This week, Benoît De Nayer, Managing Partner at Citobi, talks about the Actito platformmarketing automation platform, for the series of interviews with actors of emailing.
Can you give us a brief history of Actito? When was the platform founded, by whom, has the business model evolved since the beginning of the adventure?
Actito was launched in 2001, about a year after the foundation of Citobi, a company specialized in relationship marketing. The business model has always been based on the sale of licenses and related services.
What makes Actito unique? What distinguishes you from other players in this very competitive market?
Actito has always presented itself as a marketing automation platform rather than a simple e-mail marketing tool. It is based on a powerful CRM engine oriented towards user data management. Email is one channel among others such as SMS, print, social networks.
The structure of the application allows it to be easily integrated into the clients' business processes thanks to the "Relationship Marketing Portal" which offers a set of tools for developing customized marketing applications.
What are the 3 main challenges for the next few months in the emailing world?
The first one is certainly the exponential growth of the mobile, whose use is about to dethrone the other means of access to e-mails. It will force us to rethink not only the design of the e-mails but also the timing of campaigns, segmentation, the content... In short, it will turn all e-mail marketing habits upside down.
The second is the one campaign automationThe tools already exist to create scripted campaigns, but the uses are not numerous. Marketers will start to take a closer look at the possibilities offered by these tools to set up campaigns that will follow the consumer's behavior throughout his life by triggering mailings at the right time.
The third and not the least is Business Intelligence in the broadest sense: digital marketing and e-mail marketing in particular generate very large amounts of data that are still difficult to exploit today. One of the main challenges for marketers will be to try to use the data from consumer visits to select relevant content and thus increase the return on campaigns.
What are the next evolutions of your platform?
The different Actito modules continue to evolve in parallel (campaigns, Crm, forms...). The emphasis in the developments will be on further increasing user-friendliness through the use of new interface technologies.
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Thanks to its modular approach, Actito will be able to interface more easily with third-party applications made available to users through an "app store". The "customer intelligence" component will also evolve to offer even more advanced reporting possibilities.
Do you offer your customers a "Freemium" mode (free version with reduced features)?
No.
If so, what do you get out of it? If not, why not use this model?
Actito's business model integrates software and services. In order to get the most out of the software, we offer a personalized support that is not compatible with the freemium model.
What do you think of the French emailing market? Is it mature or is there still room for new innovations?
The French e-mailing market has two characteristics for us: it is both very mature and very competitive. France was one of the precursor markets for e-mailing in Europe, The solutions that have been developed there have nothing to envy to the American solutions for example.
This is also one of the reasons why this is a very competitive market where it is not easy for new entrants to find their place. However, there are important margins for innovation. Especially at the top of the market where e-mail marketing has to be integrated in omni-channel approaches.
A final word to conclude?
The e-mail that was given for dead a few years ago is still very green... 2013 is shaping up to be a particularly interesting year.
