SimplyCast, the Halifax-based multi-channel marketing company, is planning to launch its Version 7 product in January, including new features that will make it easier for users to reach their audience.
“It will basically allow us to launch products faster and it will include the most attractive user interface we’ve ever had,” CEO Saeed El-Darahali said in an interview this week.
A former executive at Innovacorp, El-Darahali left the government innovation agency in 2009 to develop his idea of starting an online company that offered a single point of contact for marketing across a range of different streams. The platform-as-a-service company now boasts thousands of corporate clients in more than 175 countries, including the likes of Eastlink, Cisco Systems, Huskey Energy, Maritime Travel, Bank of America and the Jim Henson Company. The service allows them to send personalized emails, conduct surveys, manage events and track website links, among other features.
El-Darahali grew the company with local programmers and the crew initially placed more emphasis on developing a solid platform than the user interface. With Version 7, SimplyCast will “bring a beautiful user interface together with that beautiful backend,” El-Darahali said. “We’re probably adding about 150 new features across the platform.”
One new product to be released includes a Press Release application, which allows users to find more targets for press releases in a fraction of the time existing methods take.
The new model also upgrades the Twitter channel to broadcast messages to specific locations, has 500 new templates and will include the re-launch of SimplyCast’s event marketing channel.
SimplyCast raised $1 million in 2009 and a small round of follow on funding in June, and El-Darahali is not ruling out another funding round in the near future. As the company grew, it not only hired about 25 people in Halifax but also became a model corporate citizen, establishing scholarships and donating money to such causes as African relief campaigns.
El-Darahali makes time late each year to undertake speaking engagements at universities, and will deliver a lecture tonight at 7:00 in the ScotiaBank Theatre at St. Mary’s University.
