A former Lyris engineer has launched an e-mail marketing software company that he claims addresses one of marketers’ biggest fears over working with service providers — it eliminates the need for marketers to transfer their data to their vendor’s network.
“If you really want to do e-mail marketing well, you’re going to be pulling data from multiple sources,” said Philip Thorne, president and founder of Alameda, CA-based Goolara. Thorne said marketers have repeatedly told him they don’t like the idea of their data sitting on someone else’s network and they’d like to bring their e-mail marketing in-house, but that their choices are limited.
He said Goolara answers that need.
He added that the name Goolara has no particular significance other than that it is memorable.
Dubbed Symphonie, Goolara’s e-mail software product will cost anywhere from “a couple thousand dollars” up to possibly $100,000, depending on the buyer’s volume, Thorne said.
The company — which made its debut at the DMA06 convention in San Francisco — has yet to sign a customer.
Thorne said he is making a free version of the software available with limited speed-of-delivery capabilities in order to entice marketers to try it.
He added he hopes to get as many small business as possible to try it, but that his target market is large companies, such as retailers.
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