A new year has started – this means that the time for summing up and development plans started as well. We will soon inform you about new features of SARE. Today, we recall the most important events and changes that occurred last year.

Four new employees joined SARE team last year: Łukasz Rzewuski, Katarzyna Badowska, Mirka Barszcz and Marcin Gugała. They joined New Business, Client Service, and Finance and Accounting department. Marcin is in charge of new MailMedia project, which includes planning mailing campaigns with the use of ready-made address databases. Currently, 15 persons are working in SARE and we are recruiting candidates for three more positions. That is why we also moved to a new bigger office.

The increase in employment is related to the realisation of our main goal: providing our clients with complex e-mail marketing service. Therefore, in 2009 we were introducing additional services in this area. These were – among others – text message deliveries, creation and expansion of address databases, preparation and optimisation of the messages for the needs of the campaign and the above-mentioned MailMedia. In the forthcoming year, two very important features will be added – both key for e-mail marketing activities. In relation to the strategy implementation, in spring we refreshed SARE brand image, prepared new visual identification materials and an Internet website. In order to improve the contact with our clients and partners, we started a blog and established SARE profile on a social network – Facebook.

We continually introduce new functionalities to SARE system, increase its efficiency and improve security systems. We described the most important changes in the system in our blog.

In 2009, we won more than 120 new clients. We widened cooperation with the current interactive agencies, including the most prominent ones, for which we supply technology solutions from the field of e-mail marketing. We observe that our clients are satisfied with the results of jointly run e-mail marketing activities and that they allot more funds for them. In 2009, more than 150 million e-mails were sent via SARE, which constitutes 40% increase in comparison to the previous year. We also sent more than 850 thousand text messages. All this was reflected in the significant increase in our turnover.

Last year, we also actively participated in the works of working groups of trade organisations. We led the e-mail marketing group in IAB Polska, which published, among all, The Document Of Good E-mail Marketing Practices for and The Marketers’ Guide. We also took part in SMB_interactive activities. We were present at several branch conferences and continued cooperation with SGH (Warsaw School of Economics), giving lectures on e-mail marketing to postgraduate students. We participated in Useful Website Certification Programme, which aim is to improve the level of usefulness of Polish websites.

In the second part of the year, we conducted our sixth research on electronic mail in Poland. Jointly with Adam Smith Centre, we checked the effectiveness of electronic communication in contacts with Tax Offices. It is worth mentioning that for the first time we took part in Mixx Awards competition and we were rewarded for “Ja lecę!” campaign organised for Norwegian airlines. At the end of the year, we conducted an opinion research on SARE clients, which, among all, provided answers for questions regarding directions in which we should develop our products and services so as to meet our clients’ needs.

This year we will carry on with our strategy of offering complex and advanced e-mail marketing services. That is why the strongest emphasis will be put on the further development of SARE system and its enrichment with unique solutions, related mainly to the personalisation of e-mail communication and the measurement of individual campaigns’ sales effects. We also plan to develop SARE MailMedia section and SMS communication services. The recruitment process will result in enriching our team with new people with diverse competences from the field of e-mail marketing. Our goal, as the leader of e-mail marketing in Poland, is to further determine trends in the field and to deliver the highest level e-mail marketing services to the biggest and most demanding clients.