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Former Monster North America president Steve Pogorzelski is working on a new company based in Boston’s South End. Co-founded with AuctionPal co-founder Colby West, ClickFuel Inc. provides online marketing services for the small- to medium-sized business market.
The company doesn’t have any “whiz-bang technology,” says Pogorzelski, who has taken the role of CEO. Account managers buy pay-per-click advertising, search engine optimization consulting and custom landing pages. Another feature is designed to provide unique phone numbers on each landing page and automatically record incoming calls for sales training. The customer gets a results dashboard that helps them understand their return on investment, Pogorzelski said.
ClickFuel aims to provide “high-touch” customer service for the 50 customers the 10-person company has garnered since its launch in February. Given the right tools and a manageable workload for account managers, that doesn’t have to mean high-cost, Pogorzelski said. “Monster was able to build a very scalable business around the SMB entity,” he said. “We’ve taken some of that learning and applied it here.”
Pogorzelski said the company hopes an uncommonly high level of service will reduce customer turnover. ClickFuel’s founders are betting the long-term value of retention will offset the high cost of customer acquisition.
“You hear people say, ‘We’ve acquired 10,000 customers,’” he said. “That’s great, but if you’ve only kept 5,000, that’s not a great model. That’s often ignored by people who rely too much on technology.”
The company charges customers – typically companies with about $3 million in annual revenue - between $1,500 and $2,500 a month, plus their advertising spend. The service launched in Boston first, with Kansas City and Philadelphia following in the second quarter of 2009. ClickFuel hopes to be up and running in 12 cities by year end, Pogorzelski said.
Pogorzelski said the company, with $300,000 in angel investment in the bank, is currently talking with venture capital investors about a Series A round of funding.
The list of potential investors undoubtedly includes Spark Capital general partner Alex Finkelstein, who Pogorzelski said introduced him to Colby, after Colby came up with the idea for ClickFuel.
The new company will face formidable competition, Pogorzelski acknowledged. “There are some very well-funded competitors like (Cambridge-based) Hubspot (Inc.) that have a head start on us, but the market opportunity is huge,” he said.
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