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W. Marc Bernsau
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
The Pitch
Startup CustomView targets makers of promotional giveaways
By Mass High Tech staff
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CustomView LLC
Headquarters: Westborough
URL: www.customviewonline.com
Email: vidya@customviewonline.com
Phone: 866-955-7050
Employees: 6
Year founded: 2010
The Pitch: $500,000 to $1 million to start a sales and marketing team; $3 million to $5 million long term
In the company’s own words: “CustomView provides marketing technology solutions to suppliers and distributors of promotional products. It is an effective, technology-based marketing solution that increases sales and enables efficient management of distributor relationships. CustomView is focused on helping businesses have targeted marketing campaigns based on individual profile and behavior patterns. We envision the campaigns to be more dynamic and provide better ROI to our customers.
Our vision is to provide more insights into the campaign by tracking the user behavior. We don’t just focus on whether a campaign mail is delivered and opened, but we track the user behavior and provide immediate information to our customer on which part of campaign content the customer is interested in and provide an opportunity to do targeted marketing based on the user behavior. Over time, we will gather enough data to make proactive campaign recommendations based on user persona and behavior.”
Background: CustomView was established as a unit of SolveIT Inc. with responsibility for melding several SolveIT products and then the sales and marketing of a single, integrated product known as CustomView. Those modules support sales and distribution of promotional products and custom products. The integrated product is in beta test and is scheduled for availability by midyear.
About the technology: CustomView is offered to customers as Software-As-A-Service model. It is developed using Microsoft .Net technology and SQL server. It uses web services to connect and interact with different systems.
What’s unique: “CustomView started off as a product with three modules and had quite a bit of decent success with about 20 customers in promotional industry. We are repositioning the company, with CustomView being a targeted marketing solution. Based on user persona and behavior, it helps businesses create a dynamic, targeted marketing campaign by e-mail. They get details on purchasing behavior,” says CEO Vidya Vasu.
“The promotional industry is well behind the technology curve. They are using tech that is, in some cases, 30-plus years old. We are bringing them into a new era, enabling them to track people who come to a website and what they are doing,” says SolveIT sales director Thomas Skrekas.
The people behind the company: Principal and CEO Vidya Vasu has a background in publishing and advertising, and ran operations and marketing for SolveIT. Ravi Jagannathan is technical director. The board of advisors includes Vasu Ram, founder of SolveIT, Dennis Burnham, an expert in the promotional products industry and artwork, Dennis Burnham, who is experienced in promotional marketing, and Dan Gorriaran, a promotional industry veteran.
Partnerships: PPPC, the Canadian Promotional Products Industry organization; ZoomCatalog, a catalog solutions provider for the promotional industry; Aprons Etc., which offers CustomView to its distributors; and Distributor Central, an order management software provider.
The value proposition: “For the folks who have used the solution when it has been sold in pieces, they’ve seen a nice impact on sales in 90 to 100 days, sometimes a 40 percent increase in sales. This is a very economical solution,” said Skrekas, noting that it allows users to upsell and cross-sell to customers.
The market opportunity: A $19 billion promotional industry in the U.S., and a $4 billion industry in Canada. CustomView sees additional opportunities in the future in Asia-Pacific.
"The Pitch" takes a look at a company, its executives and its technology-related business plan. To nominate your company for The Pitch section of Mass High Tech, please fill out the submission form.
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