26 Email Marketing Tool Success Stories [2024]
An email marketing tool, also known as an 'email tool', is a software application that helps you create, manage and automate email campaigns. Basically, it's a program that allows you to write and send bulk emails.
Email marketing is one of the most effective marketing channels around. It can be used to generate leads, increase sales, create subscribers, improve your SEO rankings and reach more customers than you would with a blog or website.
The email marketing industry is booming. The global email marketing tool market size is expected to reach $2.53B in 2028. Making an email marketing tool business is as easy as buying a domain and hosting account, but that is just the beginning. You will soon start to see the endless possibilities for creating tools that will be used by entrepreneurs, startups, and even real estate agents.
Here are some real life success stories of starting a email marketing tool:
1. SmartrMail ($1.56M/year)
George, co-founder and CEO of SmartrMail, came up with the idea for the business while running an online art marketplace. As they grew, email became an important revenue channel, but existing tools weren't meeting their needs. So, they decided to build their own email app for ecommerce stores, focusing on personalized content and speed.
How much they make: $1.56M/year
Current team size: 16
SmartrMail is an email marketing app for ecommerce merchants that generated more than $50m in sales last year through sending over a billion emails and making over $100K in monthly recurring revenue, whilst maintaining profitability since the start of this year.
2. GMass, Inc. ($5.4M/year)
During his previous business venture, Wordzen, the founder recognized the necessity of sending personalized emails to small groups. After researching available options, he was not satisfied with the solutions offered. Therefore, he developed GMass as an internal tool to aid in managing his business. Although Wordzen failed to gain much traction, GMass proved to be successful and was featured on Product Hunt, giving him the validation that he needed to make the decision to pursue this as a business.
How much they make: $5.4M/year
Current team size: 1
GMass, an email marketing platform that allows users to send cold emails and email marketing campaigns with Gmail, has attracted over 500,000 user signups, including major tech companies like Uber, LinkedIn, and Google, and now generates over $200K in monthly recurring revenue through a successful content marketing strategy and focused ad spend.
So... can you actually make money with a email marketing tool?
Of course. There are millions to be made in this industry.
But how?
- Research real, profitable businesses and see exactly how much money they make.
- Study exactly what works, and what doesn’t.
- Take action, because now you have the roadmap.
Join Starter Story and build your next big thing:
3. 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 they make: $1.44K/year
How much did it cost to start: $500
Current team size: 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.
4. SendX ($276K/year)
SendX's founder, Varun, came up with the idea for the business while working on another project called ArtCurry. He found the existing email marketing and lead generation tools to be complex and expensive, so he decided to create a platform that would solve these problems. With the technical expertise of his co-founders, they launched SendX in 2016 and have since focused on improving the product and attracting customers through SEO, blogging, and positive reviews.
How much they make: $276K/year
Current team size: 7
SendX, an email marketing company, grew from a public beta launch in January 2017 to a profitable, bootstrapped business generating over $23k in monthly recurring revenue, focusing on SEO, offering a 14 day trial period, and prioritizing product investment and customer support to retain users, with plans to double down on the Shopify and professional blogger segments for future growth.
So... can you actually make money with a email marketing tool?
Of course. There are millions to be made in this industry.
But how?
- Research real, profitable businesses and see exactly how much money they make.
- Study exactly what works, and what doesn’t.
- Take action, because now you have the roadmap.
Join Starter Story and build your next big thing:
5. 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 they make: $1.44M/year
How much did it cost to start: $10K
Current team size: 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.
6. H-supertools ($24K/year)
Hasan, the founder of H-supertools, came up with the idea while developing tools for his own online business. He realized that these tools could be valuable for others as well, so he decided to offer them for free on a website. Through content creation and word-of-mouth, he attracted a large user base and was able to monetize the platform through various revenue streams.
How much they make: $24K/year
Current team size: 4
H-supertools founder Hasan developed a set of free SEO and digital marketing tools generating $2k per month in profit using Google Adsense, affiliate marketing, selling ad spaces, and email, plans to launch a membership option, and has attained over 80k registered users and 300k monthly visits in less than two years.
So... can you actually make money with a email marketing tool?
Of course. There are millions to be made in this industry.
But how?
- Research real, profitable businesses and see exactly how much money they make.
- Study exactly what works, and what doesn’t.
- Take action, because now you have the roadmap.
Join Starter Story and build your next big thing:
7. 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 they make: $1.92M/year
Current team size: 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.
8. 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 they make: $102K/year
Current team size: 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.
9. 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 they make: $1.2M/year
Current team size: 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.
10. Mutant Mail ($24K/year)
Abhishek, the founder of Mutant Mail, came up with the idea for his business after facing a server outage and receiving a DMCA complaint due to email monitoring negligence. Realizing the need for a solution to easily manage multiple domain emails, Abhishek and his team developed Mutant Mail, the only server-side solution to this problem. Within two weeks of its soft launch, they acquired 10 paid customers, and within five days of their AppSumo launch, they gained another 100 paid customers.
How much they make: $24K/year
How much did it cost to start: $500
Current team size: 2
Mutant Mail, a SaaS product from Fresent LLC, allows entrepreneurs, small businesses, marketers, and individuals to effortlessly manage all their domain emails from a single inbox, with a max usage account managing close to 245 email ids across 29 domains and acquired 10 paid customers within 2 weeks of its soft-launch and 100 more within 5 days of its AppSumo launch.
11. 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 they make: $90K/year
How much did it cost to start: $2K
Current team size: 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.
12. Add Value | Growth Marketing Agency ($600K/year)
24-year-old Joachim Brouckaert founded Add Value, a growth marketing agency, after noticing that many marketing agencies prioritized money over delivering value to their customers. With a background in digital marketing and experience freelancing as a digital marketer, Joachim decided to start his own agency focused on full-funnel marketing services. After a year in business, Add Value generates an average monthly turnover of 30k and works with 18 active clients.
How much they make: $600K/year
How much did it cost to start: $1K
Current team size: 5
A 24-year-old founder shares how his growth marketing agency generated €360,000 in its first year, with a team of 5 people working for 18 active clients per month, using SEO, Facebook and Google ads, organic content on LinkedIn, and a hybrid agency model with a focus on client retention.
13. TextMagic ($14.4M/year)
In 2001, TextMagic started as a niche side project in the UK with limited offerings. When Priit Vaikmaa joined the company in 2007, he saw the huge potential in their SMS marketing platform and focused on expanding and improving its usability. Today, TextMagic has a diverse customer base and generated revenue just short of €11 million in 2021.
How much they make: $14.4M/year
Current team size: 51
TextMagic's CEO Priit Vaikmaa discusses the development and success of the SMS marketing solutions company, which has grown its revenue to almost €11 million and employs people remotely from all over the world.
14. 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 they make: $42K/year
Current team size: 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.
15. Dashly ($2.4M/year)
Dimitri Ive came up with the idea for Dashly when he realized that there was a need for a platform that could bring all customer conversations from various channels into one place. By merging user data and communication channels, Dashly simplifies how businesses communicate with their loyal customers. Since its launch in 2018, Dashly has grown to a team of 95 experts and generates $200K in monthly recurring revenue.
How much they make: $2.4M/year
How much did it cost to start: $10K
Current team size: 95
Dashly, a conversational marketing software, grew from a team of five to 95 experts and currently has a $200K MRR, providing a platform that simplifies the way businesses communicate with their loyal customers by bringing all conversations from a live chat, emails, socials, and messengers into one place.
16. Findymail ($30K/year)
Built an email finder tool for Twitter called Scrappybird. He realized it was too niche and expanded to the lead generation space – Findymail.
How much they make: $30K/year
How much did it cost to start: $100
Current team size: 0
Findymail founder Valentin Wallyn shares how he went from being a teenage gamer creating digital currency to building successful SaaS businesses, with his latest venture reaching $2,500 in monthly recurring revenue just months after launching.
17. 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 they make: $48K/year
How much did it cost to start: $200
Current team size: 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.
18. Email Paramedic ($2.76M/year)
Troy Ericson, founder of Copywriting.org and EmailDeliverability.com, came up with the idea for his business when one of his clients wanted to fire him. He discovered that their emails were going to spam, which was preventing them from monetizing their leads. Troy offered to solve the problem for free and ended up increasing their email revenue from $13k/month to $51k/month. This led him to realize the potential of managing email lists, and he has since grown his business to generate around $230K/mo and train freelancers in email marketing.
How much they make: $2.76M/year
How much did it cost to start: $500
Current team size: 9
Learn how Troy Ericson grew his email marketing business from scratch to generating around $230K/mo by reviving dead or stagnant email lists, maximizing opens, clicks, and sales, and writing world-class emails guaranteed to deliver to the primary inbox, and how he is expanding his services through coaching, consulting, and one-off email deliverability projects.
19. Drip ($24.4M/year)
How much they make: $24.4M/year
Current team size: 142
20. RightMessage ($360K/year)
Shai Schechter and his co-founder, Brennan, came up with the idea for RightMessage after seeing the success of personalization techniques in their own online businesses. They realized that there was a need for a point-and-click tool that would allow marketers to easily implement personalization on their websites, and thus RightMessage was born.
How much they make: $360K/year
Current team size: 3
RightMessage, a segmentation and personalization tool, grew its SaaS business to $30k MRR in one year, with over 1,000 websites installed, by building in public, iterating based on audience needs, focusing on high-touch demos, and partnering with complementary products.
21. VCbacked ($18K/year)
How much they make: $18K/year
How much did it cost to start: $1K
Current team size: 0
As an aspiring founder, learn how the Boring Founder built VCbacked, a profitable sales enablement software business that provides access to data on thousands of Venture capital-funded startup founders, with a current monthly revenue of $1.5K and plans for future growth through reinvestment.
22. Baxter Inc. ($12K/year)
The founder was having a tough time managing his Gmail inbox when he came up with the idea of a dashboard. He then interviewed dozens of regular American adults to see if the idea was appealing. Soon, he found out that the majority of people preferred a simple tool rather than a dashboard. This motivated him to build Baxter.
How much they make: $12K/year
How much did it cost to start: $50K
Current team size: 1
A case study on the founder of Baxter, a browser extension that helps Gmail users organize their inboxes by unsubscribing from newsletters, deleting unneeded emails, and automatically labeling and organizing emails, which generated over $1,000 in monthly recurring revenue in just nine months and successfully acquired an existing Gmail Unsubscribe extension to drive organic user growth.
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- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
