A YORK entrepreneur has become North Yorkshire’s first approved partner of the marketing platform Mailchimp.

Ellen Cole is the managing director of the Little Seed Group, based in York’s Priory Street, which offers marketing, PR and social media services.

Among the consultancy services it provides is support on how companies can use Mailchimp - an all-in-one marketing platform for growing businesses.

Becoming a Mailchimp partner means the 32-year-old has been recognised as a professional who provides top quality e-marketing services.

In addition to this she will be able to access exclusive resources for her clients and students; be able to use the Mailchimp branding in her training courses; be the first to be trained in new Mailchimp programmes as well as be provided with further co-marketing opportunities from the Mailchimp team.

Ellen said: “I am so proud and thrilled to have been recognised as a person who offers high-quality Mailchimp services. Now I have the backing of Mailchimp, I am now going to put the finishing touches on my email marketing training courses and hope to bring them to market in autumn 2019 so I can help more businesses become more confident with using Mailchimp within their organisation.”

Ellen set up her business in 2017 after the last company she was employed at closed suddenly.

She spent her last tenner on printing out personalised letters at the library and hand delivering them to food, drink and hospitality businesses across York. This risk proved successful as within two weeks she had a healthy roster of clients to her name and now has a waiting list of businesses wanting to benefit from her marketing, PR and social media expertise.

Ellen said: “I lived in Acomb at the time and walked into the city centre where I handed out letters and spoke directly with the business owners, after this I made my way to several business parks and visited many hotels, B&Bs and guesthouses along the way. I am glad I did it.”

A few years after Ellen established her business, she started to notice a pattern in that more SMEs (Small and medium-sized enterprises) and sole traders were getting in touch wanting to work with Ellen but not having the funds to invest in her services long-term. Having identified an unmet business tech need, Ellen started creating several training programmes to fill the void which many SMEs and sole traders were experiencing. During her time creating her training programmes Ellen felt it was vital to get the backing of the companies whose services she was going to train others in hence why she undertook Mailchimp’s rigorous partner programme in order to become an approved partner.