YesMail Goes After the Little Guy

Having already targeted the permission-based online marketing needs of the larger and mid-sized business market, YesMail is now looking to bring even small businesses over to its e-mail and direct mail services.

YesMail Direct is an online portal where small businesses register within a master application to conduct permission-based email marketing, print postcards for direct mail and buy listings search engines including Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask, although “The reality is that 90 percent of it is Google,” Mike Hilts, president and general manager of YesMail, told me.

“It’s leveraging the APIs that are available in the market today to give a one stop shop for keywords for these small market guys,” he said.

By reaching out to small businesses, YesMail intends to bring them to its mid-market system when they grow larger, Hilts said.

“Most of the large companies were small companies at one time, and what we created was the basic version of Express that allows a migration path to the mid-market solution,” he said. “It’s not trying to be all things to all people in the small business market. It’s taking the core meat and potato things that you do and simplifying them. It’s driving responses online and using them.”