Greg Cangialosi started Blue Sky Factory, a leading email-service provider, in 2001 with an initial investment of “only a couple thousand dollars,” he admits.
“We started in 2001, when getting investors wasn’t even possible [due to the 9/11 terrorist attacks],” the president and CEO tells WEALTH magazine. “We had no choice but to bootstrap it. We launched without any venture capital and grew it organically. We did $3.6 million [in 2008] and are on track to do $5 million [in 2009].”
If Cangialosi’s company hits his predictions, that’s an almost 40 percent increase between the two years. Headquartered in Baltimore, Blue Sky Factory now has offices in Boston, Charlotte and San Francisco. While other companies are laying off employees left and right, Blue Sky Factory is growing.
Blue Sky Factory developed its niche by helping businesses manage their customer lists and send out email newsletters. It is now a full-service agency offering a wide variety of professional services, turning businesses into broadcasters of their own message. Cangialosi blogs as the “Trend Junkie” and is constantly on the lookout for the next big thing in marketing, whether it’s YouTube, Twitter or LinkedIn or a new service just over the horizon. While he stays on top of the trends, he firmly believes that email is going to remain the core of internet marketing services.
“Email is the currency; it’s the only commonality of Web 2.0,” Cangialosi says. “You can’t use any of the other tools online without an email address to bring everything back together.”
Blue Sky Factory’s services allow its 600-plus clients to use their email marketing contents to broadcast across the entire landscape of the social media web (sending them out through a client’s Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.). Businesses can then receive tracking updates of how far their reach extended.
“Email is not going to go anywhere; it’s the vine that brings it all together and allows business to cross-pollinate and build community.”
Cangialosi’s company is now recognized as an industry leader, and he is an accomplished speaker at trade shows and business conventions. He makes a conscious effort to stay on top of new social media and marketing trends and keep Blue Sky’s name out there via interesting blog posts and company YouTube videos (including a behind-the-scenes tour of the Blue Sky offices in the vein of the MTV Cribs television show. Check out the company’s YouTube channel: blueskyfactory.com/tv).
“It’s amazing the amplification of signal we’ve seen companies achieve in terms of branding, timeshare and overall social equity out there,” Cangialosi says.
For example, one of his own employees used Twitter to share with his followers the fact that he wanted to sell his house. The local media heard about it, did a story, and the house sold. Cangialosi has also seen response to his blog posts from across the world.
“I wrote a blog post about some best practices and some industry trends, and within 24 hours of posting it I received an inquiry from an ad agency in Australia,” Cangialosi says. “The creative director of a major agency was commenting and asking questions. That turned into a dialogue that eventually turned into that person referring us a piece of business that wasn’t related to their business at all. That’s amazing.”
Visit Blue Sky Factory or find Greg Cangialosi’s latest blog posts at thetrendjunkie.com.
Tags: Blue Sky Factory, email service providers, Internet marketing, social media, Trend Junkie