After the sale of one of his companies, Dartmouth entrepreneur Keith Gallant is focusing on the growth of his startup, Email Opened, by bringing in more capital and a new CEO.
Gallant recently sold his website hosting service, JustHosting.ca, for more than $100,000 to VivosWeb Inc. of Hamilton, Ont. The sale will allow Gallant to focus more on Email Opened, which helps organizations analyze and improve their email campaigns.
With 1,500 customers, Email Opened is bringing on Rob Gowans as CEO, allowing Gallant to return to his first love of product development. Gowans has worked with Fortune 500 companies so Gallant believes he can help the company fund further growth by raising capital, with a target of $500,000.
“I’ve had to wear all of the hats,” Gallant said.
“That’s part of the reason why two years into the company we’re not where most startups are after two years. We should be bigger, we should grow faster.”
In November, Email Opened was the first Canadian company to pitch to the Maine Angels, the principal network of angel investors in the closest state to the Maritimes. If talks are successful, Email Opened will become the first Atlantic Canadian startup to raise capital from the group.
Atlantic Venture Capital is the only Email Opened investor, but the company has also received funding from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency.
The money Gallant raises will go toward hiring developers and a sales team.
Gallant started Email Opened in 2012 after creating an in-house email campaign service at Just Hosting. He said it increased the opening of his clients’ emails by seven to nine per cent.
On average, workers spend a quarter of their day on email, receiving approximately 80 messages. Email Opened, which recently moved from Volta Labs in Halifax to its own office in Dartmouth, gathers and interprets analytics about the emails its clients sends. By analyzing how many people are opening them, where they’re opening them from and at what time, businesses can change their patterns to ensure their messages are opened by the target audience.
“We allow people to change how they send,” Gallant said.
“Their messages are better as a result of what happened in the past. If you send better email, you can better target your customer, and you can get more return based on who you’re actually targeting.”
Signing up for Email Opened is free. If a business has fewer than 500 contacts, it continues to be free. The fee of the basic package — meaning a business has 500 contacts or more — starts at $15 per month. The premium service isn’t yet available, but when it’s ready, it will cost about $45 per month.
“Just like we give our users ways to improve their emails, our product itself will always improve and morph and change and grow with email,” Gallant said.
“Email needs to continue to change. It will always be used.”
Entrevestor receives financial support from government agencies that support start-up companies in Atlantic Canada. The sponsoring agencies play no role in determining which companies are featured in this column nor do they have the right to review columns before they are published.
