
Recognition - BoldFish must make more strides to develop brand awareness.
Advertising dollars must be spent to achieve this end.
- Complex
Installation - With a system this powerful, one would expect a reasonably
complex configuration, however we believe scripting could be implemented
to enhance ease of configuration.
- Market
Issues - The marketing arena is only now fully beginning to understand
what opt-in-e-mail is about. Selling the solution may be rocky at first
but should break out upon increased demand.
BOTTOM
LINE
Vendor Recommendations
- Develop
an Aggressive Marketing campaign to not only increase brand awareness,
but also to educate consumers.
- Enhance
the installation and configuration of the software with customized installs
based on Operating System and Database
User
Recommendations
We found the BoldFish product to be 'exactly as advertised'. The product
is indeed robust, with both NT and Unix support, and extremely fast when
given the recommended hardware and a fast processing MTA (message transfer
agent), we recommend a Sendmail, Inc. sendmail MTA for this process. We
also found support for multiple databases including Sybase and SQL and
found that the product worked well from a data gathering perspective.
With BoldFish there is no need to redesign your client database.
BoldFish
consultants were professional, knowledgeable and extremely helpful during
our installation and configuration and have provided top-notch technical
answers when needed. We highly recommend placing BoldFish on the 'short
list' of any opt-in e-mail delivery system technology decision.