EmailChannel Inc., Boca Raton, has closed its service bureau operations and cut staff to focus on its commercial e-mail management service, MyMailMutt. EmailChannel had registered to exhibit at the Direct Marketing Association net.marketing Conference & Exhibition here but cancelled its appearance. “Most of our development in MailMutt was accomplished by the end of last year,” John Lawlor, president of EmailChannel, said yesterday. “We had a very high level of development going on from summer into the fall. We started cutting back [staff] in late fall and the final cuts were made a couple weeks ago when we delivered several updated versions of the product.” Eleven employees were laid off over the last year as service bureau operations were curtailed. Another 12 employees involved during an intense development phase of MailMutt were let go last fall and over the last few weeks. Eight full-time employees remain on staff. The company shipped its last messages as a service bureau yesterday for long-time client IDG List Services, Lawlor said. Lawlor cited increased competition and a price war as the reasons for closing its service bureau operations. “It’s become a commodity business with a very low barrier to entry,” Lawlor said. “Our philosophy was to run the company to make a profit and that’s difficult to do when your competitors are willing to lose money on every job they ship just to get a new client. We were not willing to drop prices to the point of losing money. It’s just not a sustainable business.” He added that many companies return on investments became negligible because there were companies out there willing to lose millions to gain market share. EmailChannel is now focused on developing strategic co-branded and private-label partnerships to expand MailMutt and license its technology, he said. MailMutt, which went live last August and is still in a beta test phase, is a commercial e-mail search engine and mail management tool. The search engine is free to users, and the mail management tool is free to registered users who sign up for a e-mail address to be used to receive commercial e-mail or newsletters. Each day, users receive a summary digest of their self-selected commercial email. Marketers who register can submit messages to be included in the search results, Lawlor said. The site is supported by category sponsors and paid-for-position message placement.
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