£300,000 Investment for 25% of Mailtrack Ltd
Cube8.com PLC
10 April 2000
Cube8.com plc invests £300,000 for 25% of Mailtrack Limited
Cube8.com (www.cube8.com), the AIM-quoted internet incubation and investment
company which also provides strategic management consulting and technology
services, is pleased to announce that it has made a cash investment of
£300,000 in Mailtrack for a 25% stake. Cube8.com also has an option to
increase its stake in Mailtrack by a further 12.5% within 12 months.
London-based Mailtrack(www.mailtrack.com)is an interactive permission-based
email marketing company that provides a number of low-input high-return
turnkey solutions. Permission-based marketing is becoming increasingly
critical as it avoids any notion of 'spamming', a term used for emails that
are distributed indiscriminately.
Mailtrack's current customers include MyTaxi, a subsidiary of Affinity
Internet Holdings Plc, and Panlogic. Mailtrack uses proprietary software and
owns full intellectual property rights to all software that it has developed.
The services that it offers are in both business to business (B2B) and
business to consumer (B2C).
Mailtrack will use the funds raised for marketing and distribution, and to
further enhance the capabilities of its proprietary technology. In addition
to the financial investment, Cube8.com offers Mailtrack advice, and a number
of synergies within the family of companies in its investment portfolio.
Mailtrack makes internet based advertising work harder for its customers by
generating the much higher response rate gained via permissive email marketing
- this is attractive to advertisers as banner advertising response rates have
dropped to as low as under 1% in many instances.
In B2B, Mailtrack offers solutions to businesses that want to outsource their
email list management, and also offers them the opportunity to obtain revenues
from these lists via targeted advertising. Other services offered by
Mailtrack include data capture, and targeted and trackable real time marketing
tools.
In B2C, Mailtrack offers consumers, via affiliate distribution programmes, the
chance to opt in to receive email bulletins and newsletters on subjects in
which they are interested. This offers a medium for advertisers to reach
highly targeted markets, which is extremely valuable.
Commenting on the investment, Tim Dean-Smith, Chairman and Chief Executive of
Cube8.com said, 'Email marketing is a very significant sector of the
advertising market, with leading companies in the US such as digitalimpact.com
and Yesmail.com already quoted on NASDAQ. It's been shown to be the most
responsive route to date for advertisers' communication. Mailtrack is well
placed to become a significant European player, and there is also great
synergy with our other incubatees such as Tao Talk, Blue Carrots and Web
Street.'
Guy Marson, CEO and co-founder of Mailtrack, said 'We chose Cube8.com as a
strategic investor due to their Internet expertise and contacts, and also for
their financial and commercial knowledge. We believe that they are the ideal
partners to help us grow the business in the UK, and expand it into
Continental Europe and beyond'.
John Winfield, Finance Director of Cube8.com, and Stephen Masters, Cube8.com's
Online Director, will join the board of Mailtrack as non-executive Directors
with immediate effect.
For further information, please contact:
Cube8.com plc Tel: 020 7243 2000
Tim Dean-Smith, Chairman & Chief Executive
E-mail: tim@cube8.com
Mailtrack Limited Tel: 020 7243 2000
Guy Marson, CEO and co-founder
E-mail: guy@mailtrack.com
Issued by:
Bankside Consultants Limited Tel: 020 7220 7477
Henry Harrison-Topham / Julian Bosdet
E-mail: henry@bankside.co.uk / julian@bankside.co.uk
Note to editors:
Cube8.com plc is a technology focused incubator and investment company,
principally established to identify, invest in, and grow start-up businesses
within the internet, media and technology sectors.
Cube8.com provides marketing, sales channels and contacts for US based
business looking to expand into Europe and also for European businesses
looking to expand to other parts of the world. The company's shares started
trading on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock
Exchange on 28th February 2000.
Mailtrack was formed a year ago following the massive growth of email
marketing in the US, where permission marketers have achieved much higher
response rates than traditional marketing methods. The past year has been
spent researching the market and developing proprietary software to run the
system.
The company is in discussion with a number of large portals and ISPs at
present.
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