Update: How We Launched 3 New Products And Plan To Raise Money This Year [$30K/Month]
This is a follow up story for CLOSEM. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published about 3 years ago, check it out here.
Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.
I’m Richard Miles, the co-founder, and CEO of CLOSEM. We launched just over 2 years ago.
After an appliance repair technician came to my house and fixed my oven (2 days before we hosted 20 people for Thanksgiving) and did a great job.
While he could have sent me a text asking for a shoutout on Yelp, an email asking if I’d be a referral, or a postcard offering me a discount on other services…I never heard from him again.
At that point, I decided to create a simple, easy-to-use tool that would automate follow-up. Easy enough for my appliance repair guy to use but sophisticated and powerful enough for experienced marketers as well.
While there are a lot of follow-up and sales automation tools, our core product, CLOSEM, is a breakthrough by combining email and SMS with postal mail.
Postal mail has proven to be a game-changer for so many. While today’s email inboxes are full, and it’s difficult to break through the barriers and noise, and people are experiencing SMS fatigue.
That said, the postal mailbox is relatively empty, and it’s easy to convey a memorable message to your target. While the lifespan of an email is measured in seconds, the lifespan of postal mail is measured in days. It’s unexpected, outside the digital rabbit hole most marketers stay inside, and very, very “sticky.”
We made sending what looks like a handwritten letter or postcard (and adding it to a campaign of emails and text messages) the same as typing an email or text, and our users can send a series of messages to individuals or groups with a single click.
Tell us about what you’ve been up to. Has the business been growing?
This is an exciting period for us. We’ve introduced 3 new products to create a dynamic ecosystem for businesspeople looking to increase engagement and sales.
As we’ve proven the viability of the platform and our business, we intend to go out for funding this year.
We released LINKEM in the summer. LINKEM is a completely standalone product but is also immediately integrated into CLOSEM.
Users can turn long URLs into trackable short links and add dynamic QR codes to postal mail right from within the text editor. LINKEM users can create engaging mobile landing pages to turn their Instagram or TikTok bio link into an engaging marketing platform.
Users ask us if they can use CLOSEM for reaching out to cold prospects, and of course, the best way to break the ice with people that don’t know you aren’t via email. It’s by sending postal mail first and then following up with emails.
At the same time, they say CLOSEM is good for following up with the leads and prospects they have, but they’d like to know if we also provided leads.
People use many tools to scrape contact data off LinkedIn or Google, but these result in pretty poor information and can violate terms of service.
On the other hand, some services provide curated lists of prospects. While these prospects come with much more complete contact and demographic information, they tend to require monthly or annual commitments.
They can be pretty expensive, especially for our core user demographic. So we partnered with some of the largest data houses and created FINDM, where users can create an account for free, do as many searches as they like, and pay only for the contacts they download.
FINDM has over 60M business prospects, many with LinkedIn profiles and 270 million consumer records updated monthly.
Most recently, we introduced BOOKM, a tool to make scheduling with customers and prospects easier. Like LINKEM, it is a completely standalone application that is tightly integrated into CLOSEM.
While CLOSEM has built-in appointments and reminders, we didn’t have that external link where prospects could book appointments with users.
We plan to dominate this small business sales segment and have priced our tools very competitively. LINKEM and BOOKM are only $89 / year, and FINDM is a pay-as-you-go solution. CLOSEM is either $49 or $99 / month, depending on the plan.
What have been your biggest challenges in the last year?
Our company is 100% bootstrapped, and a lack of investment capital has limited our ability to promote.
What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?
We’ve got to keep working to make our products even more compelling. Adding a really good developer to our team has been a worthwhile investment.
At the same time, we must stay focused on our core business and only bite off what we can chew.
What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?
We will keep iterating and focus on ensuring our customers are happy and successful using our products.
We also focus on specific niche markets and provide solutions that appeal to specific verticals like real estate, financial services, home services, and insurance.
One area of expansion for us is in cart abandonment - -while there are tools that followup when someone does not complete an order, these are either email or text, sometimes email and text, but none of them can send a postcard with a picture of the product, along with a QR code that links back to the order page.
As we’ve proven the viability of the platform and our business, we intend to go out for funding this year.
What’s the best thing you read in the last year?
A Knock at Midnight, A Story of Hope, Justice, and Freedom
By: Brittany K. Barnett
The best thing I’ve read this year has everything to do with persistence and achieving a vision. It will make you cry and cheer (and cry).
The audiobook is also incredibly well-narrated.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?
I used to think my advice was worth it.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
We’re going to be hiring sales and customer service reps in 2023.
Where can we go to learn more?
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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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.
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