Computerworld

NZ-based software firm crosses the Tasman as global expansion continues

“Email is the number-one form of business communication..."

New Zealand-headquartered global software company Black Pearl Mail has opened an office in Sydney, reflecting “significant demand” in Australia for its product that enhances the capabilities of email as a business tool.

Black Pearl Mail is currently in discussions with over 100 companies in Australia ranging from 10 to 50,000 employees in size, including a number of deals already underway with customers listed on the ASX.

The three-year old company also has a fast-growing number of other international clients and plans for further offshore expansion in the short term.

Founder Nick Lissette says the reason Black Pearl Mail has been so successful over such a short period of time, is that the company has “cracked a problem no other company in the world has been able to solve.”

“Email is the number-one form of business communication - with over 100 billion business emails sent every day - yet it has some fundamental flaws that our service eliminates,” Lissette says.

“Until now it hasn’t been possible to create emails and email signatures that have a consistent appearance, given the diversity of devices and servers globally.

“With over 17,000 delivery permutations an email has to negotiate in the world, it was an incredibly difficult problem to tackle. We have a patent pending on our technology that solves it.”

Lissette says the service also enables clients to measure and analyse the effectiveness of their emails as a communications tool through customised reports the system can generate on key analytics such as percentage of emails opened and links clicked on.

More immediately, users can opt to see if an email they’ve sent has been opened without the recipient being aware of this.

“The potential marketing and branding benefits for companies are enormous,” Lissette adds.

“Some of Australia's most iconic brands and largest international companies are already keen to adopt the Black Pearl Mail technology and to benefit from their ability to utilise email as a digital marketing channel.

“Opening an office in Sydney is a direct result of new customer growth and our response to support that.”

Lissette says Black Pearl Mail is available for organisations of all sizes from SMEs to multinationals with hundreds of thousands of employees.

A cloud-based version can be purchased for $1 per user, while large organisations can opt for bespoke solutions with phased roll-outs.

Black Pearl Mail is owned by private investors including Simon Botherway, who is also on the Serko board, as well as company directors Shane Bruhns and Australian Peter Clare.