As we were closing the books on 2008 this past week, both literally and figuratively, my co-founder Munish Gandhi and I spent some time reflecting on the past year. We discussed the scope of Clickable’s offering today compared to our original intentions. We reviewed the lessons learned from conversations with our customers, partners and investors. We considered the worsening economy’s impact on search advertising, and much else. Because we’re committed to transparent and meaningful conversations with our customers and our community, we’d love to share these reflections with you. More than anything, we’d love to hear your feedback.

I’ll be frank: for everyone at Clickable, 2008 was simply exhausting, if often exhilarating. We completed the commercial release of Clickable Pro and Clickable Community; launched Clickable Assist, our premium full-service team; released Clickable Conversion Tracking; implemented our first Clickable Express partnership with LexisNexis; and closed our Series B round of financing with our incredible venture partners, Union Square Ventures, FirstMark and The Founders Fund. All along, we made improvements to every one of our products based on customer feedback. It is a testament to the energy, intellect and passion of our team that we were able to achieve all of this.

As mentioned, we “released” many new products and features into the market in the past year. But the truth, as Marc Andreessen so accurately put it, is that the market ripped those products and services out of us. Everything we’ve done has been a response to two very basic questions: What are the most demanding problems facing our customers? And how can we help them solve those problems simply and profitably? Whatever our original intentions and goals may have been, our actual product roadmap has been determined by what the market ― you, our customers ― demands of us.

We were reminded of this throughout 2008 by a pleasant surprise: many of our customers had much higher ad spend than we’d originally been targeting. Our goal in launching Clickable was to bring simplicity to search marketing for small and mid-sized businesses. We didn’t set out to capture the “enterprise” market. As we saw it at the beginning of the year, the key distinction between those two markets was the complexity of their goals, and we thought that “enterprise” customers were operating at a level of complexity that was outside of our scope. As it happens, those clients value simplicity as much as any others, and they found that simplicity in Clickable’s tools.

With this perspective in mind, any discussion about our plans for 2009 is, of course, provisional. Some things won’t change: Clickable Pro will continue making it simpler to manage search advertising, including more accounts, larger keyword sets and more campaigns. We’ll continue helping our customers optimize their ad campaigns to specific revenue goals, and track performance with custom reports driven by independent and consistent measurement. Clickable Assist will continue to augment our customers’ internal marketing efforts with our premium team of search marketing professionals. And our support team will continue to help our customers on email, on Live Chat and on our 800 line. They will strive to resolve all customer challenges and inquiries within 24 hours.

As important as all of this is, the over 60 members of our dedicated product team won’t be satisfied with incremental improvements. They will continue to launch significant new releases. As early as February, Clickable will be the first fully compliant tool using Google’s new API, with support for search, image, mobile and local business campaigns. In late Q1, we plan to release a full agency feature set, including better bulk management features, campaign cloning features and comprehensive reporting systems, all with white-label capabilities. Later in the year, we’ll integrate new vertical advertising networks, including new formats such as social media and display exchanges.

Of course, we recognize we are entering 2009 in a very different and challenging economic environment. Odd as it sounds, I believe Clickable is not only well positioned despite the general market environment, but because of it. With an impending recession, advertisers are demanding that their marketing investments drive specific and targeted economic goals. In the coming months, there will be more realignment of traditional advertising dollars to more measurable investments―especially search marketing. This is not to say that search marketing will be unaffected: the focus on performance will mean that even new search advertisers will optimize for profit rather than clicks, a fundamental shift. This is happening at a time when the complexity of search marketing is overtaking the competence of even experienced online advertisers. Search marketers, new and old, will seek to reduce complexity and costs, and they’ll need to do so quickly.

Fortunately, we predicted the migration to performance even before the economic downturn, and we built Clickable Pro and our other products to account for it. This is evidenced by core functionality like “Goal-Based” recommendations and our online advertising conversion-tracking tool. And from the day we began Clickable, simplicity has been our primary goal. (Every employee is given a “WWAD” ― “What Would Apple Do?” ― bracelet when they start.)

Most importantly, everything we do will continue in collaboration with our customers. There will always be a place for Clickable in tomorrow’s market, because tomorrow’s market will determine what Clickable is and will be.

I’d like to close by thanking our early customers, our partners, and the Clickable team. You are our founding stakeholders, and the primary shapers of our culture. That culture is a unique one: we strive to do extraordinarily more good than bad. It’s our 7:1 rule, the ratio of positive to negative that we aspire to meet every day. It’s nearly unobtainable, and that’s the point. But that “1” on the right side always reminds us that we’re not perfect, and that we need to solicit and listen to your advice about how we can improve. When we fail, we want you to tell us, so we can confront the problem, resolve it, and move forward―very, very quickly. Our boldest claim at Clickable is that no company has more resources, energy or desire to make you a successful search marketer. We just need you to tell us what we’re doing right, and what we can be doing better. So please let us know.

Munish and I are deeply grateful to be part of building Clickable with all of you, and we wish you great fortune in 2009.

Warm regards,
David
Co-Founder and CEO, Clickable, Inc.