Bizstartup.ie - ENTREPRENEURS

John McNamara and Barry Murphy

Interactive Mobile Marketing

Entrepreneurs may discover they are learning new skills during the launch of their business, as John McNamara found himself doing when he launched Interactive Mobile Marketing in November 2008 with Barry Murphy.

Entrepreneurs may discover they are learning new skills during the launch of their business, as John McNamara found himself doing when he launched Interactive Mobile Marketing in November 2008 with Barry Murphy.

So while the duo understood direct marketing solutions, and launched their first product, Sendmode, in January 2009, picking up the phone to make cold calls was something else entirely.

“Our background is technology so we’re learning a lot about business,” McNamara explains. “For us, as computer programmers, it was very hard for us to become salespeople, but now we’re quite comfortable. It was very difficult at the start.”

Success and growth

Their work has paid off. Today, Sendmode is sending out almost half a million messages a month, and has about 500 customers – many in the UK – with three to five customers signing up daily. Based in Letterkenny, Co Donegal, the company has already signed contracts for 2010. Its plans include releasing smartphone applications and McNamara would like the firm to expand some more.

“The reception has been fantastic,” he says. “We’ve been growing very, very quickly in terms of our volumes for our first product, for Sendmode, and we just signed our first fairly substantial deal for €100,000 and … our first iPhone contract. So as a company we do the SMS stuff but we also do the smartphone technologies.”

Business idea

The idea for the company first took root in an empty restaurant, where McNamara had been pondering how a lot of businesses had been having a hard time. A recession, after all, had Ireland by the throat.

“We thought we could use mobile phone technology and to bring a product out,” McNamara explains. “We knew there were products in this space but we wanted to bring out a product that was accessible to all business, to use mobile marketing, to get the message out to the customers. So that drove us to research how we could become the lowest-cost provider and how we could provide the best service. Once we realised we could become the lowest cost and also hold on to very, very good service, we decided then, let’s go, let’s start the business.”

Launching during a recession

While on the surface it may sound extremely risky to launch a start-up during a recession, launching a business during a depressed economy had its benefits, says McNamara.

“You realise very quickly things like rent and office spaces can be negotiated hard, we also went out into the market with the product, the market tells us very quickly that price is a huge issue for the market.  We were able to move very quickly on the pricing of our product and the service we offer and very quickly became the lowest cost for the best service, and that certainly was a reflection of the economy – everything was basically on cost.”

Photo: Barry Murphy, left, and John McNamara, co-founders of Interactive Mobile Marketing and Sendmode