Welcome to Extra Mile by HiTechNectar, an exclusive interview series with the industry leaders, discussing the latest innovations, tech trends, marketing practices, expert insights, and a lot more.
For today’s conversation, we are thrilled to have Mr. Liviu Tanase, founder and CEO at ZeroBounce, an email validation, deliverability, and email-finding platform.
Hello Liviu! We're glad you could join us today!
Q1. ZeroBounce has served 325,000+ businesses and helped them in achieving success. What prominent challenges has the company encountered while achieving such a milestone?
Ans. The biggest challenge we faced was finding the right talent to expand our platform. The demand for our services was there from the beginning – and from there, it’s grown exponentially. Our goal was always to offer our customers the very best email optimization platform, so our team plays a vital role.
The right talent goes beyond technical skills. We needed people who were not only experts in their fields but also resonated with our mission and higher goals: innovation, customer satisfaction, and a desire for continuous improvement. I knew that the key to our growth was finding these people.
As our customer base grew, so did the complexity of our operations. We wanted to make sure our platform could scale to handle more users while maintaining excellent performance, security, and reliability. That meant we had to continue to improve our infrastructure. This part was especially difficult in 2022, as we prepared to relaunch ZeroBounce.
For a few months, we worked with a contractor to develop the new platform, while at the same time building our in-house team of experts. There were many long nights for some of us. But the relaunch was a success, and the team of developers we built during that time are still with us today.
As we grew, we also faced the challenge of maintaining our reputation for having the most responsive customer service in the industry. That meant expanding our support team and ensuring everyone responds to customers promptly.
Moreover, with so many changes in the email industry, we had to meet our customers' evolving needs by building more products to support their businesses. You have to invest in research and development if you want to stay at the forefront of your industry.
It took relentless focus to recruit the right talent, scale our technology, and provide the best customer experience. The entire team is working so hard for this, and it’s incredibly rewarding to be the go-to email problem solver for more than 325,000 customers.
Q2. ZeroBounce, an all-in-one email optimization platform, plays a crucial role in business success. It examines email validation, verification, deliverability, and more. Why are these procedures so vital?
Ans. There are now more than four billion email users worldwide. For any company, email is indispensable. We use email for transactional messages—like account confirmations or invoices—or for marketing purposes. But although email has proven its reliability, the data we work with is fragile.
We did a study at ZeroBounce and analyzed billions of email addresses our software processed to determine how quickly the average email list decays. It turns out, more than a quarter of your email list dies every single year. Emailing outdated contacts results in bounces, which pose a great risk for your overall email communications.
Bounce-backs mean you’re not reaching those particular prospects, but that’s just one problem. When you get many bounces – more than 2% per email campaign – that affects your reputation with inbox providers like Gmail or Yahoo. They see it as a sign that you’re sending emails indiscriminately, like spammers do, so your future emails can end up in the spam folder.
You can prevent this from happening by cleaning your database and removing poor-quality contacts. This is an important step to add to your process so your campaigns and newsletters reach the inbox and connect with real people.
A good email validation software will also help you identify other risky email addresses. For instance, abuse emails, which belong to users who have a habit of reporting messages as spam. You want to keep your spam complaint rate as low as possible, so removing these types of contacts from your email list is something you can do to mitigate this risk.
Once you have a clean list, you’re already in good shape, but the tools available are helpful if you want to improve further. For instance, you can test your deliverability before you reach out to your customers and see if your email will go to the inbox or the spam folder.
Moreover, with large email providers like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft enforcing email authentication, you must ensure you follow this step. This process is much easier when you access the right tools. We wanted to make them available so our customers could solve all these challenges and create healthier, more effective email marketing programs.
Q3. In the era of Internet marketing, is email marketing still a relevant and effective strategy? How have technological advancements reshaped the approach of email marketing campaigns?
Ans. Email is our unique online identifier – you can’t sign up for social media without an email address, you can’t run an online business without one, and you can’t receive important updates from various services without it. Email has been around for more than 50 years, and we’ve only seen it grow.
However, it’s relevant and effective only when used correctly. If you look at all the data privacy laws and sending guidelines email service providers have implemented, they all return to one thing: common sense.
It’s common sense to:
- Ask for permission before adding someone to your email list.
- Never sell or use the customer data you gather for nefarious purposes.
- Send the content you promised, at the frequency you promised.
- Avoid emailing invalid contacts and keep good email hygiene.
- Authenticate your domain to verify who you are as a sender.
- Allow people to unsubscribe easily.
Aside from following these rules, develop a strategy that works for your business in terms of content and design so you can truly stand out in your customers' inboxes.
Technological advancements have made marketers’ lives easier. Now you have more tools than ever to determine precisely what your audience needs. To make your emails effective, use these tools and improve your segmentation and targeting. It will make a world of difference.
Q4. What are your suggestions for successful email marketing? How can companies skyrocket their marketing endeavors with emails?
Ans. Successful email marketers do one thing right: they put the customer first. When you look through your own inbox and try to determine the emails you tend to engage with the most, you’ll notice they all place you at the core of their messages.
So, before you send your next email, ask yourself:
- How does this help my customer or prospect?
- Why is it relevant now?
- What else can I do to be of service to my audience?
This doesn’t mean you can’t sell through email, but your approach should always revolve around how your products and services help your prospects. People don’t like to be sold to, so when you reframe this and make it about their benefit, it will be easier to convert.
Q5. You have been associated with the Telecom sector for quite a long time before excelling in email marketing. Persuading prospects through calls and emails — which is tougher?
Ans. I wouldn’t totally dismiss the phone as a sales channel, but in the past 10 years, it’s getting increasingly difficult to persuade people over the phone. You have so many things working against you:
- People’s distrust due to the deluge of spam calls
- A lack of synchronization with the person’s schedule
- And a general tendency for people to protect their time and avoid phone calls with sales representatives.
Email does not suffer from these drawbacks. Sure, you have the threat of spam, and your prospects may be wary of malicious messages. But going back to common sense: if you play by the rules and treat your audience respectfully, you’ll gain loyalty and trust. Ultimately, you’ll gain their business.
Q6. What is your key to success? How do you prepare and inspire yourself to thrive in the competitive commercial sector? Pass a few suggestions for young marketers.
Ans. Lots of coffee!
I wish there was a secret strategy I could share with everyone, but the only way I managed to build several businesses was by putting in the work. I’ve been an entrepreneur my whole life and have always known that if I don’t do the work, things won’t move forward. To this day, I still work most weekends and often have 14-hour workdays. My intention is not to glorify being busy, overworking, and burning out. But the more you invest in your business, the more you get back.
What keeps me inspired and driven is always wondering if there’s a better way to do things. Together with my team, we test and develop many ideas – and some of them don’t lead us anywhere. But it’s those that do that differentiate us in our market and drive our success.
My advice to marketers is to educate themselves continuously. Stay curious. Be persistent. And when you encounter a challenge, ask yourself what that moment is trying to teach you.
