BrandMyMail

About

BrandMyMail is a platform for businesses to create custom email templates and signature designs. It allows users to incorporate social media content, advertising banners, and other branding elements directly into the emails. The platform also provides analytics tools to help users track email opens, clicks, and other engagement metrics.

Build

BrandMyMail is built with Python, using Django, and hosted on AWS. For the Chrome and Firefox extensions use vanilla JavaScript. For email sending, it uses the Exim email server and PostgreSQL as the main database.

Role

As the second engineer hired by the startup, I played a crucial role in the development of the platform. My contributions led to the successful integration of key features, such as new platform plugins, payments integration, corporate premium accounts, and analytics dashboard, which provided valuable insights for customers.

Later on, my work on consolidating the codebase and modernizing the infrastructure scripts resulted in increased efficiency and reliability, helping to streamline the development process.

• Worked on Backend and Frontend
• Implemented more than 20 platform plugins that required integration with third-party services APIs
• Implemented premium features for customers such as email open/click tracking, and an engagement dashboard
• Responsible for integrating payments for individual/corporate premium accounts
• Consolidated the Chrome/Firefox extensions in a single codebase reducing the maintenance and lines of code by 50%
• Modernized the infrastructure scripts by using Ansible resulting in more reliable deployments

Results

• Featured in Forbes and TechCrunch
• Good reception with small business
• High demand for corporate accounts (multiple users and consolidated billing)

Learnings

This was my first work experience and also at a startup. Here are my honest learnings about this experience.

• On a startup, the ship direction will change all the time to reach market fit. It is better to deliver features quickly and spend less time polishing.

• When you depend on a third-party service, they can pull the rug out from under you. Gmail changed its UI a couple of times, so we had to update the Chrome/Firefox extensions. Another situation, was when Google introduced Inbox (an alternative to GMail), which forced us to take a decision whether to support it or not.

• You have early adopters, and now you are introducing paid plans.
  It is bad when you introduce the paid tiers and you remove free features from early adopters. It is better to offer a paid tier for free (or at a high discount) for this kind of customers.

Media

How to use BrandMyMail 101

How to use BrandMyMail 202

Playing with BrandMyMail