E-marketing services score sweetly

"The website encourages interaction and participation by consumers. It is lifestyle-orientated and achieves a high degree of interactivity that is building up a significant email database for Canderel," she continues.

Full consultation

The strategy was developed in full consultation with Jason Frichol, group brand strategist at Canderel's distributor in South Africa, MeriBrands, resulting in an e-marketing campaign designed and structured to complement and reinforce the conventional off-line marketing programmes and competitions.

"Within two weeks of opening the interactive website, the email database grew from zero to 4500 and a consistent growth has been maintained since then," says Papanicolaou, adding that many of Striata's e-marketing solutions are amalgamated on the Canderel website as part of its goal to maximise return on investment for clients throughout the electronic communication lifecycle.

Visitors to the Canderel website (www.canderel.co.za) are able to register to receive emails, enter competitions carrying attractive prizes and forward health/lifestyle questions (the best, with the answers, end up being posted on the site for the benefit of other visitors). It encourages participation and response.

Strategic information

Movement on the website is tracked and analysed, providing strategic information of benefit to the company. When emails are sent to the database, hits on the website increase almost immediately by as much as 40%. Papanicolaou says MeriBrands can then make an accurate judgement on the success of each marketing promotion.

According to Frichol, South Africa is a unique market in the context of Canderel internationally: "Canderel in South Africa holds the biggest market share of any single country worldwide and is considered a shining light within this global enterprise."

He adds that market research had established that the bulk of Canderel users in South Africa are connected to the Internet and cellular networks for SMS and MMS.

Digitally literate market

"We are dealing with a digitally literate market and that has opened up opportunities for us to very effectively connect with and communicate to our consumers because we have available such immediate and direct channels in the form of telephony, email, Internet and mobile technology."

Converted into a dynamic entity, Frichol says the website now develops and evolves through consumer response and is quick to adjust. "We have our own online nutritionist, there are competitions and a questions and answers facility - visitors get real value from the site. It is clean, clear, simple and highly interactive and it is making a difference for us."