Client interview series – End of year review with Fred Lerner CEO of mailpix.com

We are always eager to get to know our clients better and learn more about the strategies they apply in their businesses. Recently, Datacrushers had the privilege of interviewing a long-time client, Mr. Fred Lerner, CEO of mailpix.com. In addition to mailpix.com, Mr. Lerner owns two additional sites that too use Datacrushers cart and revenue abandonment tools; winkflash.com and mypix2.com. We wanted to gain some advice, insights, and knowledge from Mr. Lerner, as his experience in the photgraphy vertical within eCommerce has proven to be a massive success.

Datacrushers: Tell us about your business. How long have you been working on this venture?

Fred: I’ve been in the photography industry all my life; starting with film cameras. I was able to go into the online imaging business once phones started to provide the option of taking truly high-quality photographs. I quickly established www.mailpix.com. Previously, the challenge was encouraging people to take more photos and to take a camera around with them. Today, everyone has a decent camera in their pocket, as most people cannot imagine their lives without a smartphone. Therefore, the important part of the equation is already accomplished. Mailpix has been in business for 5 years now.

Datacrushers: Photography is a wide category, what is your vertical?

Fred: What we do is provide an intuitive and easy-to-use utility, which allows people to transfer photos from their phones or computers, and turn them into beautiful photographs. Customers can have those photos on prints, canvas prints, photo gifts, mugs, t-shirts… We can put an image from a phone onto almost anything from banners to shower curtains, wall coverings and more. Products such as canvas prints, photo books, and photographic prints are really popular right now.

People often say, “Nothing is more precious than a memory.” When there is a fire, or hurricane or any circumstance that forces people to leave their homes and you ask them what they took with them, they always say that they took their photo albums.

Datacrushers: What is your business model, and what platform do you use?

Fred: Our business model is a mix of original growth and brand acquisition. Typically, when we acquire a brand we maintain its identity. We use a proprietary in-house platform for eCommerce.

Datacrushers: Tell us about some of your achievements in 2017

Fred: This year we completed the following three acquisitions;

In addition to our acquisition efforts, we also have a very successful suite of apps. One of our most popular apps is https://www.mailpix.com/apps/same-day-prints-ios. Same Day Prints is an app that allows you to print photos directly from your phone. You select your photos, and the app sends them over to CVS – Americas largest pharmacy and consumer goods retailer. You pick up your photos and pay there, so no credit card is needed during the ordering process. We have many fans of the app as it’s incredibly simple and intuitive.

Datacrushers:  What steps do you take in order to prepare for the ever-busy holiday season?  Black Friday and Cyber Monday must be incredibly tough.

Fred:  The photography industry, like many others, is very Q4 centric. Q4 is gift giving time. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the two peak days of Q4 – and our marketing team has been preparing for 3-4 months on email campaigns, and working with various people and companies like Datacrushers, in order to get everyone geared up. We have our advertising and marketing ready to go.

Datacrushers: What are you looking forward to in 2018, and what are some new strategies to win big in the next year?

Fred: Well, we look forward to more acquisitions, and more organic growth, similar to what we have done in the past because it has worked so well for us.

Datacrushers: How do you find acquisitions?

Fred: We know most of our competitors, and conversely, most of them know us. We go to trade shows and keep up to date on trade publications to see what’s going on in the industry.

Datacrushers: If you could give one piece of advice to retailers for a successful ’18, what would it be?

Fred: “Do unto customers as you would have done unto you”. Because we service our customers with care and efficiency, they expect when dealing with retailers that they will receive the same type of service. We have become demanding because we treat our customers with a great deal of respect. My advice for e-commerce is to shop your competition. Understand what your competition is doing correctly. Understand the good, the bad, and the ugly of competitors. If you think you can do it faster, better, or cheaper than your competition, then you have a business model.

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Black Friday, Cyber Monday on Steroids by Datacrushers

Now that you’re ready for the holidays, make sure you’re ready to capture every sale you can and stop any abandonment before it happens. Datacrushers is a revenue discovery platform and global leader in site-wide revenue recovery and acceleration.

Disrupting the status-quo, Datacrushers is fundamentally changing the way online merchants use real shopper analytics to boost revenues and improve client lifetime value. Using machine learning and artificial intelligence, Datacrushers is a technology and platform agnostic tool designed for rapid go to market deployment across any language and currency. Datacrushers enables revenue growth by the use machine learning and artificial intelligence to mine real user, site and product data into actionable analytics to drive highly targeted and personalized multichannel campaigns both on and off-site.

By | 2017-10-31T12:21:43+00:00 October 31st, 2017|BFCM, Black Friday Cyber Monday, Cart Abandonment, Client interview series|Comments Off on Client interview series – End of year review with Fred Lerner CEO of mailpix.com