Wouldn’t it be great if you could send a letter to someone and not have to kill a tree, print the darn letter, sign it, get that yucky stamp and envelope glue on your tongue and you could do it all for less than 10 cents?

This is probably the point in the article where you scratch your head and say to yourself “well don’t I sort of do that with an email?”

Well…yeah, you do but with an email you can only send it to someone if you have their email address.  If we’re smart most of us try to limit those people who have our email address or forever lose it to the spam demons –  Zumbox allows you to ‘virtually’ send someone a letter such as a word document or a pdf to their home or business address. The person at that address can then ‘read’ the letter by going to the Zumbox site and using a pin and their address, collecting their mail.

Business Model:

•        Nice and simple – people ‘mailing’ a letter to an address are charge 5 cents and can upload it at Zumbox

Some Core Functionality/Elements:

•        Supposedly all physical address – homes and businesses have an electronic Zumbox for them on the site

•        Collect your mail at Zumbox after receiving a ‘pin’ at your home or business address. The irony is Zumbox need to send you a physical pin by the good ‘ol mail system before you can access your virtual ‘address  letter’ box

•        Multiple formats supported:

o   Documents: PDF, Word

o   Publishing: Illustrator, InDesign, QuarkXPress

o   Graphics: Photoshop, GIF, JPG, TIFF, etc

o   Print stream: PostScript and others

o   HTML, Flash, video, audio and other media

·         For businesses via:

o   Databases: Raw data from AP / AR / CRM / ERP

o   Accounting software: Quicken / Peachtree etc

Likes:

Like, Like, Like.  This site is well built, thoughtful, intuitive and the business concept makes head shaking sense.  Imagine if businesses got behind this concept and encouraged all of their users to get behind this…just imagine…

“Hey dear customer – rather than sending your Comcast bill to your mail box – we’ll send it to you via Zumbox – just go to their site, type in your address etc…”

Makes sense right?  Less trees, less envelopes, less stamps etc.

I could never get another piece of mail in my mailbox again – just those pesky coupon books so I’d never open it ever again. Joy!

Another key like is I have already, whenever possible, moved to digital billing – banks, utilities, you name it – all paperless so in a sense I don’t really need Zumbox right? Wrong.

Right now – I have to go to the Comcast site to download or at least review my paperless bill. Then I need to go to PG&E to do the same thing…you know where I’m going right? With Zumbox I could have these all ‘sent’ to me so I don’t waste time going to umpteenth different websites. Not saving any more trees but it certainly makes me a happier customer.

Dislikes/Suggestions:

•     Every address in the US supposedly has a Zumbox.  How do I know if I’ve been sent mail via Zumbox if I don’t have a Zumbox account? Zumbox doesn’t have my email address so they can’t let me know unless they send me a conventional envelope. If I got a Zumbox letter at home saying “You have mail at Zumbox.com” I’d probably think it was a spam and would be unlikely to sign up…you Zumbox guys need to figure that out…I think business support from utilities, banks etc are the key!

•     As a business this system makes most sense to me if I have most of my customers using Zumbox. I’m going to need to encourage them to use the system – I’ll need an opt in customer mailing list and I’ll need to send those non-subscribers their regular mailing. In a sense this is not different from what already happens but it still adds some complexity. Is the lower cost worth it? Businesses will need to compare Zumbox costs to their own cost structures

My Virtual Investment:

With my virtual $1M, I would zum to invest a virtual $1M. Think about it!  If you could have been an early investor in FedEx – an earlier ‘alternative’ to USPS then you’d be sitting on a beach with your cocktail of choice.  This is a big play and if they can crack the usual ‘chicken and egg’ then Zumbox offers a huge opportunity for customers, investors and trees alike.

 Good luck Guys!

http://beta.zumbox.com/

Interested in other articles about Zumbox?

•             http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/23/zumbox-delivers-paperless-mail-in-beta

•             http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10163247-2.html

•             http://twitter.com/Zumbox

 

Zumbox is certainly one to watch!

Andrew

http://www.Andrewive.com