Is the email marketing saas world too saturated to create my own?

We managed at EmailOctopus, always room for another one. Read some of our challenges here if you're serious" https://medium.com/emailoctopus/the-road-to-one-billion-emails-4ed7d441e190

Wow! Thanks for the motivation guys!

Honestly, if you find a niche market or some other way to stand out I think there's plenty of room for you. Email marketing isn't going away anytime soon :-)

I hear all marketers say text emails are the way to go, but personally I tend to delete these mails faster than visually appealing ones. Unless it's from someone who's content I really can't wait to read. But I can count those on two - three fingers.

I think if someone made a solution that made really beautiful emails easily, I'd use it. Best market for it is probably creative agencies that wants to show off their stuff. Possibly bloggers too if you went in the completely opposite direction of say ConvertKit.

By targeting agencies you can probably have pricing in the higher area too. Maybe add inn some features specially aimed at generating engagement like contests and referral programs.

Not sure if you know Designmodo, but they are known for making "design software" that is so simple to use even your mom could use it. They recently published a sneak peak in to their new Postcards product: https://medium.com/@designmodo/postcards-the-second-sneak-peek-1b4c9766e9cf

I would love to see an interface that simple, capable of creating gorgeous emails but still have good analytics. I'm thinking a fusion between Mailchimp and Postcards.

Good luck with your endeavour :-)

I say go for it. If your niche has enough potential customers. My advice: Make your product specifically for your niche.

Don't get overexcited about the potential of the general market and just focus on your niche.

**Random Example: Say there are 1.2 million plumbers. Plumbers is the niche. I'm confident that if you build a Email Marketing Software SPECIFICALLY for plumbers. Has features for plumbers, uses languages and slang plumbers use. Then you'll be able to build a successful Email Marketing Software in the plumber niche.

Because then that niche (Plumbers) has to decide between ConvertKit (An amazing software, for everyone) or PlumberKit (an awesome software specifically for plumbers)

I know which I would choose.

I have a spreadsheet tracking competitor features and pricing with about a dozen market leaders and need to expand it with some additional data points. I am willing to share my research with you if you are up for helping me expand the data set with additional data I need. Email me: lilia at bigmailer dot io if interested.

I am not worried about competition because I think success is subject to great execution rather than some insight into industry challenges or customer pain points.

I don't even think the IH podcast is saturated with email services. After, ConvertKit and EmailOctopus, I'm eagerly awaiting the next... maybe yours? ;)

ConvertKit is a good example of a success in this arena. They are a niche focused ESP. I’ve worked for Emma (http://myemma.com) for over 4 years now and have a good bit of insight into the industry. Happy to answer any general questions you might have.

I don't think it's too saturated if you find a niche. Everyone recommends something like MailChimp, but it's off-puttingly complicated for many clients who rush through the interface, are too busy to read, etc. And I don't blame them. I don't enjoy using MailChimp at all.

At one point, Phil Kaplan built Tiny Letter and cashed out (to MailChimp!) because it was a great idea - simplify MailChimp.

https://tinyletter.com/

I think someone could easily do the same for a given niche, even if it doesn't have any particular requirements. 80% of potential users wouldn't have heard of MailChimp. 99.9% wouldn't have heard of Tiny Letter.

The Tiny Letter site does a poor job of explaining how simple it is.

I'm currently building an email marketing SAAS (kinda). I'd try have some conversations with potential niches you're considering to see how satisfied they are with what's available.

While people might not know their current solution is not ideal and something better could be better for them, it's easier to find customers if they're actively looking for a solution.

Also, how will you reach many of the people who would be interested in your solution? The less satisfied they are with what currently exists, the less you'll have to reach before getting customers. Either way, you'll need some sort of distribution or way to reach early customers.

I might be in a slightly different boat because my service is specifically for creating curated emails, but I'm finding a hard time finding people who really dislike all of the current solutions - it doesn't seem to be a top-of-mind problem for them.

I don't see why not. Social media was saturated before Facebook came about and look where it is. Just concentrate on a niche, don't try to be a do it all would be my recommendation.

This comment was deleted 7 years ago