- Press Releases
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Global Vision makes it onto the "Top 500 South Africa's best companies" listing
[July 14, 2010] The Top 500 South Africa's best companies listing accurately identifies the top South African businesses in their sector, and the major companies that are the driving force of the South African economy.
Billabong SA Catch the CRM Wave
[February 24, 2010] Billabong SA to use Adora to plan campaigns, distribute communications across multiple channels, and track responses in order to gain a single view of the consumers’ experience with the Billabong brand.
Consumers speak out on bad marketing
[December 08, 2009] In a video short produced by Global Vision, Go Trolley Films, and Stonewall Digital Marketing, the challenges of modern day marketing are highlighted as four consumers share their experience with “bad” marketing.
SAP founder backs South African leader in Marketing Automation
[July 15, 2009] Hasso Plattner, founder of SAP, the world’s 4th largest software company, invests in local, market leading marketing software and services company, Global Vision.
Acquisition adds Web 2.0 to Relationship Strategies
[May 15, 2008] Global Vision acquires 40% stake in Web 2.0 company to improve effectiveness of clients’ CRM and Relationship Marketing strategies.
CRM Leaves Marketers in the Lurch
[April 30, 2008] Lauded for its 360 degree view of the customer, CRM vendors have focused primarily on sales needs, leaving marketers in the lurch when it comes to functionality.
Global Vision makes it onto the "Top 500 South Africa's best companies" listing.
[July 14 2010]
Global Vision has been recognised as one of South Africa's best companies, according to the "Top 500 Africa's best companies" listing.
Companies qualify for a listing in the Top500 only if they meet or surpass the strict performance criteria established by the Topco Media Research department. Corporate performance is measured in 100 economic sectors, and only the five top performing companies in each sector get listed. Qualifying as a Top500 company represents a huge achievement.
Top500 is available through 150 retail outlets such as Exclusive Books and selected CNA stores.
Get yours today.
Billabong SA Catch the CRM Wave
[February 24 2010]
Billabong SA have appointed CRM software and services company Global Vision as their CRM technology partner to identify and engage with their consumer base in a relevant manner via email and SMS. Global Vision, who already serve as CRM technology partners to BP, Levi Strauss & Co, ikineo, KrazyBoyz, Oscar Tango, Wunderman, Nokia, and Nestle, will provide Billabong SA with the CRM technology platform to plan campaigns, distribute communications
across multiple channels, and track responses in order to gain a single view of the consumers’ experience with the Billabong brand.
Billabong SA will initially outsource distribution and tracking of email and SMS marketing communications to Global Vision’s Managed Services team with the goal of eventually taking these tasks in-house using Global Vision’s marketing software, Adora (formerly known as Eureka).
“This is the beginning of our path to establishing a loyalty programme for our consumers,” says Strategic Marketing Manager for Billabong SA, Gerard du Plessis. “We have a very loyal following, epitomised by our world class events. Global Vision will provide us with the technology to engage with these consumers across emerging channels and begin capturing their information so we can ensure our communication with them is always relevant.”
“This new partnership with Billabong SA is especially meaningful to us due to the strong surf culture that exists within our business. We consider ourselves adorers of their brand already,” says Global Vision CEO, Jon Jacobson. ”Adora’s advanced reporting and dashboards will provide Billabong SA with the insight into their consumers’ demographics and preferences that will enable them to build more loyalty through more relevant communication and offers.”
Consumers speak out on bad marketing
[December 08, 2009]
In a video short produced by Global Vision, Go Trolley Films, and Stonewall Digital Marketing, the challenges of modern day marketing are highlighted as four consumers share their experience with “bad” marketing. The four people represent four typical scenarios created when marketers try to engage with consumers across emerging channels, such as email and mobile, without the proper tools in place to track and manage these campaigns.
Marketers and agencies are embracing emerging channels to reach their consumers in a low-cost and measurable manner. Unfortunately, in the rush to keep up with changing times and a competitive market place, many marketers and agencies are diving in “head first” without the proper tools in place to ensure all interactions between the brand and the consumer are tracked across all channels.
According to a report released in April this year by leading industry analysts Forrester Research entitled “Campaign Management Needs a Reboot,” marketers are finding that current campaign management tools struggle to keep up with numerous digital, inbound, and emerging channels. In the report, Forrester Research urges marketers to look for campaign management tools that integrate channels, support customer dialogues, use social insights, and deliver functionality at the marketer's desktop.
The video short has been produced in preparation for the launch of Global Vision’s latest generation of its integrated relationship marketing software, Eureka, which will be re-branded as Adora when it launches in January 2010.
Global Vision recently received R 23 million in investment from Hasso Plattner Ventures (Hasso Plattner is the founder of the world’s 4th largest software company, SAP) to launch Adora globally.
Click here to view the short video.
SAP founder backs South African leader in Marketing Automation
[July 15, 2009]
Hasso Plattner, founder of SAP, the world’s 4th largest software company, invests in local, market leading marketing software and services company, Global Vision.
Hasso Plattner Ventures has confirmed investment in local marketing software and services company, Global Vision for the on-going development and global roll-out of their flagship multi-channel marketing software, Adora The fund was set up to support promising local technology companies with significant global growth prospects in becoming market leaders internationally.
To date, Global Vision is one of only five companies chosen to receive funding. Its integrated relationship marketing software is already being used locally and internationally by market leading companies such as Diageo, brandhouse and Levi Strauss & Co. to measure a brand’s performance by enabling them to engage with the consumer-base through relevant, one-to-one communication via multiple touch-points and channels. Consumer behaviour is then tracked to determine brand loyalty levels, predict future consumer behavior, and measure marketing effectiveness and ROI. The investment from Hasso Plattner Ventures is intended to accelerate Global Vision’s market penetration overseas, while simultaneously securing a dominant foothold in the local market.
Andrea Böhmert, Director of the fund says, “We select companies with products that will show significant growth in their relevant segment and finally become the market leader globally within a reasonable time frame. In Global Vision’s case, we see them optimally positioned to take advantage of the growing demand for measuring marketing effectiveness and ROI and managing one-to-one, multi-channel communication. With Global Vision’s successful track record and the new software version, to be released in January 2010, the company is ahead of the competition in responding to the need of brands to directly engage with its customers.”
Jon Jacobson, Managing Director of Global Vision comments, “Hasso Plattner Ventures’ backing not only opens up an invaluable network of contacts in the marketplace for us, but also provides us with the funding that we need to successfully compete internationally and become global leaders in our market.”
Acquisition adds Web 2.0 to Relationship Strategies
[May 15, 2008]
Global Vision acquires 40% stake in Web 2.0 company to improve effectiveness of clients’ CRM and Relationship Marketing strategies.
Local software house and Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Global Vision, has acquired a 40% stake in New Media Labs, a niche technology company focusing on the development of Web 2.0 applications. Providing CRM and Relationship Marketing software locally and overseas to customers such as brandhouse, Master Currency, and Levi Strauss & Co., Global Vision will use New Media Labs to begin developing and incorporating Web 2.0 applications into clients’ CRM and Relationship Marketing strategies.
Web 2.0, or what is considered to be the use of the Internet as a software platform and the development of applications using Web technology, gives end-users the ability to collaborate, form online communities, network and access software-like functionality via the Web. Examples of Web 2.0 powered sites include Facebook, YouTube, and Wikipedia.
“Web 2.0 enhances CRM and Relationship Marketing strategies from a customer acquisition and retention perspective by enabling customers to engage with a company and interact with a brand via new channels. Our stake in New Media Labs ensures we can provide our customers with the tools they need to take advantage of the channels their market is already using,” says Jon Jacobson, MD and co-founder of Global Vision.
Research giant, Forrester Research recently noted in a report on the boom of Web 2.0 that over half of the companies in North America and Europe see Web 2.0 as a priority for 2008.
“We are providing businesses with the ability to enter the world of blogs, RSS feeds, podcasting, mobile solution, mash-ups, social networking, widgets and wikis,” says Dereck Sigamoney, co-founder of New Media Labs. “This new world will revolutionise the manner in which traditional business takes place and will change the way in which businesses communicate with the customers and staff.”
The companies’ first joint-project is adding Web 2.0 functionality to Global Vision’s Relationship Marketing offering. “Our stake in New Media Labs is an investment in our product offering. By incorporating Web 2.0 functionality into our software we’re making them more functional and increasing end-user adoption by providing features that end-users have already embraced in popular applications such as Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube,” concludes Jacobson
CRM Leaves Marketers in the Lurch
[April 30, 2008]
"Lauded for its 360 degree view of the customer, CRM vendors have focused primarily on sales needs, leaving marketers in the lurch when it comes to functionality. Jon Jacobson, CEO and co-founder of Global Vision, speaks about new CRM trends that will be a boon for marketers".
Why have CRM applications neglected the needs of marketing professionals and always focused primarily on sales automation?
CRM as a concept has always included marketing. You have Marketing Automation, Sales Force Automation and Help Desk or Support. And despite all three being key to CRM, CRM vendors have traditionally delivered light-weight functionality in their Marketing Automation set of features; limiting them primarily to just e-mail campaign management and lead tracking. That's it.
This is due to a couple of reasons. First of all, software is primarily developed and sold to streamline processes and thereby save time and ultimately, money. To sell software, you need to convince the market that you are going to help them save money, first and foremost, since at the end of the day expected ROI is what justifies spend. So, although CRM has always included marketing, from a software perspective, the easiest place to show ROI is in sales and support, since both of these departments are made up of dozens to hundreds and thousands of people. You make these large teams 5% more efficient, cut a couple of minutes off of the time it takes them to do something, then multiply that times 100 or 1000 and you start seeing big savings. Unfortunately, calculating ROI for marketing activities is more complicated and has therefore been more difficult for a CRM application to deliver tangible value to a marketing team.
So, has it been primarily because marketing ROI is difficult to measure?
I would say so, yes, it's been a lack of hard numbers. Historically, there have been more soft factors than hard factors in marketing than in sales and support. You can quantify the effectiveness in sales and support by looking at things such as sales figures and call duration. But it's always been out of the reach of technology to be able to measure the softer factors, such as brand affinity, brand awareness and the likelihood of repeat purchases.
So, has it been primarily because marketing ROI is difficult to measure?
Fortunately it is, yes. New marketing channels such as the Web and mobile phone are giving marketers a new way of measuring response to a campaign. We see traditional media like TV and radio driving people to websites and getting people to send an SMS. This is making the effectiveness of traditional media easier to measure. So, on the one hand marketers are now being held more accountable for delivering solid results. But on the other hand, these solid results can now consist of more than just pure sales figures.
The other thing is that the Web and mobile channels are now creating an immediacy that didn't exist before, putting more demands on marketers. The time lines between campaign conceptualization and launch have been cut dramatically, and so have the time lines between campaign launch and response. As a result, marketers are now expected to run more campaigns, across multiple channels, in less time, and analyse much more data.
And these new marketing channels represent tremendous cost savings. The fact that you can now get a message out via SMS or e-mail at a much lower cost than via television or print has meant that the potential for huge cost savings and greater efficiency has increased.
So if you really think about it, it's the new marketing channels that have created the need for more marketing focused features, or Marketing Automation, in CRM applications, because of the resulting potential time and cost savings, the new demands on marketers, and the increase in data that marketers need to analyse. The market is beginning to demand it, to expect it, to pay for it.
So what functionality should marketers look for in a CRM application?
Beyond the traditional features such as list management and lead tracking, as a minimum, marketers should be looking for CRM applications that can help them implement and manage e-mail campaigns, SMS campaigns, and track responses. Beyond this, they should start looking for more advanced features that boost their relationship marketing capabilities to their base.
Ideally, they should be looking for an application that focuses on Marketing Automation that can easily plug-in to an existing CRM application, because it's going to be a while before CRM applications catch-up with Marketing Automation applications from companies that have been focusing on this for a while.
What do you mean by relationship marketing capabilities?
Relationship marketing is simply the focus on customer retention and increasing the lifetime value of a customer. So instead of focusing on customer acquisition, relationship marketing focuses on the existing relationship you have with a customer and how to leverage this relationship to derive more value, or simply put, to get more sales out of the customer base. So, ideally, marketers should look for features in a CRM application or Marketing Automation application that has a strong focus on customer retention and relationship marketing.
Is customer retention not more a support role?
No not at all. Customer retention should be a focus of the entire organisation, since it's so much cheaper to sell to an existing customer than to acquire a new one. You keep your customers happy, and they will not only buy more from you, but it will cost you a lot less to sell and market to them, and they will even refer your business to their circle of influence.
So how does marketing play a role in this?
It's marketing's role to develop and implement customer retention programmes. This can be in the form of loyalty programmes or reward programmes, for example. It's also up to marketing to create a detailed profile of the customer base and identify loyal customers, customers who are likely to defect to another brand, customers who are unhappy, customers who are happy, and then develop a targeted campaign for each group to either reward them for their loyalty or convince them to stay with you and buy again. This is what relationship marketing is all about.
And going back to CRM, how does CRM play a role in this?
Relationship marketing starts once the customer is acquired, and this tends to be where a lot of CRM applications stop providing marketers with functionality. Once acquisition has happened, you need to be able to segment your customer base into different groups based on their loyalty to your brand, their affinity to your brand. We have a 4 level scale starting off with “available” and ending up in the ideal of “adorer”. This is based on RFM value, or the Recency, Frequency and Monetary value of their purchases. Aside from pure sales as an indicator, you also need to be able to track the number of interactions your customers have with your brand, either via your call centre, a survey, a competition, or activities on the website. A marketer wanting to effectively run a relationship marketing programme needs to find a CRM solution that gives him this information. They need to look for a CRM application that helps take a consumer through the brand journey and tracks it. In other words taking a customer from “available” to “adorer” and being able to identify what stage they are in along the journey. This is core to relationship marketing.
And how is Web 2.0, the new Web technologies and ways of people using the Web changing CRM requirements for marketers?
The latest Web technologies are just increasing the possibilities for a consumer to experience a brand, engage directly with a company, and for companies to engage directly with the consumer. Web 2.0 applications such as online communities and social networking sites like Facebook, wiki's and blogs are putting the power into the consumers' hands and giving them the ability to either embrace or reject a brand and let the whole world know it. It's creating opportunities for companies to create more “touch points” to interact with the consumer and get them to experience the brand and become more intimate with the brand. The brand journey is essentially becoming more elaborate now. And with all of these new developments, all of these new “touch points” being created by both companies and customers, CRM applications need to manage multi-channel campaigns and be able to capture and track the interactions with consumers across these multiple channels.
20 April 2010
Financial Times: Venture capital: Becalmed but ready for action once the BEE deal-flow ends
Having earned revenues of R27m in South Africa last year, Global Vision expects to wedge open doors at US digital agencies that are interested in the kind of measurable solutions for mobile and online campaigns that his company has developed.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/74098576-4c0e-11df-a217-00144feab49a.html
30 October 2009
Business Day: Relief, at last, from those midnight cellphone chirps
Business Day speaks to Global Vision CEO, Jon Jacobson, about how Adora provides consumers – and marketers – with a solution to bad mobile marketing.
http://www.businessday.co.za/Articles/Content.aspx?id=85508
16th October 2009
Financial Mail: From Shotgun to Laser
Larry Claasen, Sr. Editor at Financial Mail, interviews Global Vision CEO, Jon Jacobson, on the power of marketing software such as Eureka.
http://secure.financialmail.co.za/09/1016/features/gfeat.htm
4th September 2009:
Marketing Mix: It’s about Customers, not Brands
Brand obsession has seen the focus of marketing shift away from customers. As local and global markets feel the pinch of an economic downturn, marketers can use technology to clearly understand and deliver to the needs of those people who buy their company's products. Jon Jacobson, CEO of Global Vision, shares his riffs about how brand and marketing managers can use current technology to increase their contribution to the company's bottom line.
http://www.marketingmix.co.za/pebble.asp?relid=8167
