Spend on marketing communications via e-mail and SMS is booming. Electronic messaging specialist Striata SA announced today that it has experienced a dramatic increase in customer activity focused on e-mail and SMS.
"This increase in activity over the past few months has produced a significant rise in revenues attributable to e-marketing campaigns," said Striata eMarketing Manager Mia Papanicolaou. "Our weekly e-marketing campaign throughput has shot up by almost 30% from 35 to 48 and we've on occasions executed more than 200 campaigns a month."
Stressing that the campaigns are legitimate marketing and operational communications from businesses that have the required permission to communicate with their customer bases, Papanicolaou said Striata adheres to a strict anti-spam policy: "All campaigns sent through Striata are permission-based."
To handle the significantly higher volume, Striata's production team has been strengthened with additional resources and two new professional services teams have been created. Quick throughput, straight messaging campaigns in e-mail and SMS are completed within 48 hours to target groups that can extend to several hundred thousand recipients. Because client databases are becoming cleaner, Striata has also noted a corresponding increase in the number of recipients with which its larger customers are communicating.
Some of the growth experienced can also be attributed to Striata's R3 million acquisition of eMessageX.com in March. The deal enhanced Striata's e-marketing strategy and execution capabilities and provided a solid platform to extend its digital communications offerings.
The groundswell of activity has also led Striata to develop a full creative department focused on digital design for electronic campaigns. Creative director Jain McGuigan and the creative team have taken on projects where customers want turnkey management of their e-communications from creative concept right through to implementation and execution.
"We now also have a custom development team responsible for programming requirements that fall outside the boundaries of straightforward messaging," said Papanicolaou. "The team includes programmers skilled in a variety of programming languages and databases. Now we not only address the customer's messaging requirements but add real value to their marketing strategy by creating flexible and innovative applications that give customers an edge in their respective markets."
Striata recently completed a campaign involving more than 450 000 SMS messages within two days, a deadline that demanded 30 000 SMS messages be sent every hour during office hours.
"With e-mail, we're sometimes called upon to execute campaigns that demand more than 500 000 messages a day," added Papanicolaou. "While the technology has the capacity to handle much more than that, the volume is limited deliberately to stagger the impact of the campaign's call-to-action on the client's customer care environment.
"Typically we encounter a slow-down of e-marketing activity towards the end of the year but 2006 is proving different - there has been a consistent increase in activity with retailers, banks, mobile service providers and the entertainment industry gearing up to make the most of the festive season."
Striata is an application software developer and service provider focused on enabling secure electronic communication. Striata specialises in the secure delivery and payment of bills, statements, pay-stubs, invoices and all other confidential documents, via encrypted e-mail. Striata has been a provider of software and services in the electronic messaging arena since 1999 and has offices in New York, London, Sydney and Johannesburg, as well as partners in Ireland, Germany, The Netherlands, Central & South America, and Asia Pacific.
Visit www.striata.com.
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