Anyone who has sent out email newsletters knows what a hassle the design part can be. Sure, you can use the large email handlers like MailChimp and ConstantContact, but the design is still a challenge. You can use one of their stock options, but these are bland and unoriginal. However, we just came across a pretty interesting platform that makes it incredibly easy to design HTML emails: Mailmalade. We had a chance to ask the team a few questions about their platform:
Mailmalade
What is Mailmalade?
Mailmalade is a web-app for anyone who just wants to spend a few minutes in building inbox-friendly HTML emails, using their own design files and without the need for coding knowledge.
“HTML emails” is the technical name for the eNewsletters, the emails commonly used to announce events, advertise products or maintain customer engagement. These emails are called “HTML” due to the HTML attributes they have, such as the HTML links on the email that can be clicked by the recipient.
The Mailmalade app is based on an easy 3-step process. Start with uploading your own design as an image. Multiple image formats are accepted and more formats will be incorporated shortly. Then, crop and define the uploaded design, adding the HTML attributes you want. Finally, choose from either exporting the email directly to an email marketing service provider such as Campaign Monitor or MailChimp by syncing your accounts with Mailmalade, or simply downloading your newly created email in *.zip format ready for a later use.
With Mailmalade, tedious programming, long hours, visualisation errors, incompatibilities, misaligned images, severe testing… are finally gone.
Mailmalade is integrated by a team of young multi-disciplinary people, with passion for new technologies and enthusiasm for improving our lives. The team is dually based in London and Barcelona, two of the top smartest cities in Europe, both with an incredibly buzzing start-up atmosphere.
Why did you build Mailmalade? What problem are you taking on?
Designers and coders currently spend hours and hours to create HTML emails. Also checking the compatibility of the created emails is not an easy task as it requires a lot of intensive testing and re-iterations in the design process to ensure appropriate results. With Mailmalade, not only we allow them to save lots of time in the design and programming process but we also approach HTML email design to the wider public, as no coding knowledge is required to make use of our web-app.
Tell us your founding story. Was there an “ah ha” moment?
Our aim was to make the life of the designers and coders easier. And by extension that of anyone who may be interested in doing HTML emails but cannot do it at the moment because of a lack of time or coding knowledge. We just decided to spend hours and hours once and for all, so that creating an HTML email is no longer a matter of time or money but can be done efficiently and effectively.
Tell us about your founding team and their backgrounds.
Enric Cuadras Oliva is the CEO and co-founder of Mailmalade. He is an Aeronautical Engineer by background but has been pioneering several start-up projects over the last few years. For this Mailmalade project, initially started in the back end of 2013, he teamed up with four of his best friends with vast experience in web development and start-ups. Each of them bring a specialist skill to the Mailmalade team and to the development of the web-app: two are focused on coding, one is the master in web designing, and the fourth is specialised in email and social media marketing.
