Emailage Rides Out Post-Holiday Rush In Q1

The first quarter can be even more chaotic than the holidays for some companies — or, at least, it brings its own post-holiday flavor of chaos.

Startup Emailage, which leverages customers’ email addresses to identify and prevent eCommerce fraud, had a solid game plan going into November and December, helping its customers fine-tune their systems and prepare for the anticipated fraud barrage that would be hitting retailers during the busy shopping season. That plan enabled it to weather the season more or less smoothly.

However, the holidays inevitably reveal the chinks in retailers’ fraud defensive armor, meaning the first quarter tends to be a time of major strategic changes.

Anthony Enrico, Emailage VP of Customer Success, said that has certainly been the case these past few months, and the startup has been working hard to help customers evaluate new products, strategies and team members as they beef up their defenses.

Enrico said the customer success team has also been making the industry conference rounds, where many corporates are beginning to show interest in email as a risk assessment tool.

Indeed, he noted, a survey by MRC released a few weeks before its conference showed that email risk assessment was one of the top tools currently desired by corporates — which made the Emailage booth a very popular place during the event, he said.

Enrico said there are always a few startups at these events touting new fraud defense techniques, but because it’s such a big problem with such damaging consequences, people tend to prefer the tried-and-true methods — which he said Emailage has now shown itself to be.

Potential customers are looking for an automated fraud tool they can implement quickly and with confidence, Enrico said. Nobody is looking to grow their fraud analyst teams, and they don’t want a solution that requires more team members or a managed service.

Emailage, said Enrico, checks those boxes, providing fully automated risk analysis and a simple, tidy score to the customer so it can make its own decision about whether to take the risk.

In other news, Enrico said Emailage is updating its products, enabling the company to consume even more information, as well as enhancing the speed of its system. He said the startup is also putting down formal roots in several international markets where it already has a smattering of customers, including Australia, Singapore, Canada and others.