Case Studies

The story behind AshWebMail

AshWebMail is a brilliant example of rebranding Campaign Monitor. We sat down with Derek Ashauer to get the scoop on his design process, how he sells the rebranded app to clients and why it's important not to reinvent the wheel.

What gave you the idea to rebrand Campaign Monitor?

"Campaign Monitor worked very well for the first couple clients, so we started actively marketing it to prospective clients."

We had a few clients that asked us about doing email newsletters. I decided to go forward with Campaign Monitor for our clients because of the pricing structure (pay-as-you-go) since most of our clients would have small lists they would send to infrequently. Most of our clients are new to websites, web marketing and often the web in general so having something that was very easy for them to use was paramount.

Campaign Monitor worked very well for the first couple clients, so we started actively marketing it to prospective clients. As we did, we realized that many of them had never thought about email marketing and it took a lot of explanation about how it works, the benefits, and how cost effective it can be. We basically got tired of explaining in email or over the phone, so we decided to just put a little website together that did all the explanation for us.

We love the AshWebMail site, tell us the story behind that

It's the same story that is behind every website we create for our clients. We looked at others who had rebranded Campaign Monitor, saw what we thought they did right, where they missed the mark, and then put our version together. The biggest thing we wanted to people to realize was how easy the whole process is.

Since many of the prospective clients we spoke with about email marketing didn't really know much about it, we wanted them to feel comfortable that it isn't a difficult thing to accomplish.

The demo videos are some of the best we've seen, how was that process?

Frustrating. Any time you do video demos, you are bound to mess up and have to do it over, and over, and over. I was very hesitant to even try it because I had done video demos for a product I launched very early in my web career and it went horribly. However, since Campaign Monitor is much more simple and easy to use compared to what I had created way back when, the process overall was better than I had anticipated. Each video took about 10 attempts until I felt OK with it.

The most difficult thing was getting a quiet enough setting - we have two parrots that were not happy I took them out of the office to make the videos and were the main reason for the multiple attempts.

How do you pitch email marketing to your clients?

"The features, ease-of-use and simple pricing do the selling for us."

We are by no means salesmen, so we try our best to just explain to clients what it is and how it works. Usually during that conversation the client sees how they could use it to their advantage.

Then when we explain the pricing they respond very positively. Thankfully the features, ease-of-use and simple pricing do the selling for us.

Any tips for other designers considering reselling it to their clients?

You don't have to reinvent the wheel. Putting together content is always the worst part of every website, but Campaign Monitor has done such a great job of explaining their own product why not just take what they have. They even encourage it!

Sample campaigns sent by AshWebMail and their clients

Not only is the AshWebMail site a beauty to behold, but the team have also sent their fair share of great looking emails and put together some impressive templates for their clients.

AshWebMail announcement

Custom template for Chi