E-mail marketing company Wired Empire plans to continue operations with a skeleton crew to maintain its client base while it searches for a buyer, sources close to the firm said yesterday.
Wired Empire is a division of New York-based Marketing Services Group Inc., which late Monday announced that it had discontinued operations.
Sources said that a number of employees critical to maintain the division’s client base will remain on board while another 53 employees are expected to be laid off.
Wired Empire was listed as an exhibitor at The DMA net.marketing Conference & Exhibition here. A crew arrived last Sunday, the opening day of the show, to set up its booth but the booth was not staffed and remained empty for the duration of the show.
“The interesting thing that I’m seeing is traditional list mangers, brokers and service bureau businesses have just assumed that this is a natural business to get into and it really isn’t,” said Rodney Joffe, founder and chairman of Arizona-based Whitehat.com. “I think we’re going to see more of this.”
Geoff Smith, director of client programs for ClickAction, Palo Alto, CA, agrees. “It’s a tough time for the e-mail marketing space in general,” Smith said. “It’s so competitive. There’s 30, 40, 50 e-mail companies out there and they’re all scrambling for the same thing. I predict several other businesses will fall by the wayside in the next four-to-six months.”
Earlier this year Wired Empire had received $20 million in financing. Its clients included EDS, Conjoin, Hearst Business Media, Primedia (DIRECT Newsline’s parent company) RoadRunner Sport and ZDNet.
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