MAIL METRICS

Adecade of military training with the Reserve Defence Forces taught Nick Keegan the value of a tactical retreat. The Dublin entrepreneur found himself in a deadend with his outsourced mail services business in 2015, and he realised that its survival depended on the company finding a new direction. Having raised c.€850,000 equity investment, Green Letterbox pivoted to become Mail Metrics (No.16), a B2B provider of digital and mailroom services.

“For Green Letterbox to work we had to sign up consumers and the companies that send the documentation,” Keegan explains. “The idea failed because we were trying to solve a consumer problem – managing online billing accounts – but all of the power was in the hands of the service providers like banks and insurers. We couldn’t get traction with them.”

Keegan (32) hails from an entrepreneurial family and in 2013, he launched Green Letterbox with Polish brothers Marcin and Pawel Jernas. The service centred on an app through which consumers could receive digital post, manage passwords and business communications, set bill-pay reminders and the like.

“Our initial idea didn’t interest corporates but it was clear that they had problems with their customer communications,” Keegan recalls. “We went back to the drawing board to develop what would become the Mail Metrics product suite. Luckily, our investors were understanding, and they assured us that they had backed us as a team.”

The Mail Metrics’ digital platform brings the idea of mail and communications consolidation to businesses rather than consumers, supplemented with analytics and workflow management capabilities.

“Pawel and Marcin set up a development team in Poland, and in Ireland we have our customer-facing roles such as sales and support. We employ 28 people and with clients the first step is a lift and shift of the ‘as is’, where we take over management of the client's mailroom and provide inbound and outbound post as an outsourced service. The second step is the digital transformation element,” Keegan explains.

Operating company Green Letterbox Ltd booked a profit of c.€140,000 in 2019, reducing accumulated losses to € 610,000, and trade debtors increased by 70% yearon-year to € 170,000. Shane Woods, who has expertise in M&A and fundraising, recently joined Mail Metrics as chief financial officer to help explore possible expansion for the venture in the UK.