Founded almost 10 years ago, as the new millennium dawned, CoolerEmail is entering its second decade in 2010.

Reaching that milestone is an opportune time to look back at CoolerEmail from its beginnings to now. Examining the email marketing industry as a whole, we see how it and CoolerEmail have grown and developed together in dramatic fashion over the decade. So put your nostalgia hat on and get that faraway look in your eyes as we return to 2000 and compare then and now.

Early in the development of Internet marketing, permission-based email was identified as an economical and powerful tool for direct communication. Founders Leif Youngberg and Lars Helgeson wanted to make it easy for anyone to capitalize on this new opportunity in direct marketing by offering a reliable tool to send professional-looking, permission-based communications and track responses. CoolerEmail was one of the first companies to integrate robust customer relationship management software with HTML e-mail campaign tools.

From its inception, CoolerEmail promoted best practices by emphasizing the importance of sending solicited communication only. The term spam is traced back to 1993 and actually predates the legitimate use of email marketing. By the time CoolerEmail was founded, spam was already an annoyance, but Congress was still three years away from passing the CAN-SPAM Act (new regulations later went into effect in July 2008). Thus CoolerEmail’s founders made it their mission to work diligently with ISPs to develop the industry’s highest deliverability rates while helping their clients send legitimate, opt-in email.

From those humble beginnings with just a handful of clients utilizing CoolerEmail’s robust functionality, CoolerEmail now sends millions of permission-based, trackable emails on behalf of thousands of clients each and every day. Working directly with all the major ISPs, CoolerEmail is proud to offer its clients the highest deliverability rates in the industry.

In 2000, Gallup found that only 54 percent of Americans used the Internet, and 89 percent of them used it for e-mail. Today, most Americans use the Internet, with a vast majority of them using it to send and receive email regularly.

CoolerEmail has always led the industry with innovative features and unmatched reliability. CoolerEmail’s founders believed then, as they do now, that customer service is paramount. Our Cooler Support Team is “fanatical” about support, providing live help during business hours by phone (866.4.COOLER), email or through social networking sites.

Speaking of social networking, the sites Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn didn’t even exist in 2000, but now they do, and CoolerEmail was, of course, an early adopter of all three. Social networking continues to grow in importance, as an adjunct tool for Internet and email marketers. In 2010, you’ll see more robust CoolerEmail functionality and integration for social media sites.

The team at CoolerEmail is looking forward to our second decade as the email marketing service that stands out from the rest in technology, usability and customer service. As we like to say, It’s Just Cooler!