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Direct mail marketing company Addressable has abruptly gone out of business, according to a website message at its domain home, addressablemail.com, Inman discovered.
Emphasizing the suddenness of the shutdown is a website footer still advertising a recently past webinar. It sits below the following message:
“It is with a heavy heart that we announce Addressable is halting operations. We were unable to secure additional financing to keep the business operating at this time. We will not be able to fulfill any current or future mailings at this time.”
Inman discovered the shutdown in an attempt to contact its CEO and founder, Chris Tosswill, about serving on an Inman Connect Panel about artificial intelligence. Tosswill studied the technology in college and used it in the company. He has not responded to multiple attempts for comment.
Preston Holmes, who led public communications with Addressable, responded via text, merely saying he no longer works with the company.
Inman was contacted by other industry professionals about the abrupt closing. One was a customer who had recently opened an account with Addressable, paying them close to $13,000.
“You have to prepay everything with them, and use your credits within six months, but it takes some time to get your campaign up and running,” said agent and broker John Rainville of the Brokers Realty Group Limited in Lewisberry, Pennsylvania.
“I was going to send to nine neighborhoods around my office, and we hired a company to confirm the addresses, and I have two huge billboards up in my market in that neighborhood, and had heavy web marketing with Adwerx and Nextdoor,” Rainville said.
Rainville said he’s “chasing Baby Boomers” and direct mail resonates well with that demographic. His plans were to send 2,000 mailers before Addressable went into “reverse stealth mode.”
The company’s catch is its robotic, “handwritten” postcards. It had also implemented a ChatGPT-based content creation tool it called SmartCopy.
“Addressable has always been committed to providing innovative solutions to help our customers grow their businesses,” said Tosswill in March 2023. “This feature will enable real estate agents to generate highly personalized marketing messages at scale, helping them acquire more listing appointments and grow their businesses.”
In an April 2023 Inman review, Addressable was noted for multiple features to support direct mail marketing.
“Complimenting its direct mail offering is Addressable’s Listing Architect, a solution that builds landing pages for properties. Users need only upload a few photos, enter some property features and a narrative tone, and a few paragraphs of very usable copy are generated,” the review stated.
The company’s LinkedIn profile was active the week of Thanksgiving, posting a recommendation for agents to “consider the warmth of your greeting.”
There’s no advice about the risk of ghosting clients, which the post’s comments suggest is happening.
This is a developing story.
