Emailvision, an email marketing platform of almost 15 years, has expanded its offering to such levels that a name-change to the company it acquired in 2011 was necessary.
In a statement released by the newly named ‘SmartFocus’, chief executive officer Brad Wilson, described how the rebrand was a better fit for the additional services it now offers its current 2,500-strong customer base.
“Our business has evolved to the point where the name Emailvision no longer reflects the wide range of ways that we help our customers,” Wilson said. “At SmartFocus, we’re committed to delivering real-time personalised marketing across channels at each stage of the customer lifecycle.”
We probed Wilson further on the reasoning behind the rebrand and how he hopes to give brands increased customer loyalty off the back of it:
Why did you decide now was the right time to rebrand?
Brad Wilson: Emailvision was a pioneer in email marketing, and became one of the largest providers of highly personalised, permission-based email marketing in the world. However, over the past five years, our business has evolved into a broader multichannel cloud marketing platform that serves the needs of our clients across email, mobile, social, web, and other channels. For that reason, the name Emailvision no longer reflected the wide range of ways that we help our customers – we needed a name that reflects what we do today and where we are going tomorrow. At SmartFocus, we’re focused on delivering real-time personalised marketing across all channels and at each stage of the customer lifecycle. We help businesses to find a smarter way to focus on their customers.
How long have you been working on the rebrand?
BW: Upon joining the business eight months ago, we started exploring our options around rebranding.
How will the rebrand better position you to compete with ExactTarget since its acquisition by Salesforce?
BW: The rebrand finally aligns our story with the actual capabilities and value that we bring to customers, so this obviously helps us compete more effectively in the market.
Now that the rebranding is behind you, what is next for SmartFocus?
BW: We have a regular product release cadence, and the next phase of it is the new October 2013 Service Release that is coming later this month. It’s packed with new features for our customers in the areas of analytics, integration capabilities, smarter cross-channel marketing and more. We’re also making major investments to further ramp up our partner ecosystem. It’s an exciting time to be in this market.
What does the future hold for brands looking to use SmartFocus to drive loyalty?
BW: It’s clear that the future of marketing is all about driving personalised, real-time messages to customers across a wide set of channels. Whether you are looking to automate behaviour-based campaigns in real-time across multiple channels or automatically deliver targeted recommendations across e-commerce websites or emails, the SmartFocus Cloud Marketing Platform enables you to continually engage customers with relevant, personalised messages that drive campaign performance and increase customer lifetime value.