Digital River in new issue of Forbes
forbes.com
LapLink, a Seattle-based software maker and seller, has only 40
employees worldwide and is a self-described "multimillion-dollar"
company. It outsourced its entire e-commerce operation--including e-mail
marketing, fraud detection and so on--to Digital River (nasdaq: DRIV -
news - people) and says it's a service that has more than paid for itself.
"We've been able to do all kinds of things that otherwise might not be
possible," says Casey Selleck, LapLink marketing project manager.
"We've gained cross-promotional relationships, they manage our e-mail
campaigns and they are able to keep us abreast of industry trends."
For Digital River's part, it says it is able to do this because it has scale on
its side, boasting some 10,000 clients, for which it processes millions of
transactions. Instead of just observing the customer patterns of one
individual site, it is overseeing the marketing campaigns and transactions
of all 10,000 clients.
"We can spot a trend before it happens. We can call up a client
immediately and say, 'This e-mail campaign isn't working,' " says Digital
River Chief Executive Joel Ronning. "It's not a hunch, it's a fact. We're like
Amazon on steroids."
Amazon on steroids is great for a business with Amazon-like aspirations,
but for a company that, for example, has ambitions to sell ceramic cookie
jars to a small group of collectors online, spending thousands on data
analysis is a luxury indeed. |
