Let’s face it—e-mail has become almost useless due to the growth of spam, embedded malware and a host of other problems. Simply put, businesses can’t rely on e-mail any more for marketing or professional communications. What’s more, spam is not only a drain on productivity, it has now been identified as a contributor to carbon emissions, albeit in a roundabout fashion.

Salt Lake City-based Sendside Networks took a close look at how businesses communicate with each other and their customers and came up with a new model, which eliminates multiple e-mails, adds multiple communication paths to a company’s Web presence and, at the same time reduces the need for on-site sales calls.

Originally designed for financial markets, Sendside Networks’ new platform offers businesses measurable metrics to track how customers are interacting with the company and, more importantly, a unified pathway to help close the deal and build a long-term customer relationship.

Sendside Networks delivers those capabilities with a communications platform that works as a service that aims to combine Web content, audio, video, Flash or existing print collateral and then delivers it as a single multidimensional message, called a package. Those packages allow organizations to prepackage and send important, confidential and complex information to their customer prospects and business partners.

Advanced reporting and analytics provide the sender with key information on when a package is opened and what content is viewed. The goal here is for businesses to align marketing and sales efforts to deliver a central location for approved content, which in turn facilitates faster follow-up on customer requests.

The overall result of a package is to create shorter sales cycle, reduce risk, improve efficiencies and meet compliance requirements. The controlled nature of package delivery also helps with DLP efforts. Sendside packages further marketing and sales goals by eliminating the need for multiple steps in the sales process and simplifying the creation of custom sales presentations or complex media kits.

Advanced reporting capabilities instantly inform senders when packages are delivered, what content was accessed, whether a video was viewed, and what documents have been read and downloaded.

The product is delivered via a Web-based service that uses Web 2.0 technologies. Users create accounts on the service (the personal edition is free) and then access a communications management console, where they can roll up documents, video, hyperlinks or other content into deliverable packages. Those packages are delivered via the Sendside secure network to targeted receivers.

In other words, a user creates a package, which is then stored on the Sendside network—a secure link to that package is then delivered via an e-mail to the receiver. The recipient then clicks on the link, which brings them to a secure Web page, where they can interact with the content, send messages, download files and so on. All activity is recorded and archived, which allows users to keep track of who has seen what and also creates an audit trail.

The platform portal offers a library, message center, reporting, signature tracking, networking and many other features that help to create an integrated communications environment. Users can log into the portal from any Web-connected system, eliminating the need for dedicated software to be placed on an individual PC. That also gives the product “netbook” appeal, where all you need is a browser and an account to stay in touch or deliver critical documents.

Business accounts range from $20 to $75 per seat per month. For enterprise implementations, pricing is based on the number of unique recipients reached in a given month. Solution providers can sign up as an affiliate to sell the service to their customers and can earn some revenue via commissions and training opportunities, or better yet, by selling mobile systems to leverage the service on the go.

Solution providers also have the option to become reseller partners, and can rebrand the product, integrate with existing Web pages, develop APIs and create custom solutions. Margins can range from 30 to 40 percent for most partners.

Sendside helps to solve a critical problem faced by many businesses by providing secure, auditable communications that can be used to create customized packages for marketing needs or to keep proprietary information secure during transmission.