Engagement through e-Marketing

E-Marketing is here! All the signs are good... an expanding economy leading to a rising e-commerce sector, increasing consumer interest in online engagement and companies big and small willing to experiment and try new avenues to connect with the people driving their businesses. The Indian internet economy is growing at a mind boggling rate of 23% and is projected to contribute Rs. 10.8 trillion to the national GDP by 2016. That’s merely four years away! In the year 2010 alone, Rs. 3.2 trillion (amounting to 4.1% of the country’s GDP) was added to the economy. So we are looking at nearly a threefold increase in about half a decade! To some companies, it seems to represent an unprecedented opportunity to innovate, develop and explore.

We are one such company! We are Octane, a marketing technology organization that provides a state-of-the-art email, SMS & web-marketing platform. We are the industry leader in this sector and one of India's top 20 technology start-ups. Founded in 2007, Octane has come up in a big way since 2010. In that year, we launched the 2.0 version of our e-marketing platform, also called Octane, for our clients and ushered in a sea change in the way Indian technology companies communicate with their customers.

What we did, essentially, was to create a technology platform that lets users create and send emarketing campaigns. It is India’s first DIY solution in this space and has consistently been receiving updates and features that have made it one of the most robust platforms to use for companies looking to send bulk email at low costs. The system is capable of sending one million emails per hour per client. That’s an incredible amount of capacity for a system that didn’t even exist till a few years ago.

What we do now, is help our clients engage better with their customers. We believe that with the right tools, any marketing campaign or project can get exceptional results and be a success. So, we offer capable software and technological solutions to fit all needs. We don’t however, believe in customer alienation and therefore absolutely dislike and discourage spam. Octane is a 100% permission based e-mail marketing platform and we promote our anti-spam beliefs more than the Octane brand itself.

Growing 600% in the last year alone, we now have offices in New Delhi, Mumbai and will soon open our doors in Bangalore. We have also proactively tied in with all leading industry bodies and agencies (like CMAI) and run special free services for NGOs. Anyone is welcome to log on to our website and try our services for free for a month. We also conduct special workshops for clients to help them better understand the best practices related to e-marketing and we are on the verge of launching certification courses for marketing professionals as well.

E-marketing is on the rise and even though it still amounts to a small percentage of the total marketing budgets at most places, research done by us shows that the scenario is slowly but surely transforming. The solutions that we offer can help companies take advantage of this trend and position themselves actively in the digital marketing space to better communicate with their customers.

Innovation has become the ‘need of the hour’. To differentiate ourselves from the massive media clutter surrounding our customers, we need to get customer attention using methods that combine creativity and expertise. Leveraging the rise of mobile internet and networked personal devices, we can create an eco-system of services that work in real-time, are personalized and consumer specific. But reaching the customer is just half the task, to sustain their interest; we then need to constantly innovate and add value to our communication. Our connections become conversations that consumers appreciate and not annoyances left best in the spam folder.

If a strategy is balanced keeping in mind all the various aspects of the stake holders, then it becomes sustainable automatically. This is where Octane steps in, we help provide our clients with the opportunity to explore new ideas, trends and innovate further to meet their challenges.