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www.smtp.com
From the 10-K dated 3/31/2011:
DESCRIPTION OF OUR BUSINESS
Corporate History
We were incorporated in Massachusetts on October 14, 1998 as EMUmail, Inc. and changed our name on April 1, 2010 to SMTP.com, Inc. On November 23, 2010, we incorporated a new entity under the name SMTP, Inc. in the State of Delaware and entered into a Merger Agreement with SMTP.com, Inc. The sole purpose of the merger was to change the jurisdiction of our company from Massachusetts to Delaware and to increase the number of authorized shares outstanding. Unless the context otherwise requires, all references to “our company,” “we,” “our” or “us” and other similar terms means SMTP, Inc., a Delaware corporation.
Business Summary
We provide Internet-based services to facilitate email deliverability, including bulk and transactional sending, reputation management, compliance auditing, abuse processing and diagnostics. Our services provide customers with the ability to increase the deliverability of email with less time, cost and complexity than handling it themselves. We believe our growth since inception has been driven by the compelling value proposition for our services. As of December 31, 2010, we had approximately 10,000 customers.
Principal services
We provide services to enable small, medium and large businesses to outsource the sending of outbound emails. Legitimate senders of email use our services to help maintain their online email reputation so that their email is not blocked and is delivered to the intended recipients.
The services are differentiated by level of computer, software and customer support resources we provide, which is largely based on the volume of emails sent by our customers:
1.
Business solution services are for small business users that send low volumes on an infrequent basis. These customers typically send between 500 and 200,000 emails each month and pay between $2 and $200 per month in fees. As of December 31, 2010, we had approximately 10,000 small business user customers with the average customer paying us approximately $10 per month.
2.
Corporate solutions are for larger businesses requiring dedicated computer and software systems with advanced features, proactive reputation management and phone support. Our high volume corporate customers receive more powerful computer and software systems, high speed Internet connectivity, advanced email management features, 24/7 event monitoring and the highest levels of customer support. Corporate customers typically send from 200,000 to many millions of emails each month and pay between $200 and $10,000 per month. As of December 31, 2010, we had approximately 350 corporate customers with the average customer paying us approximately $450 per month.
Sales and Marketing
We sell directly to prospective customers through online advertisements and through marketing agreements with vendors of email marketing software who promote our services to their clients. Approximately 65% of our customers reach us directly while approximately 35% reach us through third parties. We pay these third parties between 5% and 30% of the revenue generated from their referrals. Aside from fees paid to third parties, our marketing and advertising expenses are not directly related to our level of sales. There is no direct correlation between revenues and marketing expenses.
Growth Strategy
Our growth strategy is to expand our business through (i) acquisitions of, or investments in, other companies with competing or complementary services, technologies or businesses; and (ii) entering into relationships with other businesses in order to expand our service offerings, which could involve preferred or exclusive licenses, additional channels of distribution or discount pricing or investments in other companies. We expect to fund our business expansion through the issuance of debt or equity securities, the payment of cash, the exchange of services, or any combination thereof.
Competition
The market for our services is competitive and rapidly changing, and the barriers to entry are relatively low. With the introduction of new technologies and the influx of new entrants to the market, we expect competition to persist and intensify in the future, which could harm our ability to increase sales, limit customer attrition and maintain our prices.
Barriers to entry in email delivery services are very low. Privately-backed and public companies could choose to enter our space and compete directly with us, or indirectly by offering substitute solutions. The result could be decreased demand or pricing for our services, longer sales cycles, or a requirement to make significant incremental investments in research and development to match these entrants’ new technologies. If any of these happens, it could cause us to suffer a decline in revenues and profitability.
Our principal competitors include providers of email management services for small to medium size businesses such as AuthSmtp.com, SMTP2Go.com, JangoMail.com, SocketLabs.com, StrongMail.com, ExactTarget.com, CheetahMail.com, ConstantContact.com, iContact.com, MailChimp.com and Bronto.com, larger companies such as Amazon.com, as well as the in-house information technology capabilities of prospective customers.
Competition could result in reduced sales, reduced margins or the failure of our email marketing product to achieve or maintain more widespread market acceptance, any of which could harm our business. While we do not compete currently with vendors serving larger customers, we may face future competition from these providers if they determine that our target market presents an opportunity for them. Finally, in the future, we may experience competition from Internet Service Providers, or ISPs, advertising and direct marketing agencies and other large established businesses, such as Microsoft Corporation, Google Inc. or Yahoo! Inc., possessing large, existing customer bases, substantial financial resources and established distribution channels. If these companies decide to develop, market or resell competitive email marketing products, acquire one of our existing competitors or form a strategic alliance with one of our competitors, our ability to compete effectively could be significantly compromised and our operating results could be harmed. In addition, one or more of these ISPs or other businesses could decide to offer a competitive email marketing product at no cost or low cost in order to generate revenue as part of a larger product offering.
Our current and potential competitors may have significantly more financial, technical, marketing and other resources than we do and may be able to devote greater resources to the development, promotion, sale and support of their products. Our current and potential competitors may have more extensive customer bases and broader customer relationships than we have. In addition, these companies may have longer operating histories and greater name recognition than we have and may be able to bundle an email marketing product with other products that have gained widespread market acceptance. These competitors may be better able to respond quickly to new technologies and to undertake more extensive marketing campaigns. If we are unable to compete with such companies, the demand for our products could substantially decline.
We cannot assure you that we will be able to respond quickly, cost-effectively or sufficiently to market conditions. Our business, financial condition and operating results may be adversely affected if we are unable to anticipate or respond quickly and economically to any developments.
Our ability to compete will also depend on the strength of our brand, our ability to attract and retain key talent and other personnel, the efficiency of development and marketing. All these activities require significant financial resources. We may not be able to sustain competition. Our inability to compete effectively would have an adverse impact on our business.
Intellectual Property
Our core technology is built upon Postfix software that is open source and can be used by anyone without cost. We customized various aspects of the software to optimize the speed at which email is delivered. Customizations to open source software code generally require developers to make their work available at no cost. Since we have created our software by developing extensions which plug into open source software without modifying the open source code, we do not believe there is a risk we could be required to offer our products or make our source code available. Generally, we spend less than 10% of our sales on research and development activities.
We do not own any patents, trademarks, licenses, franchises or concessions aside from the SMTP.com domain name and trademark.
Technology
We currently rent Internet servers from Bocacom, Hostgator, thePlanet, Iweb, Rackspace and Softlayer. Each of these companies have servers in multiple cities in the United States and in Canada. Our disaster recovery strategy is to use back up virtual servers.
Regulation of our business
We must comply with U.S. federal legislation entitled Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003, or CAN-SPAM Act, which imposes certain obligations on the senders of commercial emails and specifies penalties for the transmission of commercial email messages that are intended to deceive the recipient as to source or content.
The CAN-SPAM Act, among other things, obligates the sender of commercial emails to provide recipients with the ability to opt out of receiving future emails from the sender. In addition, some states have passed laws regulating commercial email practices that are significantly more punitive and difficult to comply with than the CAN-SPAM Act, particularly Utah and Michigan, which have enacted do-not-email registries listing minors who do not wish to receive unsolicited commercial email that markets certain covered content, such as adult or other harmful products. Some portions of these state laws may not be preempted by the CAN-SPAM Act.
The ability of our customers’ constituents to opt out of receiving commercial emails may minimize the effectiveness of our email marketing product. Moreover, non-compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act carries significant financial penalties. If we were found to be in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act, applicable state laws not preempted by the CAN-SPAM Act, or foreign laws regulating the distribution of commercial email, whether as a result of violations by our customers or if we were deemed to be directly subject to and in violation of these requirements, we could be required to pay penalties, which would adversely affect our financial performance and significantly harm our business. We also may be required to change one or more aspects of the way we operate our business, which could impair our ability to attract and retain customers or increase our operating costs.
As Internet commerce continues to evolve, increasing regulation by federal, state or foreign governments becomes more likely. Our business could be negatively impacted by the application of existing laws and regulations or the enactment of new laws applicable to email communications. The cost to comply with such laws or regulations could be significant and would increase our operating expenses, and we may be unable to pass along those costs to our customers in the form of increased subscription fees. In addition, federal, state and foreign governmental or regulatory agencies may decide to impose taxes on services provided over the Internet or via email. Such taxes could discourage the use of the Internet and email as a means of commercial marketing and communications, which would adversely affect the viability of our services.
Employees
We have four full-time employees consisting of:
·
Chief Executive Officer
·
President and Chief Operating Officer
·
Vice President of Engineering
·
Assistant to the Chief Executive Officer
We also have two contractors in the United States and eighteen contractors in Ukraine.
Our Ukraine team consists of:
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Nine technical support
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Four systems engineers
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Four research and development engineers
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One accounts receivables
We believe that our future success will depend in part on our continued ability to attract, hire or acquire and retain qualified independent contractors. There can be no assurance that we will be able to attract and retain such individuals or companies. If we are unsuccessful in managing the timely delivery of these services our business could be adversely affected.
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