How Rackspace Alumni Struck Out On Their Own To Build Pathwire, A Rising Email Marketing Star
By Nicole Jacobson, VP of Marketing, Pathwire
Pathwire, a fast-growth corporate brand that includes email marketing companies Mailgun and Mailjet, offers a fascinating case study into the ambition and drive that enables new and exciting businesses to thrive in highly competitive markets.
Based in San Antonio, Texas, CEO Will Conway and his team spun the business - now branded Pathwire - out of Rackspace in 2017, using the knowledge gained from that uber-successful multi-cloud solutions provider to make a name in the cloud, email, and API spaces.
It was a bold step because in doing so they were going up against established giants like Sendgrid, Mailchimp, and Amazon SES. As Conway says, his team has been pivotal in enabling the business to thrive. “We’ve built a business thanks to some amazing people, who have helped us take our products into a crowded market while building our solutions into an ecosystem that is getting on the radars of some fantastic businesses.”
Working with a variety of Private Equity investors, delivering significant value along the way, Pathwire has grown in size, reputation, and experience. The result of this collective effort has been significant innovation across its product portfolio alongside an expanding and enviable list of customers, including the likes of Cinemark, LaLiga, and Dribbble, among many others around the world. Today, Pathwire collectively sends 22 billion emails a month on behalf of 100,000+ businesses through its platforms Mailgun and Mailjet.
Pathwire’s Mailgun subsidiary is positioned as the way modern companies work with email. The platform’s solid infrastructure and powerful and easy-to-use APIs are designed to empower smart development teams to reach real customers at scale with a data-driven approach so their organization can grow faster. Businesses around the world have adopted the solution to get their message to the right people at the right time.
Similarly, Mailjet’s mission is to simplify email creation, delivery, and tracking through collaborative tools so customers can focus on growing their businesses. By making it easy for SMEs and enterprises alike to attract, engage and build relationships with their customers via email, Mailjet-powered marketers use the platform to send billions of emails a month.
Recently, Pathwire has begun sharing its expertise and insight with the wider business and marketing community. Among various new content and communications initiatives, the company conducted research examining how consumers are interacting with email and how brands have shifted their email strategy during the pandemic, helping inform email sending/marketing best practices.
“Every part of the organization is growth-oriented, with strong shared cultural values and the personality to focus on product innovation and customer support,” explains Conway. “That puts the business, our team, partners, and customers in an ideal position to emerge from the challenges we’ve all shared in the past year with confidence and well placed to continue on this exciting journey.”