Spending large sums of money on digital engagement isn’t much good if you’re adopting a ‘spray and pray approach’. So says Xtremepush, a software developer shepherding brands in the field of online engagement.

Founded in Dublin in 2014 by Tommy Kearns and Kevin Collins, Xtremepush helps businesses garner more digital engagement from their customers. It also allows them to interpret and commercialise the large amount of data they gather from customer interactions with apps, websites, emails and other digital channels.  

Xtremepush’s founders initially targeted the sports sector, landing Leinster Rugby and the IRFU among their first customers. The company now has over 300 enterprise customers on its books, among them some big US firms such AS Hearst Digital and 7-Eleven. Other customers include banks, sports betting and gaming firms, and e-commerce and travel companies.

Xtremepush’s services revolve around its online  software platform, which customers use for digital notification management. When someone downloads your app, Xtremepush facilitates creating push notifications to send to the user if they’ve opted in to receive them. 

These notifications pop up on a user’s home screen and can be a mixture of text, image or sound. They can help persuade the customer to finish an online transaction, check out a new service etc, and clicking on the notification brings them to a landing page of choice.

In Association with

Xtremepush also provides in-app messaging services that don’t require opt-in approval. They work when the user is active within the app and can help to familiarise users with the app itself and its services or product lines. 

A fundraiser in September 2016 saw the company secure €400,000, including €200,000 from taxpayers through Enterprise Ireland. The company booked a loss of €153,000 that year, as year-end debtors increased 25% to €165,000. In 2018 the board has been beefed up with non-executive directors Bryan Carroll, formerly a bank CTO, and John Hartnett, chief development officer with Paddy Power Betfair.

These appointments were followed by 2018 acquisition of Emailcenter, based in Northamptonshire. Emailcenter specialises in email marketing for big brands and had net worth of £1.1m at the end of 2016. FinRes, an M&A advisor in Dublin, advised on the deal and capital strategy, with funding arranged by Capital Step in Mayfair.

Recently Xtremepush became the first Irish-owned tech firm to earn a place on the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Mobile Marketing Platforms. According to CEO Tommy Kearns: “It is particularly pleasing to be praised for our real-time analytics and communications, as well as the scalability and ease of use of the platform. These are three crucial aspects of our offering.

“The report also testifies to our cross-channel capabilities, which we know from clients is a huge differentiator for us. Unlike some other vendors mentioned, we are strong across all digital channels, not just mobile, including web browser, SMS, email and social messengers.”

CTO Kevin Collins added: “Our rapid growth is due to the profound effect our solution is having on forward-thinking brands around the world. We consider ourselves to be strategic partners, and work closely with clients to consolidate their engagement channels, unify the data silos and deliver exceptional customer experiences.”

In the Q&A below, Kearns  explains the company's development path.

Who are Xtremepush’s founders?

Xtremepush was founded by myself and our CTO, Dr Kevin Collins. Before Xtremepush, I held a number of roles in the value-added services side of mobile technology. I moved into mobile app development in 2007, co-founding iMobile Applications with Padraig Shanley. Kevin Collins is a data scientist with experience in the big data analytics and engagement space. 

How did Xtremepush come about?  

It originated from an ongoing problem faced by some of our iMobile clients. We would build a new app for their business but they were unable talk to their customer in a relevant way. Padraig and I went to DCU looking for a technology partner to help develop an engagement solution. After some discussion with Kevin, Xtremepush was founded. Our technology was 18 months in development before launching in March 2014.

What is your USP?

We typically become the complete multi-channel communication hub for clients, enabling them to use the data they own to deliver and automate communications through any digital channel, with a complete feedback loop. We own our entire technology stack, which is important with  GDPR looming.

There are other solutions that work for single communication channels, such as email only or push only. With Xtremepush, a business can have one solution to understand, engage and influence their app users. 

As a solution provider, we recognise that the technology must be simple to implement and operate, so we have a huge focus on ease of setup and the usability of our product. One example of this is our Google Vendor Partner status with Tag Manager, which enables marketers to deploy our solution quickly without leaning on technical resources. 

How is the service priced?

We use a software-as-a-service pricing model, which is based on monthly active users and the number of modules used by the client.

How do you view the startup landscape in Ireland?

Over the past number of years, there has been a big culture shift, with large SMEs and enterprises looking to specialist startups to solve some of their business challenges. Ten years ago, you needed scale to get a meeting with the right people in a large organisation. Now they understand that innovative startups can add significant value quickly. Because of Ireland’s size, once a startup gets some traction it needs to start looking to the UK and further afield to drive growth.

Where do software startups go wrong with their marketing?

There is a tendency to raise some money and use the ‘spray and pray’ model for marketing, which in a lot of cases does not work and burns a lot of cash quickly. In the B2B enterprise software market, companies should concentrate on the product, securing traction with early customers and solving their problems. 

Once you have done that, I think it is easy to ask customers to help with your marketing efforts by giving good testimonials through case studies or videos that you can then market in a much more powerful and believable way. I believe this type of content marketing is vital, and customers are generally happy to co-operate once they see you have delivered on your customer promise.

Gartner's Verdict on Xtremepish, from 'Magic Quadrant for Mobile Marketing Platforms', published 15 July 2019

"Xtremepush is a Niche Player. The company positions its solution as a purpose-built mobile marketing platform with aspirations to become an MMH. Xtremepush’s platform highlights real-time engagement and message delivery, and supports major mobile messaging capabilities as well as real-time analytics. Marketers in digital commerce, travel and hospitality, financial services, and online gambling should consider Xtremepush.

Strengths
Real-time analytics and communications: Xtremepush’s platform emphasizes synchronized multichannel engagements that flow from its Maxautomation cross-channel journey builder. The company supports real-time data ingestion via a real-time big data analytics (RTBDA) architecture built on Apache Kafka and similar event-streaming service platforms. Xtremepush plans to develop a single-integration method for extending real-time capabilities to every event in a customer’s ecosystem, rather than adding real-time events via SDKs.

Scalability and cross-channel capabilities: In 2018, Xtremepush acquired email service provider (ESP) Emailcenter, bolstering its already robust support for all major mobile and web message techniques. In addition to native email capabilities, the Emailcenter acquisition included the Maxautomation journey builder tool, adding drag-and-drop journey building capabilities to the platform. Some customer references have scaled Xtremepush’s platform beyond outbound marketing campaigns to encompass internal corporate communications.

Ease of use: With a combination of detailed templates and rule-based segmentation, customer references noted the ease with which nontechnical marketers were able to design and execute complex journeys with multiple messaging and communications campaigns. Xtremepush can create direct links to a customer’s CMS, enabling marketers to dynamically assemble localized content for any message, email campaign or offer.

Cautions
Campaign analytics and reporting: Client references reported a desire for greater detail in campaign analytics as well as improvements in the depth and flexibility of reporting capabilities.

Robust capabilities require a phased implementation: Client references desired more mature mobile messaging capabilities from the platform. References cautioned that adding channels requires close work with the support team."

Photo: Xtremepush founders Tommy Kearns (left) and Kevin Collins