For people working in the media or anyone who owns a website and needs to send info to users, automated marketing platforms are a lifesaver. One could post manually on multiple websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and others, but the smarter way to do this would be to use a service that automates this process. While there are a myriad of companies offering this service, the startup Postoplan challenges them while making a name for itself.
Expansion and a New office in the UK
Postoplan offers services as an automated marketing platform for social media and messengers. It has now secured $1.5 million (€1.43 million approx) funding from lead investor TMT Investments accompanied by YellowRockets. The startup will utilise these fresh funds to bolster its U.S. business and continue developing and improving the platform’s algorithm.
Postoplan is currently planning further expansion in the U.S. and increasing partnership networks in diverse B2B and B2C industries. “Postoplan is very successful in the upward trend of advertising and marketing in social networks. Alexey and his team managed to create a powerful product, and we believe it will grow fast”, notes Artyom Inutin, co-founder and Managing Partner of TMT Investments Venture Fund.
The startup will also expand its current team of 36 people as it goes ahead to open an office in the UK. They will hire soon in the UK as they plan to expand their team to at least 70 people by the end of the year.
A freemium approach
Currently, Postoplan is available for its users as a freemium model that offers a subscription to medium and small businesses without any time limits. In a conversation with UKTN, Postoplan’s founder and CEO, Alex Bozhin notes that the company’s freemium offering doesn’t take away from what’s on offer. Instead, the paid version adds to an existing suite of solutions. Also, the startup claims it is the world’s first platform that enables the creation and automatic publication of content on WhatsApp.
“A user can choose a standard subscription package and use it without any trial period free of charge. Or they can choose a Premium package with an expanded list of features. This is the only such offer on the market for social media marketing platforms,” Bozhin notes. This is in stark contrast to what its rivals offer for free accounts.
For example, Buffer, one of the biggest SaaS solutions providers for social media management, lets free users plan 10 post publishings, connect 1 account and use 3 channels. Bozhin says, “Such restrictions make it impossible to use the platform for free constantly. The standard free subscription at Postoplan has no restrictions on the number of posts, the number of connected accounts, or the time people spend on the platform.”
Additionally, the startup will also strengthen its R&D post-funding. It will implement Artificial Intelligence to create and offer a new AI-based product.
Getting ahead of the competition
Buffer, Hootsuite, Sprout Social are some of the platforms that Postoplan is competing with. To establish itself against such bigwigs is a tough task, but the company’s latest funding round suggests they’re going the right way. The startup currently has over 100,000 clients in 147 countries and is present on all continents. As per the founder, its services are being utilised free of charge by many educational institutions worldwide for over a year.
“Our clients include Ministries of Education in several countries. We don’t insist on payments. But we are, obviously, a business, so we do have a paid subscription for those who need more than our free basic functionality,” Bozhin says. “This is what distinguishes us from all the competitors. We focus on users, and we care for small and medium businesses. We recently scrapped all the restrictions, so now our Freemium clients have no limits on the number of posts, users, and accounts. No service offers anything comparable.”
The idea for Postoplan was formed after Bozhin’s 15 years in marketing, which propelled him to make a more effective offering. “I have used lots of different tools but as a marketing professional, I was never fully satisfied. The algorithms were unclear, the effectiveness was insufficient,” he notes. After realising the potential in this market segment, he started working on a SaaS offering with a user-friendly interface that is geared towards helping small and medium businesses.