21 Email Automation Platform Success Stories [2024]
Tired of juggling countless emails? Enter the world of email automation platforms. These tools streamline the process of sending personalized emails to your audience, saving time and ensuring consistency.
Building an email automation platform involves developing software that can segment your audience, personalize content, and schedule emails. The real work includes collaborating with developers, marketers, and customer service teams, understanding clients' needs, and continuously optimizing the software for better performance.
With businesses increasingly relying on digital marketing, the demand for efficient email solutions continues to rise. Starting this venture offers a chance to provide essential tools that enhance communication and boost engagement strategies. If you're tech-savvy and eager to develop impactful solutions, creating an email automation platform could be your next successful business endeavor.
In this list, you'll find real-world email automation platform success stories and very profitable examples of starting a email automation platform that makes money.
1. Customer.io ($49.9M/year)
Colin and his co-founder came up with the idea for Customer.io while working at another startup. They noticed that email lists were disconnected from app data, making them outdated and incomplete.
They saw an opportunity to streamline the process by breaking down barriers between developers, marketers, and product teams, facilitating better message management and sending between apps and customers.
And we saw this opportunity to breakdown the barriers between developers and the marketers and product people who were trying to modify content of the email, trying to decide when it was time to send a new email, and really streamline that process of how web and mobile app businesses create, manage, and send all of their messages between their app and their customers. — Colin (Source)
How much money it makes: $49.9M/year
How many people on the team: 305
A deep dive into how Customer.io's founder and CEO, Colin Nederkoorn, built a successful marketing automation platform with revenue of $4.16M/month and annual earnings of $49.9M using growth strategies like Twitter engagement, landing pages, and content marketing before offering pricing plans starting at $100/month.
2. Superhuman ($20M/year)
Rahul Vohra, the founder of Superhuman, identified the problem of email inefficiency through personal experience and professional observations while managing his previous company, Reportive. He noticed that productivity tools like Gmail were becoming increasingly sluggish and cluttered over the years, and that plugins to enhance functionality often exacerbated these issues. This frustration was shared by many high-volume email users, including venture capitalists and founders, whom Rahul interacted with regularly.
Realizing the opportunity for a better email solution, Rahul conducted extensive informal research, asking potential users about their email pain points and needs. He also capitalized on his firsthand knowledge and experience to envision a more efficient email client. To validate his idea, he continuously gathered feedback from initial users, iterating the product based on their insights.
Essentially, the process was driven by a mix of personal annoyance with existing tools, market validation through direct user engagement, and a continuous refinement loop. Early challenges included the technical complexity of integrating advanced features into a seamless user experience, which Rahul overcame by assembling a talented team and paying meticulous attention to design and performance. This iterative approach ultimately helped shape Superhuman into a tool that significantly enhances email productivity.
How much money it makes: $20M/year
How many people on the team: 130
Discover how Rahul Vora took Superhuman from idea to $20M/year by solving email inefficiency with a high-speed, user-focused interface, securing $800K in seed funding, conducting 700+ user interviews, and leveraging viral growth strategies.
3. Stripo ($4.8M/year)
Stripo's founder, Dmytro Kudrenko, a seasoned programmer-turned-entrepreneur, identified a major gap in the email marketing industry when he realized HTML email design required coding skills that marketers usually lack. Launching in 2017, Stripo rapidly grew to one million users worldwide, generating approximately $400,000 in monthly recurring revenue by offering an intuitive, coding-free email template builder with seamless one-click exports to over 80 platforms.
How much money it makes: $4.8M/year
How much did it cost to start: $100K
How many people on the team: 70
Case study about Dmytro Kudrenko and his flagship product, Stripo, an email template builder for marketers that went from zero to one million users worldwide and has a monthly recurring revenue of about $400,000 in an effort to simplify the email creation process and provide flexibility in email design without coding skills.
4. Dux-Soup ($4.8M/year)
Will van der Sanden, the Founder and CEO of Dux-Soup, came up with the idea for his business after his wife expressed frustration with manual lead generation for her publishing company. Recognizing the potential in LinkedIn scraping, Will saw a gap in the market for a product that offered more value at a lower cost than existing options. The result was Dux-Soup, a LinkedIn automation tool that now has over 70,000 users and nearly $5 million in revenue.
How much money it makes: $4.8M/year
How much did it cost to start: $0
How many people on the team: 20
Dux-Soup is a LinkedIn automation tool that helps business owners and sales & marketing professionals generate more leads, increase efficiency, and save time; with over 70,000 users and revenue of nearly $5 million, it offers automated top-of-the-funnel LinkedIn outreach activities, targeted LinkedIn campaigns and multi-touch & personalized LinkedIn drip campaigns for lead generation.
5. GreenRope ($1.92M/year)
metrics for our business are our customer satisfaction and retention rates, which remain consistently high. We currently have over 1,000 customers in over 20 countries, ranging from startups to universities and municipalities. Moving forward, we plan to continue evolving and improving our platform to meet the changing needs of businesses and provide even greater value to our customers.
How much money it makes: $1.92M/year
How many people on the team: 15
GreenRope, a self-funded CRM and marketing automation platform with over 1,000 customers in 20 countries, was built organically and focused on creating a positive, customer-centric culture without outside investment, with an all-in-one interface solving challenges in managing sales, marketing, customer service, and operations.
6. Taximail ($1.44M/year)
Phaiboon Trikanjananun, a computer engineer and serial entrepreneur, came up with the idea for Taximail while sitting in his garden in 2012. Drawing on his experience in the digital business, he saw a need for a locally homegrown email marketing platform that could cater to all types of businesses. Today, Taximail serves over 5,000 reputable organizations in Thailand and continues to grow.
How much money it makes: $1.44M/year
How much did it cost to start: $10K
How many people on the team: 60
How a Thailand-based email marketing platform, Taximail, grew to serve over 5,000 organizations in Thailand and generate $3.6 million per year through tailored features, close customer collaboration, and utilizing AWS services.
7. lemlist ($1.2M/year)
Guillaume Moubeche came up with the idea for Lemlist while running a B2B lead generation agency and seeing the impact of personalized images and videos in cold emails. Dissatisfied with the lack of personalization features in existing tools, Guillaume sold his shares in the agency and teamed up with two tech geniuses to build Lemlist. They quickly gained traction, becoming the #1 product on Product Hunt and attracting thousands of customers.
How much money it makes: $1.2M/year
How many people on the team: 19
Lemlist co-founder Guillaume Moubeche shares how he and his tech genius co-founders built their cold-email automation platform to $600,000 ARR, acquired 8,000+ customers worldwide, and grew at a 30% Month over Month growth rate through their unique approach to personalization, community building, and using their own product.
8. Acumbamail ($1.02M/year)
Ignacio Arriaga and his partner, both technical individuals, identified a gap in the Spanish email marketing market and recognized the potential for a profitable business venture. Leveraging their coding expertise and previous business experience, they bootstrapped Acumbamail and launched the platform within 4 months. With a focus on serving Spanish SMBs and providing dedicated customer support in Spanish, Acumbamail has now grown to over 3,500 paying customers and generates an average monthly revenue of $85,000.
How much money it makes: $1.02M/year
How many people on the team: 7
Spanish email marketing software start-up Acumbamail achieved an average revenue of $85,000 per month, while providing a service to almost 40,000 clients, after bootstrapping the company from scratch with $4,000 in start-up funds.
9. Parseur ($480K/year)
Sylvestre Dupont, the co-founder of Parseur, came up with the idea for the data extraction tool during his sabbatical break year in 2013. While building a travel map website, he realized the tedious task of manually entering travel confirmation emails into the app and thought it would be great if the app could automatically extract the relevant information. This sparked the idea of building an email parsing tool, which eventually became Parseur.
How much money it makes: $480K/year
How much did it cost to start: $1K
How many people on the team: 0
Parseur, the data extraction tool, helps businesses automate their data entry process, catering to multiple industries such as food delivery, real estate and marketing, and has grown to over $40k in revenue per month since its launch in 2017.
10. Closet Tools ($456K/year)
Jordan O'Connor created Closet Tools to help his wife attract more traffic to her Poshmark profile.
He noticed that his wife had to spend a lot of time doing various tasks to attract more traffic and sales, but she didn’t have the time to do it all.
To solve this problem, he used his self-taught coding skills to create a tool that could automate these tasks for her.
After his wife and her friends found the tool helpful, Jordan was inspired to blog about the solution and share it on Reddit.
He then went on to build the frontend. Soon after launch, he attracted 10 paying clients, and the number of users has been growing since.
How much money it makes: $456K/year
How many people on the team: 0
Learn how Jordan O'Connor grew his startup, Closet Tools, from 10 paying clients to generating an impressive $38K/month in revenue through clever automation tactics and sharing his solution on platforms like Reddit and Google.
11. COLDINBOX ($420K/year)
Arthur Backouche came up with the idea for Coldinbox while looking for a new job in growth/digital marketing. He discovered a tool to send bulk invitations on LinkedIn with personalized messages and used it to successfully engage with startups and generate leads. Seeing the potential, he decided to develop his own SaaS product, Coldinbox, which is now being used by B2B entrepreneurs, consultants, and business development managers.
How much money it makes: $420K/year
How many people on the team: 0
Two entrepreneurs developed Coldinbox, a bulk LinkedIn messaging tool that assists B2B business development managers in converting high-value prospects into leads and customers, resulting in $35,000 in monthly profits.
12. CLOSEM ($360K/year)
Richard Miles, co-founder of CLOSEM, came up with the idea for the business after realizing the missed opportunities for follow-up in his own experiences with service providers. He reached out to his friend and co-founder, Laura Betterly, who loved the idea and saw the potential. Together, they created CLOSEM, a software tool that helps entrepreneurs and small business owners automate the process of following up with leads and increasing sales.
How much money it makes: $360K/year
How many people on the team: 1
CLOSEM is an AI-powered software tool that helps entrepreneurs and small business owners automate the time-consuming work of following up with leads, prospects, and customers, and increasing sales, grossing around $200,000 this year and confidently targeting $12MM next year.
13. Maildroppa ($240K/year)
Feeling stifled in corporate life, Marcus Biel leveraged his Java development skills to create Maildroppa, an affordable email marketing tool for solo founders. The platform's unique free plan and bootstrapper ethos helped it achieve $20,000 in monthly revenue, transforming the email marketing landscape.
How much money it makes: $240K/year
How much did it cost to start: $5K
How many people on the team: 0
Bootstrapper turned entrepreneur created an affordable yet powerful email marketing solution, offering a free plan for 100 subscribers forever, leading to $20,000 in monthly revenue, catering to solo founders and bootstrappers building their businesses.
14. Email Engine App ($120K/year)
Andris conceived the EmailEngine idea from his experience at a CRM startup a decade ago. Despite advancements, he noticed the persistent challenge of integrating services with customer mailboxes.
Leveraging his extensive experience in open-source email projects, Andris decided to address this issue independently by founding his own company.
How much money it makes: $120K/year
Learn how an engineer turned a common developer frustration into a self-hosted email service with a seamless REST API, generating $120K/year and converting open-source users into subscription-paying customers at €895 annually.
15. Tribecto Automations ($120K/year)
Sam Wilcox, the founder of Tribecto Automations, came up with the idea for his business while working at InvisiblePPC, where he re-designed and rebuilt sales processes using CRM and automation tools. He started doing consulting as a side gig, and after 12 months of hard work, Tribecto was making more than his full-time role. Eventually, he decided to take the chance and run Tribecto Automations full-time, leading to consistent growth and profitability.
How much money it makes: $120K/year
How many people on the team: 0
Tribecto Automations re-designed sales and marketing processes for B2B companies, growing from $5k/month to $10k/month, through creating a defined productized service model and using specific software tools for email marketing, CRM, webhooks and Zapier.
16. Mailmodo ($102K/year)
Aquibur Rahman, the founder and CEO of Mailmodo, came up with the idea for his business while working as a marketer at a fintech company. He realized the importance of email for business growth and saw the potential of AMP emails when Google announced them for the Gmail app. Seeing the gap in the market for a no-code platform that supports AMP emails, Rahman decided to create Mailmodo to help marketers improve email conversions and engagement.
How much money it makes: $102K/year
How many people on the team: 25
Mailmodo, an email marketing software that enables marketers to send app-like interactive emails, accelerated to 100k+ ARR in just five months after launching the public version in January 2021, with a focus on attracting and retaining customers through organic growth and product-led solutions.
17. Electric Sauce ($90K/year)
The founders initially started as Shopify developers but quickly realized the need for email marketing strategies in the eCommerce space. They used Upwork as a platform to find clients and focused on providing valuable services at reasonable prices. Their dedication to simplicity and accountability helped them attract and retain customers, with their main client being acquired through Upwork.
How much money it makes: $90K/year
How much did it cost to start: $2K
How many people on the team: 0
Electric Sauce, a data-driven, retention-focused, email marketing micro-agency founded by two Seans, generates $12,500 a month through pricing their services from $3,500 to $5,000 for established brands, and $1,500 to $2,500 for startups through patient learning, frugality, simplicity, extensive outreach on Upwork, and utmost accountability while using tools like ClickUp, and exposure to thought leaders on YouTube and courses like Klaviyo and Smart Marketer.
18. Nureply ($48K/year)
Wanted to find alternative solutions to finding customers. And did not want to only use paid advertising or cold outreach on LinkedIn.
Learned about email marketing and started exploring how to use it to attract customers.
After realizing he was writing the same outreach nearly every day, he wondered if he could build an AI-based tool for emails.
With a background in Machine Learning (ML), and AI topics, and a working knowledge of GPT-3/OpenAI, he started developing an AI-based email marketing tool.
How much money it makes: $48K/year
How much did it cost to start: $200
How many people on the team: 0
Onur Geneş founded Nureply to help SaaS and agency owners boost their revenue through email marketing, growing to $4,000 in revenue per month in just four months, without any paid advertising campaigns yet.
19. Bluetick.io ($42K/year)
Mike Taber came up with the idea for Bluetick.io after experiencing the frustration of sending follow-up emails and tracking responses manually. He validated the idea by conducting customer interviews and collecting prepayments, and then hired a team of developers to build the product. After improving the website and launching, he focused on email marketing to attract and retain customers.
How much money it makes: $42K/year
How many people on the team: 0
Bluetick.io is a self-funded SaaS app that helps salespeople, customer success reps and busy founders close the loop with their customers using sequences of automated email follow ups, achieving $1,000 MRR without writing a single line of code through customer validation and prepayments.
20. weMail ($1.44K/year)
Tareq Hasan and his partner Nizam Uddin founded weDevs in 2008, a company focused on building successful WordPress products. After experiencing the need for an affordable and WordPress-based email marketing platform, they developed weMail to save money and offer quality features. Their strategy of targeting the WordPress community and utilizing content marketing has helped attract and retain customers.
How much money it makes: $1.44K/year
How much did it cost to start: $500
How many people on the team: 4
weMail is a WordPress-based email marketing tool that boasts affordable email automation and boasts features such as third-party sending APIs and the ability to integrate for free, with over 12K downloads and 500 active installs.
21. Lotus ($252/year)
Vadim, a software engineer, came up with the idea for his business, Lotus, while working as an open-source maintainer. He struggled to keep up with GitHub notifications and was inspired by the transformative email service, HEY, to create a similar tool for GitHub developers. Since launching last week, Vadim has already earned $261.74 and has been sharing his journey through a weekly newsletter to maintain accountability and keep readers updated on Lotus's development process.
How much money it makes: $252/year
How much did it cost to start: $0
How many people on the team: 0
Lotus app creator Vadim shares the story of how he created a Mac app for managing GitHub notifications and earned $261.74 in his first week as an indie developer, through consistency, careful feature selection, and a powerful toolset including Excalidraw, Buttondown, and Vercel.
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
