Form your own opinion about Epsilon with the interview of its Customer Service Director for France, Nicolas Potier. Feel free to share your opinion about Epsilon in the comments.
Can you give us a brief history of Epsilon? When was the platform founded, by whom, has the business model evolved since the beginning of the adventure?
Epsilon was founded in 1969 by 4 Harvard students, creating the first database to store information on members of the university's various fraternities. 40 years later, Epsilon is now one of the world's leading data providers, not only in North America, but also in Europe and Asia.
In 2004, Epsilon was acquired by Alliance Data. Since then, our offer has covered a much broader spectrum than just data. We offer access to the technology needed to process the data we collect. Our solutions and expertise in email marketing are widely recognized, but we also address other channels such as social networks and SMS within a resolutely multi-channel platform. Last but not least, to make data knowledge and technology as relevant as possible, we offer a marketing consultancy service as well as a communication agency which enables us to support our customers in optimizing their communications.
By the numbers: In 2012, the Alliance Data Group is a $3.6 billion company. We host 9 Petabytes of data for our clients (which represents 1.5 billion contacts in base) and we send for our clients over 40 billion opt-in emails per year.
What makes Epsilon unique? What distinguishes you from the other players in this very competitive market?
In France as in Europe, our expertise is oriented towards "email marketing".
We are able to support our clients wherever they are, through 37 offices worldwide, and have close relationships with local ISPs, making it easy to manage inbox issues. In email marketing, we don't do acquisition and focus on retention, which greatly enhances our reputation
on the market with ISPs, which our customers benefit from. We provide a tool in SAAS mode, which the customer can use themselves or delegate to us to focus on strategy.
Data, our historical core business, is now our main development axis for Europe. Data is at the heart of all marketing decisions: it tells us when, how and through what channels our clients should address consumers. We are now building databases for some of the world's largest companies, including the largest American banks, who trust us in terms of both service quality and security. Our objective is clearly to bring our French customers to these reflections in order to better address their bases, avoid attrition and improve the return on investment of marketing campaigns. Our integrated solutions leverage the power of transactional and demographic marketing data, as well as strategic insights, data analysis and creative campaigns. They also leverage robust digital and database marketing technologies to connect brands and their consumers, both online and offline. This allows brands to increase customer engagement and generate quantifiable marketing revenue.
Finally, at Epsilon the support is clearly different from what some of our competitors offer. When you sign with us, you are assigned an account manager who often has more than 10 years of expertise in email marketing and data. This account manager manages a limited number of accounts and is accompanied by an operational account manager to ensure responsiveness
maximum. You also have access to 24-hour technical support with guaranteed SLAs depending on the priority of your request. In case our native solutions are not enough, we are also able to develop for you "in-house" solutions in order, for example, to guarantee the automation of flows between the client's database and the Epsilon platform or to trigger complex email scenarios remotely via our API. In addition, for topics related to marketing strategy, you have dedicated marketing consultants, supported by analysts and statisticians, with "vertical" expertise, i.e. by industry type.
What are the 3 main challenges for the next few months in the emailing world?
- The multiplicity of reading platforms and uses. What is my mobile population? How can I ensure that my newsletter is optimized for reading on smartphones or tablets, without neglecting its display on a large screen? Once my user has clicked on my newsletter via their phone, am I able to send them to a mobile application or site? And when is the most effective time to write to them since they can now access their emails at any time and through any channel? Each user typically uses multiple email addresses and accesses them on several different devices in a single day. Does your router have the technology and expertise to help you meet this challenge?
- The CRM approach. How to integrate email marketing campaigns with other marketing channels? Are you able to know today how many times and through which channel you have engaged with Mr. X, a loyal customer of your brand for years. Do you know how many emails you sent him last week, how many times he interacted with your call center, if he went to your physical store? To buy something or to complain to the salesperson and ask for a refund? Is he a fan of your Facebook page or subscribed to your Twitter feed? Is your router capable of supporting you beyond email marketing?
- The notion of commitment. Beyond the act of purchase, how can I create long-term commitment? How can I improve the profitability of my campaigns in the long term and reduce my inactive rate? Which indicator(s) should I follow to measure engagement? What is engagement? How does it translate to my customers, to my business specifically? How can I improve it? Is your router able to offer you expertise coupled with that of a communication agency?
What are the next evolutions of your platform?
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It is now important to adapt to an increasingly omnichannel environment. New technologies must be able to help marketers effectively engage with their consumers across multiple channels and develop real-time, actionable strategies.
Do you offer your customers a "Freemium" mode (free version with reduced features)?
No.
Why not use this model?
The "Freemium" model is not in line with the expectations of the customers we target and it could only be done with an advertising model and without support, which we do not conceive. We are not a technology provider, but a true strategic marketing partner for our customers.
What do you think of the French emailing market? Is it mature or is there still room for new innovations?
The French email marketing market is unfortunately still often the playground of the lowest bidder in terms of price. The "CPM" ("Cost per Thousand") is at its lowest and will not go back up... just like the opening or click rates of the customers who leave on cheap solutions.
Fortunately, and many have understood this in France, the real value comes from our customers' contact base. It can quickly become exhausted (spamming, unsubscribing, inactivity, etc.) and no longer respond to inappropriate solicitations. If our client is not able to interpret it in time and consider corrective actions, the money saved on the "CPM" will be largely compensated by the colossal loss generated by the attrition of the database. On this point, I think the French market is coming to maturity with many issues now related to CRM and data, upstream of email marketing.
Finally, we are happy to see that the explosion of social networks has not been at the expense of email, which remains one of the best direct marketing channels in terms of return on investment for those who know how to address it intelligently.
A last word to conclude?
Just to thank you for this interview!
