Grad Profiles highlight the personal and professional stories of Founder Institute Graduates from across the globe.
This profile on Spinnakr, a Graduate of the Washington DC Founder Institute, was written by Emma Tzeng. Emma blogs at http://emmatzeng.wordpress.com, and you can also follow her on Twitter at @emmatzeng.
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Look out, folks: the web is about to get real personal. And Spinnakr is at the forefront of the action.
Spinnakr helps online marketers and website owners deliver targeted, customized messages to their visitors. In this way, users will more likely click through and follow the appropriate calls to action because the relevant information has been presented in a way that they understand.
The entire premise of Spinnakr is this: As humans, we intrinsically filter our words and navigate our conversations based on our listeners’ behaviors and values.
Similarly, Spinnakr’s technology mimics human behavior by assessing audiences and delivering individualized messages to different demographics of viewers. It does this by collecting and analyzing third-party cooking data, on-site behavior, and referrer base data to sort web traffic into specific audience segments.
In essence, Spinnakr is out to prove that the web isn’t and should never be a “one size fits all” model.
Co-founded in May 2010 by Adam Bonnifield and Michael Mayernick, the Washington, D.C.-based startup recruited hundreds of website owners just months after its initial release. Though Bonnifield and Mayernick spent some time in Silicon Valley—Spinnakr was a part of the 500 Startups class back in October 2010—the co-founders are both active leaders in the burgeoning D.C. startup community.
Studies show that tailored messages result in a four to five minute increase in users’ browsing time and triple the number of conversions. Currently, however, only two percent of the web incorporates data-driven, personalized messages to target visitors, which only means the market for customized online marketing is still ripe and Spinnakr is poised to lead the trend.
Although giant corporations and e-commerce businesses such as Amazon currently employ a similar technology that displays customized content to consumers, Spinnakr sets itself apart by focusing on targeting small business and individual website owners on a budget. It offers its service free to start and charges for additional services on its platform.
A Spinnakr account is easy to set up, too. The process only takes about 60 seconds: users are asked to copy a snippet of code and embed it into their websites. Spinnakr takes care of the rest.
Website owners can use Spinnakr to offer top influencers a special deal on a product, welcome international visitors with a message in their native tongue, correlate a current news story with site content, or attract new hires. The possibilities are nearly endless and will most likely result in a 200 percent or higher increase in user engagement, according to a study done by the company.
Backed by investors such as Dave McClure of 500 Startups, the founders of Comscore, and advisors of KISSmetrics, Spinnakr expects continued, steady growth as more and more small businesses and website owners look to its product offering to boost site engagement.
As Bonnifield exclaims, “We believe the web is going to a more fluid and relevant place, and we build technology simple enough for everyone to deploy it on their websites.”
The Internet is, indeed, evolving at a rapid pace, and successful businesses must either continually adapt to the trends already in place or re-engineer new ones. Spinnakr has certainly demonstrated that it’s capable of carrying out the latter, and it’s only a matter of time before other businesses begin to follow suit.
To learn more about Spinnakr:
