Why we built eNudge

eNudge was designed and built back in 2006, before software‑as‑a‑service (SaaS) was a popular way to meet business software needs.

The problem we set out to solve

The particular problem we were helping businesses solve was how to quickly and easily send professional‑looking, personalised email and SMS messages, in bulk, to Australians. The requirements included measuring opens, clicks on links inside emails, and how many times an email was forwarded. It was also important to make it easy for businesses to manage bounces — and the Australian Spam Act requires that you make it very easy for a recipient to unsubscribe.

At the time there were several solutions on the market, based in the USA, but we found them very hard to use — hence our desire to create a solution we could use for our own business, as well as provide to others. Business people, especially small businesses, are always time‑ and resource‑poor, so a solution that was quick and easy to use was paramount.

Built for Australia, from the start

Other solutions on the market only included email — we were keen to keep all messaging within one platform, so we set out to build SMS into our online solution too. eNudge launched in September 2006, providing bulk email and a series of SMS messages, including a mixture of email and SMS. We've been delighted to support eNudge users, and to enhance the platform, ever since.

Evolving since 2006

Technology has changed enormously since 2006, including the popularisation of mobile phones for browsing the web and reading email. This led to all eNudge email templates being made mobile responsive, so reading on a small phone screen is as easy as on a desktop — and eNudge itself was made mobile responsive, so you can view campaign statistics and manage campaigns from your phone.

Social media also came into existence, and eNudge was enhanced to track the sharing of your emails across a range of platforms. In response to the rise of autoresponders, we improved on the idea and added Action Responder functionality, which only sends messages from a series depending on the action taken by each contact attached to that series. As privacy legislation made it more important for Australians' personal data — especially data collected by government agencies — to remain on Australian servers, all eNudge data is housed in Australia. And with the rise of cloud software, eNudge has been integrated with various online tools including Outlook.com, Gmail, Xero, and more to come.

Over its lifetime, eNudge has received many enhancements — too many to describe here — along with numerous facelifts and a rebrand, and we continue to add new features regularly, often in response to specific requests from our users.

The most important reason for eNudge remains: to make it very quick for organisations to create and send professional, trackable email and SMS campaigns, and then analyse the results. If you'd like to understand how eNudge could help with your email and SMS activities, please don't hesitate to get in touch.