• by Jess Nelson , October 5, 2017

Europe’s largest email marketing software company is expanding into the United States.

From its headquarters in Poland, GetResponse powers the email marketing campaigns of more than 350,000 customers around the world. The company delivers more than 1 billion emails per month, with a deliverability rate above 99%.

With half of the company’s sales volume deriving from the United States, CEO Simon Grabowski says it was a logical next step to expand into North America. He says the company scouted a few different locations in the U.S., but fell in love with the Boston area.

“Boston has an incredibly European vibe to it,” says Grabowski. “It felt like home.”

Boston is also the home of Mike Morris, the newly appointed head of GetResponse US. Morris was previously vice president of customer acquisitions at cloud VoIP phone solution Grasshopper.

Boston will become the company’s “business development hub,” says Morris.

GetResponse plans to invest $30 million across the next two years for U.S. expansion, says Grabowski. He says the company plans to hire new talent for the Boston office, primarily focused on account management, business, and sales.

“The Internet is amazing,” says Grabowski. “Here we are -- a Polish company -- fortunate to become successful without a U.S. presence. As we’ve matured and developed, we now have the capital that enables us to launch an expansion full-force.”

GetResponse’s European roots are a differentiator in a competitive market with the likes of MailChimp and ConstantContact, particularly ahead of the implementation of GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) in May.

GDPR is an EU data privacy regulation, but it also affects any company outside of Europe that is marketing to European citizens.

“American companies want to actively market to European customers, but GDPR can open up a can of worms,” says Grabowski. “It will be much easier for us to offer that type of compliance out of the box.”