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.
In this list, you'll find real-world email marketing tool success stories and very profitable examples of starting a email marketing tool that makes money.
1. ConvertKit ($25M/year)
In 2013, Nathan set a challenge for himself: build a $5K/mo SaaS in 6 months with just $5,000. He got the idea after reading people's complaints about Mailchimp online, and decided to build a product that addressed those.
How much money it makes: $25M/year
How much did it cost to start: $5K
How many people on the team: 82
Discover how Nathan Barry bootstrapped ConvertKit from a $5,000 investment to a $25 million/year email marketing powerhouse by addressing the main objections of online creators and scaling through a lucrative affiliate program with an impressive $2.08 million/month average revenue.
2. Instantly AI ($19.2M/year)
The co-founders developed the tool out of necessity for their lead generation agency. Initially, they used existing tools to help their customers generate leads. However, as they scaled, the cost of using these tools, which required payment per email account, became unsustainable.
In response, they decided to create their own tool, utilizing the skills of their developer. Initially, the tool was intended for internal use. However, after discussing it with others, they recognized its unique value and its potential to benefit many similar businesses.
We noticed that as soon as we tried to scale, the prices increased instead of decreasing. — Kaevand Co-founder Instantly; (Source)
How much money it makes: $19.2M/year
How many people on the team: 15
Discover how Instantly.ai grew from 0 to $2.4M in just 9 months by solving the problem of costly lead-generation tools for marketers with an affordable and effective AI-powered email marketing software.
3. 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 money it makes: $14.4M/year
How many people on the team: 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.
4. 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 money it makes: $5.4M/year
How many people on the team: 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.
5. Email Paramedic ($3.12M/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 money it makes: $3.12M/year
How much did it cost to start: $500
How many people on the team: 10
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.
6. 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 money it makes: $2.4M/year
How much did it cost to start: $10K
How many people on the team: 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.
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 money it makes: $1.92M/year
How many people on the team: 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. 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 money it makes: $1.56M/year
How many people on the team: 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.
9. 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 money it makes: $1.44M/year
How much did it cost to start: $10K
How many people on the team: 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.
10. 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 money it makes: $1.2M/year
How many people on the team: 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.
11. 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 money it makes: $600K/year
How much did it cost to start: $1K
How many people on the team: 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.
12. 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 money it makes: $360K/year
How many people on the team: 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.
13. 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 money it makes: $276K/year
How many people on the team: 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.
14. Maildroppa ($240K/year)
Feeling stifled in corporate life, Marcus Biel leveraged his Java development skills to create Maildroppa, an affordable email marketing tool for solo founders. The platform's unique free plan and bootstrapper ethos helped it achieve $20,000 in monthly revenue, transforming the email marketing landscape.
How much money it makes: $240K/year
How much did it cost to start: $5K
How many people on the team: 0
Bootstrapper turned entrepreneur created an affordable yet powerful email marketing solution, offering a free plan for 100 subscribers forever, leading to $20,000 in monthly revenue, catering to solo founders and bootstrappers building their businesses.
15. Ignore No More ($156K/year)
Sophia O’Neal’s relentless desire to avoid mundane employment led her to launch Ignore No More, a SaaS-focused marketing agency. Inspired by Warby Parker's innovative branding, Sophia built a $21K/month business through savvy positioning and strategic no-code solutions, employing a globally diverse team.
How much money it makes: $156K/year
How much did it cost to start: $5K
How many people on the team: 2
Case study about how Sophia O'Neal built Ignore No More, a profitable marketing agency for SaaS companies, working with 2-5 clients/mo and bringing in $13K-$21K/month, with a team of 10 employees speaking 12+ languages, showing how she went from freelancing to agency success despite financial struggles and setbacks.
16. Maverick Media Lab ($120K/year)
Gilberto, the founder of Maverick Media Lab, grew up in an immigrant family in the US with a desire for financial independence. After working for a marketing agency and refining his skills, he ventured out on his own to create a service that would help businesses generate more referrals. By focusing on using LinkedIn and email to expand clients' networks of referral partners, Maverick Media Lab has grown rapidly and is projected to double its current revenue of $10k/month in the next six months.
How much money it makes: $120K/year
How much did it cost to start: $0
How many people on the team: 0
Gilberto, founder of Maverick Media Lab, shares his success story of generating $10k/month through his productized Referral Connector System, which helps businesses enter the online marketing space without large advertising costs.
17. 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 money it makes: $102K/year
How many people on the team: 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.
18. 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 money it makes: $90K/year
How much did it cost to start: $2K
How many people on the team: 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.
19. 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 money it makes: $48K/year
How much did it cost to start: $200
How many people on the team: 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.
20. 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 money it makes: $42K/year
How many people on the team: 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.
21. 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 money it makes: $30K/year
How much did it cost to start: $100
How many people on the team: 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.
22. 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 money it makes: $24K/year
How much did it cost to start: $500
How many people on the team: 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.
23. 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 money it makes: $24K/year
How many people on the team: 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.
24. VCbacked ($18K/year)
By noticing the limitations in existing lead databases like Cyberleads and Who Raised?, the founder of VCbacked pinpointed a niche need for more tailored and comprehensive contact information for B2B companies, leading to a $1.5K MRR venture.
How much money it makes: $18K/year
How much did it cost to start: $1K
How many people on the team: 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.
25. 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 money it makes: $12K/year
How much did it cost to start: $50K
How many people on the team: 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.
26. 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 money it makes: $1.44K/year
How much did it cost to start: $500
How many people on the team: 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.
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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.
