You don't know Actito ? It's normal, they haven't really arrived in France yet. However, if you have been following Badsender for a long time, you may have already read this interview which dates back to 2013. But this time, things are getting serious for Actito in France: opening of offices in Paris, a marketing strategy, ... and a Managing Director France in the person of Marc Désenfant.
A few days ago Marc agreed to answer the questions of Badsender, let's do the interview!
Could you tell us a few words about your background?
Marc Désenfant - I started my career with an experience in retail at Carrefour, where I quickly became a supermarket manager, which allowed me to learn the basics of the business. Then I spent three years at McKinsey, where my consulting assignments were obviously mainly focused on retail.
In 2000, the Come&Stay adventure began. The agency had a precursory positioning at the time on the email marketing market by integrating data, technology and service at the heart of its activity. Come&Stay experienced a meteoric growth that led us to the stock market in 2006. And then, after 14 years of good and loyal service, the Actito France adventure started about 6 months ago.
How did you and Actito meet? Did they contact you?
MD - I knew Kenya since the McKinsey era and I also knew the tool that is used by Kia in France. I was the one who went to see them and explained that the Actito platform was really made for France. I also had the opportunity to introduce Actito to Nextedia and they found that it was particularly well suited to their needs.
On the Belgian market, in general, the Citobi brand is better known than the Actito brand. Why bet on Actito in France?
MD - Citobi is to become a holding brand, and the group's communication will be refocused on Actito on the one hand and on MediQuality, Citobi's other major product, on the other. Even in Belgium, people will only talk about Actito. That's why in France, from the beginning, the objective has been to use Actito in all our communication.
Why, when the French market is saturated with emailing/ecrm solutions, do you think you have a chance?
MD - One could indeed say that there are too many solutions if we look at the market in a very broad way, that is to say by looking mainly at emailing solutions.
But if we look more specifically at multi-channel customer relationship management solutions, we can't say that the market is saturated. Today, if a company wants to centralize the management of its online customer journey, there are very few solutions available, at least if you don't want to fall into options that are extremely heavy to deploy.
We rely heavily on our agility: speed of deployment, ease of use, simplicity of integration. We want to be a long-term partner for our customers and our goal is to provide a complete service, not just software.
When you discuss this with your Belgian colleagues, what makes the French market so special?
MD - From a product point of view, what characterizes the French market is obviously the volume and more aggressive email practices than in Belgium.
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On privacy issues, the Belgians are often much more respectful of the rules while France is more "limited". This implies more vigilance in terms of deliverability.
The infrastructure has therefore been modified to be able to absorb much larger volumes: we can now manage a database of 10 million profiles without any problem. Moreover, on the deliverability aspect, Actito is now a member of SignalSpam.
What is complicated for us is the lack of awareness of Actito in France. The objective is therefore to build an image through major marketing investments in the coming months.
The level of astonishment when I show the product to different French advertisers is very high: they are extremely surprised that they had never heard of the solution before.
An anecdote: after a demonstration, a prospect said to me one day: "Oh, I'd like to play with it already". A good tool can make the use of a solution as complex and complete as Actito less dramatic. We really focus on ease of use.
And to come back to the question, at the functional level, everything is already available in ActitoThere are no major differences between the Belgian and French needs.
Do competitors see you coming?
MD - Today, nobody sees us coming. I think the other players in the market will be amazed at the quality of the product when they have never heard of it.
What are your references today?
MD - In France, we can mention Kia, which has been a customer for several years, but also Randstad, Mercedes Benz, Zannier Groupe or MonsieurDrive (now in the same group as LeBonCoin). In addition, there are of course 80 Belgian customers such as Carrefour, Toyota and many others.
A last word to conclude?
MD - We are currently recruiting massively: Pre-sales, consultants, project managers. We have a target of about 15 people by the end of 2015... let's face it!
