_Gurval Caer is the CEO and President of “Blast Radius”:http://www.blastradius.com/, an award-winning provider of innovative and profitable customer experiences. Blast Radius, recognized as one of Canada’s 50 best privately managed companies, integrates strategy, technology and design to help global companies better align their sales, marketing and service to the needs of their customers._
*One Degree: Blast Radius is one of Canada’s largest web development shops, yet most of your work is done for non-Canadian firms. Is this a historical fluke, a planned strategy, or coincidence?*
Our strategy from the beginning was to build a business that targeted the Fortune 1000. We believed that they were most likely to possess the resources and vision to truly understand and realize the potential of technology to create a new kind of customer experience. That was our mission from day one.
By starting in Vancouver, we were able to be more cost-effective for the West coast business community and developed relationships with companies like Nike in Portland and Nintendo in Seattle, both of which are still clients today.
Now since we have opened offices in Toronto and Amsterdam, we are also developing strong relationships within Canada and Europe.
*One Degree: We’ve seen web shops attempting to “productize” their intellectual property. Is this a wise strategy or does it have inherent weaknesses?*
Category: Five Questions
“David Carter”:http://carter.iuplog.com/ is CTO & VP Strategy of “iUpload”:http://www.iupload.com. David provides the overall technology direction of the company and consults with customers on internet strategy. David founded WebPartz Inc. which was acquired by iUpload in March of 2003. Prior to forming WebPartz, he spent 11 years at Microsoft where he had held various positions including Manager of Internet Strategy, Marketing Manager Knowledge Management, Content Management, and eCommerce products.
*One Degree: iUpload’s roots are in content management but you seem to be making your biggest inroads in blogging. At the same time, many blogging tools seem to be moving towards becoming full site/content management tools. What’s going on here?*
Our content management clients wanted more staff to contribute content, as well as including partners and customers. We used blogging as a way to allow them to do that. If you are a company with thousands of customers, managing that many posts requires a whole different approach. We took what we already knew about content management, with permissions, workflow, etc. and applied it to a new suite of tools to manage communities of blogs and blog posts. Our market is still the same, corporations and large communities; we’ve just broadened their sphere of contributors.
*One Degree: I’m fascinated by your “bubble up” content approach whereby community sites give readers blogs and then promote individual posts to more broadly read areas. Can you talk a little about this and what the appeal is for community sites over, for example, discussion boards?*
_Michael Seaton is Director, eMarketing at “Scotiabank”:http://www.scotiabank.com. He currently leads Scotiabank’s one-to-one electronic marketing strategy for the retail bank in Canada. He is responsible for the design and implementation of Scotiabank’s award winning permission-marketing program and for data-driven marketing campaigns and initiatives across the bank’s electronic channels._
_He is active speaker and is a long-standing volunteer with the “Canadian Marketing Association”:http://www.the-cma.org/, currently Co-Chair of the CMA’s E-Marketing Executive Council and is on the Board of Directors with the Association of Internet Marketing & Sales (“AIMS”:http://www.aimscanada.com/)._
*One Degree: How important is e-mail marketing to Scotiabank?*
E-mail is very important for Scotiabank and is a critical part of our direct marketing and channel strategy. Our e-mail program called “The Vault” allows us communicate on a regular basis and consistently demonstrate our brand promise of helping customers get ahead financially. E-mail serves to enhance the overall Scotiabank experience.
We have established a trusted dialogue in this channel because we use it to help educate, advise and coach customers on a wide range of personal money matters. We appreciate and respect the ability to communicate through e-mail and we strive to provide value back. Customers really “get it” and like that we are not just hitting them with offers.
And, we’ve seen amazing results. In one campaign, e-mail qualified and drove “hot” leads directly to our branch-based sales force. In this model, customers connected with their local branch where the relationship is held for an immediate and targeted follow-up. Our branches love e-mail because they are closing upwards of 50% of the leads we generate. So, our frontline has seen the importance and effectiveness of e-mail and so have our customers.
*One Degree: Phishing is hitting the entire e-mail marketing industry through decreased trust. It must be a huge concern for Scotiabank as financial institutions are the most common sites used by scammers. How has the rise of phishing changed the way you use e-mail?*