I Built A $1.4M/Year Email Marketing Platform [Based In Thailand]
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
Hi guys! My name is Phaiboon Trikanjananun and I’m the founder of Taximail, an email marketing, and automation platform. It is effective and suitable for all types of businesses. We are a Thailand-based service provider that delivers campaigns, newsletters, promotions, and benefits to more than 5,000 reputable organizations in Thailand. We have a global reach of customers and proudly keep on growing.
We have added various features such as SMS Marketing and our BizChat where you can take advantage of the leading chat platforms like FB Messenger, LINE Official, Telegram, WeChat, and more to communicate with your customers. Share your products and services in the convenience of an app or browser. Easy to manage a lot of chat rooms from multiple platforms. This will help businesses to close more sales.
Taximail has grown tremendously since its inception. We are serving large-scale enterprises and SMEs.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
I am a computer engineer by profession and a serial entrepreneur who is also a founder of a web development company called Orisma. On a sunny afternoon in the summer of 2012, I was sitting in the garden having an iced americano and thinking of another addition to my growing business. Since being in the digital business for a long time, I have thought of creating software that can be used in all types of businesses. Learning from customers' interaction paved the way in creating an email marketing platform which I called Taximail. It specializes in email marketing, marketing automation, e-commerce email marketing, and email customization.
There are already existing email platforms in the market but I have made this locally homegrown which we pride ourselves on today. We work closely with customers and tailor the service according to their needs.
It is not an easy road to take in making a business like this. With sheer determination and hard work, we were able to create an email marketing platform that has a world-class caliber.
Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.
I created a platform that is easy to use and you don’t need to have a tech experience to do it. I made sure the platform looks easy to navigate for the best user experience.
You can create an email campaign seamlessly and take advantage of the available templates if you don’t have one. Obtain a real-time campaign report immediately after sending out your campaign and access this information on the web or your smartphone at your convenience.
Because of our experience working on a project in Orisma that we needed to create a newsletter for our enterprise customers and feedback from other customers. Using many email marketing tools we found a lot of problems with IP blacklisted, warm-up IP, open/click stats, etc. We used that knowledge to create a more advanced engine feature such as swapping in/out IP addresses and maintaining the volume in each domain of the recipient. Enterprise companies can use their domain in every link of their email, we added IP monitoring tools to help customers track the progress and track problems.
We can send 200,000 emails per hour per account. We can balance the speed of the number of emails to each IP to each destination server.
As an AWS Technology Partner, we utilize CDN Cloudfront to make the images of any email campaigns load faster wherever you are in the world. We abide with the customer data protection privacy and we are ISO certified ISO/IEC 27001:2013.
In the first two years, we are having problems and working with public companies in Thailand with huge databases we need to take care of the list cleaning and be aware of the spam trap emails.
Describe the process of launching the business.
When I created this platform, I carefully planned and executed it with my team. We had gone through many processes of testing to see how it works and improve the service.
I have the means and manpower to create this type of business.
Before launching, we already researched global competitors and existing competitors in our region. It helped us understand customers’ needs, preferences, and behavior as well as our competitors. We made sure that we can compete and offer a much better solution.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
Having Orisma, our web/dev agency for 18 years in Thailand helps us in having more enterprise customers. It was just a word of mouth from customers and our prominence locally paved the way for having more customers.
Since the launch, we have grown and continue to add more features and integrations to make our platform more powerful.
First of all, there’s word of mouth, since I have a web development agency some of our customers were happy to onboard using our email marketing platform. We have established rapport with our customers that made them love using our platform. We created a personal support assistant to help them with their email marketing creation.
At Taximail, we believe that if you can communicate effectively that would lead to more sales and create brand loyalty.
You have to reset, learn to relax so that your mind can rest too from all the business stress. Your physical and mental health matters to run a business smoothly.”
Here are some marketing strategies that I can share to attract and retain customers.
- leverage the use of social media
- make a blog
- you can maximize your search engine optimization
- build a mailing list and create a good relationship with customers
- make an affiliate marketing program
- make it personal
- engage your customers with chat
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
I am doing well and right now focusing more on making our platform better by creating added features that will help our customers grow their business even more. Having a software/tech business is not an easy task. You have to stay relevant and innovate to become an industry leader so to speak.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
Starting your business can be extremely rewarding. You will have the independence and freedom to make the decisions that are crucial for your business’s success. You will have a lot of learning opportunities. You will be involved in all aspects of your business and you will gain a thorough understanding of the various business functions.
Another worth mentioning is creative freedom. You will be able to work in the field that you enjoy doing. Your skills and knowledge will be put into use and you will have personal satisfaction implementing your ideas.
Lastly, you will learn from the mistakes that you will encounter as your business grows. No one solution fits all in building a business from the ground up. You have to reset, learn to relax so that your mind can rest too from all the business stress. Your physical and mental health matters to run a business smoothly.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
We are an AWSTechnology Partner. I select the AWS services that suit our business needs to improve the performance of our email marketing and automation platform. We use AWS Cloudfront for our content distribution to optimize the speed of the content delivery.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
This book is called How To Win Friends & Influence People will teach you about social life and how to become a better entrepreneur. It will give you steps on how to make friends with everyone you meet. Also, it teaches you how to overcome competition and win over people who are close-minded or not interested in your pitch. This is a good book to share as an aspiring entrepreneur.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting?
If you’re going to start a business, you must love it. In this business are you knowledgeable too? You have to ask yourself because the moment you get into this there is no turning back. To succeed you need to solve meaningful problems and execution is everything in the business.
You have to set realistic goals and milestones to build long-term success. Focus on setting to achieve small incremental goals rather than one-time big time. Decide which opportunities to pursue with great impacts on the success of your business.
Lastly, build a meaningful relationship with your customers because they will become your loyal customers. Be friends with other people in the industry. You don’t need to think of competing rather learn to collaborate to have a positive impact on your business.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
Here’s the link to our Careers page.
However, we hire in our office in Bangkok.
Where can we go to learn more?
If you have any questions you can email at [email protected]
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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.