MarTech Interview with Khris Thayer, CEO and Founder at OPTIZMO
Published on 6/6/19 by MarTechSeries
Tell us about your role at OPTIZMO and how you got here. What inspired you to start the company?
I am the CEO and Co-Founder of OPTIZMO. I founded the company with my partner and CTO, Grant Fern, in early 2009, so we are celebrating 10 years of momentum this year. OPTIZMO was inspired by a need in our industry for Email Compliance, Suppression File and Data management platform that went above and beyond the utilitarian nature of compliance and information security. The industry needed a platform that would not only automate many of the compliance functions necessary to utilize email as a Commercial Marketing medium but also provided insights into email campaign performance and channel partner activity.
By creating a paradigm shift in how Email Compliance was managed under the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, OPTIZMO has successfully become the ‘best of breed’ Email Compliance solution available, serving over 400 of the most recognizable Brands, Ad Agencies, Performance Networks, and Affiliate Marketers.
Given the changing dynamics of the marketing technology landscape, where do you see OPTIZMO fitting in a CMO’s stack?
If a company actively engages in Email Marketing or is evaluating a Comprehensive Email Program, then OPTIZMO plays an integral role in both the infrastructure and brand protection needed to mitigate risk. OPTIZMO is a web-based SaaSapplication used by digital marketers to ensure that third-party Email Affiliates and Channel Partners are interacting with the Advertiser’s consumer data, existing customer base and consumers who have unsubscribed or opted-out, in a way that protects all parties involved.
Our platform ensures that the Brand Advertiser, the Consumer, and the Mailing Partner have a secure and centralized repository for data handling that provides the necessary automation, checks, and balances to ensure that brands and their partners do not expose themselves to potential liability with the Federal Trade Commission for non-compliant email activity.
What does your ‘Ideal Customer’ Profile look like?
OPTIZMO’s ideal customer is any company that sends commercial email and we service all customers from small or medium-sized brands to Fortune 500 companies in a variety of business verticals. Insurance Companies, Financial Companies, Full Service Advertising Agencies, Affiliate Networks, Lead Generation Companies, Consumer Products, Dating Websites, etc. are only a few of the verticals that we serve. OPTIZMO’s customer and user base consist of many globally recognized household name brands as well as products and services that are new-to-market.
What data-points do you work on to make OPTIZMO’s solutions more competitive for optimized enterprise-level results?
There are several data points we use in the context of Competitive Analysis for solutions, however, to list them all would probably be an article in and of itself. Ultimately, OPTIZMO strives to maintain our position as the fastest, most reliable, most secure service of its kind, which is also the most committed to Customer Service and the end-user experience within the Email Marketing and Ad Tech arena. We ensure that our pricing always remains competitive and that our technology is consistently pushing the boundaries of what is technologically possible and financially feasible concerning Data Management, Database Architecture, Infrastructure, and Data Transport facilities. We deliver security standards that meet or exceed even the most stringent security risk assessments for data handling. We manage both churn and scale to ensure that long-term customers retain the level of service that they have become accustomed to, while the company continues to bring on new customers and grow the overall customer base.
How is the global market for Email Compliance solutions shaping up with the evolution of global data privacy regulations?
Email Compliance and Suppression List Management are paramount in today’s global market. Regulatory compliance laws such as the U.S. CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 and the GDPR require that consumer opt-out requests are honored and companies that do business in the EU markets are required to honor a consumer’s right to be forgotten. The only way to efficiently do this is through a secure and reliable Suppression File Management solution. The caveat is that many third-party solution providers and in-house solution teams are unaware of how challenging these processes are and they are typically naive to the degree in which infrastructure and information security come into play. While we have seen many companies attempt to deliver solutions to service these needs, we have observed most of them vastly underestimate what a comprehensive Email Compliance solution entails from solution and development, all the way through to customer fulfillment. In short, there is a growing global demand, but a general lack of knowledge and experience relevant to this specific niche.
Read the rest of the MarTech Interview with Khris Thayer at MarTechSeries.
You can also learn a bit more about Khris and the rest of the OPTIZMO team on our Leadership Team page.