Hi, everyone! Today I share the mic with Ross Andrew Paquette, CEO of Maropost, which provides powerful, easy-to-use, enterprise-grade software solutions to scale your sales and marketing.
Tune in to hear how Maropost went from doing $300,000 in revenue to millions in revenue, how they achieved this without raising any capital, and how they compete with more established email marketing companies.
Download podcast transcript [PDF] here: How Maropost Increased Their Revenue From $300K To $40M+ In Just 6 Years By Hiring the Best Team!
Time-Stamped Show Notes:
- [00:39] Before we jump into today’s interview, please leave a review and rating and subscribe to the Growth Everywhere Podcast!
- [01:20] Ross started off in email sales and marketing.
- [01:35] His early goals were to build a platform, have at least ten customers, and build a lifestyle business.
- [02:30] Maropost has been around for 6 years and they want to be like Oracle and Salesforce moving forward.
- [03:03] In 2012, they were doing $300,000 in revenue and then a year later were doing $3.3 million, which continued to increase into the millions.
- [03:27] They did all this without raising capital.
- [04:07] They depended on word-of-mouth and referrals.
- [05:20] Maropost has two tools: Maropost Marketing Cloud and Maropost Sales Cloud.
- [05:29] They started off as an email service provider.
- [05:42] They’ve expanded beyond email to mobile, push, messaging, and social.
- [05:56] They have also gotten into acquisition, which means that they offer survey and form functionality.
- [06:07] Their most recent launch was for an acquisition builder.
- [06:35] They also have built-in marketing automation.
- [06:46] Overall, Maropost is multi-channel.
- [07:30] For the Marketing Cloud, their ideal customers are mid-market to enterprise businesses.
- [08:00] They also have a strong level of service when it comes to SMB.
- [08:18] Companies were jumping around from one email marketing company to another, when what they really needed was better service overall.
- [08:22] Maropost found that they provided that better service.
- [08:53] Their goal is to unseat Fusion Soft and similar companies simply by providing better, more comprehensive service.
- [09:50] Maropost started added to their list of services about two years ago; they stretched beyond email deliverability.
- [09:58] Deliverability is a key area in which to succeed.
- [10:25] Once they mastered that, the focus became product innovation.
- [10:34] They add anywhere from 5-15 features per month to their marketing cloud service.
- [10:51] The Maropost team is made up of about 175 employees.
- [11:01] They have a great tech team.
- [11:18] They also have an aggressive innovation schedule.
- [11:42] Marketing Cloud charges by email volume per month or year.
- [12:30] Most companies still charge this way, which is how they decided to structure their payment plan.
- [13:26] Their “outbound programs” are how they acquire the most customers.
- [13:38] The goal is to pinpoint organizations within certain markets and territories.
- [14:00] They are quick to adapt to shifts in the business.
- [14:12] Their average customer spends about $95,000/year on their service.
- [14:58] Mercedes-Benz now manages their email program through Maropost and came to the company through an agency partner.
- [15:10] They had previously been struggling with the platform they were using. None were producing the desired results.
- [15:22] The ROI was in the negative.
- [15:28] They now leverage everything from automated campaigns to personalized messaging through Maropost.
- [16:16] They have 85 automated paths that customers can follow.
- [17:28] Maropost focuses on helping them move the ball forward much quicker.
- [18:20] Ross enjoys the smaller business side of the business, because you can connect with them more easily and set clear goals.
- [19:23] Maropost’s biggest struggle has been on the people side of things. Managing a large number of people from a wide variety of ages and backgrounds makes things more challenging.
- [20:05] As Maropost improves, so will their people management.
- [20:18] Ross believes it’s important to have an extremely vigorous hiring process, where you leverage your core values.
- [21:05] He has rushed hiring in the past and found that it wasn’t a great fit.
- [22:05] Ross wouldn’t say he has a specific day-to-day structure; he still handles a lot of frontline areas for the business.
- [22:24] Today, his focus is to wake up and jump right into whatever is on tap for the day and go for as long as he can each day.
- [23:30] One of Maropost’s core features is a marketing automation tool called, “journeys”, which uses a drag and drop format.
- [24:07] Ross has always been interested in making their tools user friendly.
- [24:42] Ross met his co-founder on Odesk (which is now Upwork).
- [24:50] 6 years ago, he was working with someone else and the partnership wasn’t working out; he was going to shut down the company.
- [25:07] Before he shut down, he went on to Odesk to look for another developer/partner and his current partner is the first person with whom he spoke.
- [25:25] Ross considers their CTO one of the top developers on the planet.
- [26:21] Ross isn’t a reader, but he did listen to the audio of the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson.
- [27:31] The last week, Maropost started using Asana and thinks it’s phenomenal.
Resources From This Interview:
- Maropost
- Ross@Maropost.com
- Upwork
- Must-read book:
- Asana
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