Few would argue that there is nothing as un-sexy, yet more useful than voicemail. Sure, in this day and age of rampant text messaging and social media, the thought of leaving a voicemail message may seem quaint. But, is there really any more efficient of a method of providing information than just using your voice?
While voicemail is an entrenched service in the mobile space, most current offerings are somewhat limited in their usefulness. Beyond the basic saving and listening, the most advanced advancement appears years ago in the form of visual voicemail, which allowed users to manage their inbox more efficiently.
Looking to take that application to the next level is YouMail, which has taken the growth of applications stores across smartphone platforms to target consumers directly with its visual voicemail service. The company claims its current offerings handle more than 1 million calls per day across North America.
The Irvine, Calif.-based operations currently employs around 15 people, mostly focused on development and operations, and has three positions available on its website, including a senior software developer, B2B sales consultant and customer care analysts.
YouMail CEO Alex Quilici explained that the company initially got its start in providing its service to Research In Motion’s BlackBerry platform, which initially did not have a visual voicemail component.
“BlackBerry was initially the market of least resistance as there was not visual voicemail on that platform,” Quilici explained, adding that recently the BlackBerry platform has “fallen off the map.”
Moving forward, Quilici noted that he sees the greatest growth coming from Google’s Android platform that he said was better as a development platform when compared with Apple’s iOS as it’s not as restrictive.
Working in the app market environment has also forced YouMail to rely heavily on word of mouth to get its message out, as well as viral marketing campaigns to get in front of consumers. The company is currently focused on the consumer space, but Quilici said the company has also seen interest from smaller enterprises looking to provide a more unified voicemail offering for their employees.
Quilici also touched on the touchy subject of over-the-top applications and how the mobile industry has struggled to find a happy medium between app developers providing the compelling content and wireless carriers providing the pipes on which those applications run. Quilici said he felt that the current model would evolve over time to a point where carriers could tap into the revenue stream in a similar manner that application stores garner a piece of application sales.
“OTT will be a place where carriers do well over time,” Quilici explained. “Carriers at some point could offer hooks into their networks that application developers would be willing to pay for.”
RCR Wireless News: So, what does YouMail bring to the mobile table?
Alex Quilici: Right now, YouMail offers two applications: YouMail Visual Voicemail Plus (for iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry), and WhoAreYou (For Android).
The YouMail Visual Voicemail Plus is essentially voicemail on steroids, with its four biggest features:
–Getting your voicemail anywhere – smartphone, computer, tablet, even e-mail, or through a mobile website.
–Treating your callers specially – by automatically greeting them by name or by a personal greeting, including user-generated greetings from an active greetings community, and the ability to block certain callers like telemarketers from leaving voicemail.
–Knowing exactly who called with “Visual Caller ID” – an image – such as a Facebook photo or brand logo and name, for almost every caller, whether or not they’re in the user’s address book.
–Sharing with one-click – the ability to effortlessly post voicemails on Facebook or Twitter, and e-mail them easily.
The WhoAreYou application is all about real-time “Visual Caller ID,” where you can see who is calling and easily stop them from bothering you with one click.
RCRWN: Who is the target market for your voicemail application?
Quilici: The target audience for YouMail visual voicemail is a smartphone user that wants more than a traditional voicemail service, especially those who “get a lot of voicemail.” In practice, this turns out to be primarily people in the 24-45 age group, with segments such as “sole proprietors,” “soccer moms,” and the “urban crowd” substantially overrepresented versus their presence in the general population.
RCRWN: What is the price point/service level for the application?
Quilici: The core applications are free but there are premium services.
RCRWN: What is the business model for YouMail?
Quilici: YouMail’s business model is a freemium model, with the goal to get users on the service and then migrate a substantial percentage to premium services. For now, the main premium services are a “human-edited” transcription service, so people can very accurately read their voicemail (in contrast to the relatively poor quality automatic services that are out there), and a “professional” service, that is ad-free, provides some additional storage and privacy features, and has toll-free customer support.
RCRWN: What it your prime sales channel for getting the YouMail service to customers?
Quilici: YouMail is growing almost entirely by word of mouth from the users of viral features in the product. We’ve started adding distribution partners, with regional carriers like Viaero preloading YouMail on their phone, and other carriers like Immix, Blue Wireless, and VoicePulse making YouMail the default voicemail for all their users.
RCRWN: It seems like most operators offer a similar service. Who do you see as your main competitors in this space?
Quilici: Comparing YouMail’s services to an operator’s service are like comparing a Ferrari to a Fiat. Yes, they’re both cars, but one offers a dramatically better driving experience that makes their owners happy. Our service(s) are fundamentally different – they are dramatically more feature-rich while being kept simple, and they’ve been built to leverage community and to interact well and automatically with other apps people use on a day-to-day basis – and for the same or lower price, which makes it pretty compelling.
That said, we don’t see any other companies offering a service as compelling as YouMail. Even the current visual voicemail services have not been enhanced since their introduction several years ago. Our biggest battle is the inertia of people not switching from their carrier’s voicemail to a free service that outshines what they’re currently using.
RCRWN: How significant was the recent deal you signed with LetsTalk.com to preload the application on certain devices? What sort of uptake have you seen from that deal?
Quilici: We think the LetsTalk deal will be the first of many, where YouMail starts being delivered at the point of phone purchase versus having to be discovered in an app store later on. We haven’t released any numbers but we are very pleased with our initial results. The fact of the matter is that many users will click on most icons that come with their phone at some point, and once they try YouMail, they’re very likely to stick around.
The ability to enhance a basic function of a phone with a service like YouMail can be a key differentiator for device manufacturers and large carriers. Including it as a free “value-added” service for customers can add to the attractiveness of their product or service and help retain customers who would have to take a step down to a different, less feature-rich basic service.
RCRWN: How has the “app” environment changed the playing field for application developers?
Quilici: The app environment is actually key to reinventing the entire “value-added services” segment. The old “stand-alone” carrier provided and marketed services built by legacy infrastructure companies and run “in-network” is now being replaced by direct-to-consumer services, delivered through applications on top of cloud-based platforms. Most are done with a freemium model and marketed by viral features and word of mouth. YouMail is an example of a company that’s completely oriented to the new world – we’ve got a massively scalable platform (that has handled well over 1 billion calls), we’re focused on building apps that are naturally viral, we’re selling direct to consumers … and we have a freemium model. More importantly, we’re now starting to get distribution partners who see the value in making services like we have available to their customers.
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