“One can work even from another planet. The main thing is the result”. How does Folderly work?
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Does your mailing list get caught in spam? Folderly solves this problem and helps companies get the most out of their email marketing. Six months after its release, the product is being used by over 100 clients. We decided to take a look into Folderly’s inner mechanics and see how the company works.
Vector found out from Vladyslav Podoliako, founder of Belkins Marketing Agency and their product Folderly, what the team’s work week consists of, what problems the new service solves and how Folderly treats freelancing.
What is Folderly?
Folderly is a product that solves the problem of email deliverability. Our job is to ensure that all of the client’s newsletters end up in the inbox and make them an effective marketing tool. This is why it’s gratifying when we make it possible to improve the ROI of a client’s mailing list by 3-4 times.
Folderly appeared due to the problem at our agency. Two years ago Belkins had about 800 mailboxes under their control. At one point their open rate dropped from 90% to 40%. Of course, after a few days we fixed the problem. But during that time, I reviewed the letter delivery process. I realised that there was a need for a product like Folderly.
We’ve been in operation for seven months now, and we now have more than 100 customers.
What is the relationship between Belkins and Folderly?
Initially, Folderly was worked on by the same team as in Belkins. Later we decided to form a separate team for the new product. Now everything is separate: goals, objectives, budget and teams.
We are building an ecosystem of products and services in a sales and marketing environment that covers all customer needs. For example, someone uses Folderly but doesn’t know how to write letters. We have a team of content writers and lead-generators at Belkins to do this.
We got our first two clients from Belkins. They gave us their permission to experiment and we built a product to solve their problems with email deliverability and openability. It worked for their sales and marketing department and internal processes and became our proof of concept.
Now it’s just me and one developer working on Belkins and Folderly at the same time.
How does Folderly help businesses make money from letters?
What does the average person think of email marketing? “I buy the domain, pay for the newsletter service, set up the subscription form, write and design the emails, send them out, and everything will be fine. And gets an open rate of 1%. So what’s the problem? It all comes down to three fundamental parts of email:
- where the leads come from and how good they are;
- what content and what tools we use to send it;
- how the email infrastructure is set up: domains, DMARC signatures, SPF, DKIM and so on.
Folderly deals with the last part – the email infrastructure. It handles a huge amount of information: it analyses the sender’s previous activity and domain reputation, and shows what needs to be changed. Because email authentication is like going for a loan: the more documents you have, the more money you get.
Who is working at Folderly now?
A real dream team:
- I as the founder of Folderly;
- a development team of six people;
- a digital marketing specialist;
- customer success team of two;
- sales team;
- email deliverability team.
How do newcomers integrate into Folderly?
Firstly, we developed a Wiki back in Belkins, which we are now customising for Folderly. This is where all the information about the company is stored. If you collect it all, you could write a dissertation.
Secondly, we have a cool onboarding, which is scheduled on a daily basis until the end of a person’s probationary period.
Third, we assign a mentor to newcomers, who helps quickly integrate into the workflow.
What is the work week like at Folderly?
On Monday we have a sprint planning session and go over the week’s tasks. All tasks are tied to OKRs, which we set for the quarter and year. Every day we have a grooming session (a team meeting to discuss product tasks and plan the next sprint – ed.) with the development team on the progress.
At the next meeting on Friday, we sum up the retro-meeting – the results of the sprint. Also each department has sync-calls.
You can work remotely, in the office or even from another planet. The main thing is the result”. Have you finished the task? Take the next one. We preach maximum efficiency in our work. Why do something if you don’t do it at 200%? Just a waste of resources.
Each person in the team chooses their own tasks. So you have to assess your own strengths to get everything done in time. This is the honesty of working at Folderly: everyone is clear about their strengths, deadlines and the goals for the company and each department. For example, some people take a fundamental task and work on it for a month, while others tackle many small tasks each week.
There are times when you have to work in a hurry. For example, a client calls in the middle of the night: “My integration is broken, everything is not working”. You have to switch on. We have built a three-tier system for this:
- the first person receives an SMS;
- if that person has not processed the request, a message is sent to the second person in Slack;
- if that person has not processed the request either, a third person receives an automated call.
If you work with us for a year, you will realise that one year with us is like seven years in a normal company as in space.
How is leisure organised in such a busy rhythm of work?
We have a joint programme with Belkins to support the team. If we talk about recreation, it’s paintball, kayaking, playing sports together. The important thing is that everyone can say: “I’m tired, I need a rest”. This is normal, and I tell my team to take care of their leisure time as well as their tasks.
How does Folderly treat freelancing in employees?
I understand entrepreneurial ambition. Each of us always wants more for ourselves and our environment. But I have a rather negative attitude towards freelancing among employees. Working on two projects is inefficient, because the attention is scattered, and the employee won’t be able to devote enough time to each one. Because of this, they won’t develop themselves properly either.
Everyone at Belkins and Folderly knows that you can come up to me and just say: “I want to start a project like this”. Within the group, all of our expertise and resources in sales, finance, marketing and recruitment can be used to create and develop it. In fact, this is something of an accelerator within our ecosystem. This is how we are already developing two projects.
