The following is an Executive Overview of our presentation at AdExpo in Johannesburg, 25th March 2010.

The Web, email, social media and mobile communication have dramatically changed Marketing by making it measureable, immediate, more intimate and interactive. All of which are wonderful things for a marketer.

Unfortunately, as marketers, many of us are diving in head first - ready to take advantage of all of the opportunities and cost savings associated with marketing via new channels, without proper planning, foresight and technology to engage with consumers in a relevant and interactive dialogue via the most appropriate or preferred channel.

To avoid blowing the brand when using new channels for marketing there are 3 pitfalls to look out for:

1. Running email and SMS campaigns as a once-off campaigns: When we run once-off campaigns, we fail to take advantage of a great opportunity to begin an engaging, interactive and relevant dialogue with our consumers. We’ve gotten their attention and we’ve opened up a channel of communication when we generate a positive response via a new channel. Use the subsequent dialogue to get to know your consumers better by capturing and centrally storing their demographics, their media consumption, and their purchase behavior and product preferences. When we fail to do this, we risk blowing the brand by not building on available analytics to increase the relevance of subsequent communications. Check out our Levi’s case study to see how one brand is getting it right…
2. Running email and SMS campaigns via multiple vendors and applications: What tends to happen with multi-channel marketing is that we tend to use different service providers or applications to communicate via each channel. So we end up storing consumer data across multiple databases which creates silo views of your consumer – the opposite of the single view we all strive for. The problems with these silo views is that we limit our opportunities to get to know our consumers better and risk contact saturation, or communicating with our consumers too frequently, because we are unable to track how often we have communicated with them across the various channels. The result is that regardless of how interested they may be in hearing from us, if they hear from us too often, they’ll unsubscribe….and we’ve just blown the brand.
3. Running mass mailing campaigns instead of narrowly segmenting your base and running precision marketing campaigns: By failing to use existing consumer data to segment our list, we send out a generic and highly irrelevant message to our consumers. The more we segment our list, the more relevant we are able to make our messaging. With the exponential growth in number of marketing messages people are exposed to today across multiple channels, effective marketing is no longer about personalisation. It’s about RELEVANCE. Inserting a person’s name into the first line of an email or SMS is no longer going to cut it. Today’s consumer is expecting their brands to listen to them, know them and be relevant to them.

The overall result of any of these 3 pitfalls is that our marketing messages – whether they are sent via email, SMS, call centre, or direct mail – are being perceived as irrelevant and intrusive, which essentially equate to SPAM in the consumers’ eyes.

And a sure fire way of “blowing the brand.”

Well, the day is finally here. Sometimes we thought it would never come. Our intrepid Adora development team has finally done it. Adora, the latest version of our marketing software (formerly known as Eureka), was born in the early hours of this morning: 1.52 am to be precise. 

(Photo right: The Adora team celebrates the birth of Adora this morning. Click to enlarge)

As amazing as it has been to watch the team pull together these past few months and put in hundreds and hundreds of late hours to make sure we met our deadline today, it’s been even more amazing to witness these guys eat.

All that late-night work and dedication has required significant fuel reserves and a quick tally has revealed the following consumption figures over the past 7 months for a team of 20:

• Pizzas                                                  750
• Steers Beef Burgers                     220
• Nando’s Chicken burgers          550      
• French Fries                                  160 kg.
• Cigarettes                                  1 200 packs
• Coke                                                300 L
• Coffee                                             500 L
• Beer                                              Enough
• Brandy                                         Enough

 (Photo above: The Adora team above “feasting” on Nando’s chicken burgers on one of their many late nights at work. Click to enlarge)

Oh….and from last night’s last sprint and celebration: 10 bottles of Champagne and 48 Red Bulls

So, if you’re a young, naïve and starry-eyed start-up and you’re busy calculating the cost of development of your dream product, make sure to include a bit for fuel. Your team will need it.

(Photo right: The Adora team working into the night to meet our deadline)

As a company made up of many passionate surfers, we’re totally stoked to have added Billabong South Africa to the list of global brands using Eureka (Adora) as their relationship marketing platform. Below is a photo of us this past Friday finalising details of upcoming campaigns we will be running for Billabong SA beginning January 2010.

Left to right: Julian Diaz (GV Marketing Manager), Gerard du Plessis (Strategic Marketing Manager, Billabong SA), Leanne Rosen (GV Client Services), Caide Oxland (GV Client Services)

Gerard du Plessis, Strategic Marketing Manager for BIllabong SA, will be working with us to grow the existing consumer database, enrich the data and engage his consumers in multi-channel and interactive campaigns to increase involvement with and loyalty to the Billabong brand.