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Aug. 14--Myriam Cohen is a serial entrepreneur. At the first company she started, SelectJOBS.com, her focus was to find tech employees for other firms. At her latest company, the focus is on finding customers for small firms by using electronic mail.
Her company is Equilibrix. Customers sign up to receive e-mail from the merchant. Then Cohen's company creates a database, designs ads, and sends out messages from the different merchants once a month. Equilibrix's six-person staff also puts together a community advertisement flier, using noncompeting customers, and sends that out monthly.
"People print out the offers and bring them into the store," said Mario Aponte, owner of Downtown Bicycles, a Fort Lauderdale bike shop that is a customer. He says the e-mails also have stimulated traffic on the company's Web site.
"It's the ability to connect with customers inexpensively," Cohen says, that sells her service. Prices for merchants begin at $95 a month.
Although e-mail marketing is a well-established concept today, Cohen says it was an uphill battle when she started the company in 2001. In the early days, businesses didn't believe e-mail would be a viable way to get their messages across. And customers were initially reluctant to give out their e-mail addresses.
Now that so much communication is done by electronic mail, consumers don't seem to mind receiving ads that way.
Cohen's credentials as an entrepreneur are well established. Using both her computer science degree and her MBA, Cohen founded SelectJOBS.com in 1995. It was a profitable site, based on fees paid by companies looking for techies. She sold the company to CareerShop.com in 1999, the year before the tech boom collapsed.
A little consulting work followed, but not a long period of early retirement. "What are your options at that point? To sit on your hands? Or play golf for about a week? That was pretty much it," she said.
Equilibrix operates from a virtual office, meaning it doesn't have one, but it can be found online at Equilibrix.com. All six employees work from home. They are connected through a database that's located in Dallas and a server that's in Kentucky. About once a week, the staff gets together for a sales meeting in a rented office in Plantation.
The big benefit of doing it that way is in lifestyle rewards, she says. "I have two kids and I can take them to school and pick them up. I hang out with them. I go to all their plays, while my company is functioning and making money," she said.
Equilibrix doesn't have direct competition, she says, because most companies that advertise via e-mail are large enough to do the work themselves. Or, they turn to their advertising agencies.
Cohen says it takes a lot of door-to-door selling and networking to educate her small business clients that this kind of marketing isn't the same as direct-mail or junk mail. The small business's customers choose to be part of the e-mail list and they always have the option to take their names off the e-mail list. Aponte, at the bike shop, says few of his customers have opted out.
Equilibrix has about 200 clients, primarily in South Florida.
Harriet Johnson Brackey can be reached at hjbrackey@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4614.
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Copyright (c) 2006, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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