Type LLC Founder Rick Sears Headquarters Johnson City Parent organization SpotSocial, Inc. | Industry Internet Area served Worldwide Founded 2000 | |
 | ||
Key people John Cannon
(President) & (CEO)
Rick Sears (Founder) Products Bojos, email signatures | ||
Email Ideas is an American software company that created the Bojo, a graphical email signature and conglomeration of social tools. Email Ideas is headquartered in Seattle, Washington.
Contents
Email Ideas was founded in 2000 by Rick Sears, and later merged with iPlenus Solutions to form the Cannon-Sears Group, the new holding company of both divisions. The company's signature product, initially called an eCard, was changed to Bojo, meaning “greetings/best wishes” to reflect expansion into blogging and social networking in addition to professional markets.
Email Ideas
In 2000, Rick Sears founded Email Ideas out of Wilmington, North Carolina. The company began building eCards for local businesses. eCard creation and maintenance was manual.
Cannon-Sears Group
In August 2006, Email Ideas merged with Johnson City, Tennessee-based web solutions provider iPlenus, forming the holding company The Cannon-Sears Group. iPlenus founder John Cannon assumed the role of President & CEO over both divisions of the company.
Over the next several years, the company's creative and technical teams worked to automate eCard creation, facilitating installation in most email environments. A strong foothold for the product was found in the real estate market, where Email Ideas quickly became a preferred vendor for Exit Realty, Prudential Real Estate, and Weichert Realty.
In October 2006 Email Ideas released their automated system, which allowed customers to customize and install their own eCards with the ease that had been lacking in previous years.
Following a period of rapid growth, Matrix Strategies privately invested in May 2007 for additional product development.
Real estate expert Rick DeLuca began promoting Email Ideas in February 2008 as a part of his nationwide seminar programs.
Elizabeth Ward Small, acclaimed real estate success, started promoting Email Ideas in her own seminar tours in May 2008.
The following month, in June 2008, Email Ideas officially branded eCards under the name “Bojo”.
Products
Email Ideas' flagship product, the Bojo, is a personalized HTML email signature that can include contact info, a portrait, and live links to websites and social tools.
The Bojo has undergone many design changes in its history, becoming more stylized as additional capabilities are added and per user request.
In February 2007, TextMe service became available. Clicking the TextMe button on a Bojo will send a text message to the owner's cell phone, facilitating communication and immediate mobile feedback.
Email Ideas changed their business model in March 2008, shifting away from a purchase-to-use structure and moving toward an ad-supported use-for-free model. This follows in line with their growth into the blogging/social networking community, and expands the market to include non-business use as well.
In August 2008, Email Ideas released their ePaster software—a floating icon that pastes Bojos into blogs, social networking sites, websites, documents, emails, and other HTML-enabled programs. The next month, a Bojo widget entered Beta phase, with a goal of automating pasting into social networking sites.
Summer 2009 will see the launch of Bojo Studio, a graphical user interface (GUI) for editing the shape, colors, text, background, and order of each field on the Bojo.
April 2012, PRS International agreed to acquire substancially all of the assets of Email Ideas. and appointed Paul St. Onge - Chairman of the Board