Why Actito in Iberia: 8 verifiable facts

Why Actito in Iberia: 8 verifiable facts

I’ve been at Actito for a few months now and have a better perspective on what this company is all about. Before joining, I had a preconceived idea of what Actito was like, but I can confirm that what I thought is a far cry from the reality – it’s much better.

Just to put it on record, I’ve now got past the initial ‘honeymoon’ phase 😊… and I can confirm that even though the ‘honeymoon’ is over, I’m still ‘in love’ with Actito. Without a doubt.

What can you learn from this?

In this post, I want to summarise why Actito is, quite simply, the most solid option for medium-sized and medium-to-large companies in Spain and Portugal. This will no doubt apply to other regions too, but I’m focusing on what I have experience of.

Who might this be of interest to?

• Those of you using a single-module marketing automation solution and needing more
• Those of you who aren’t making money from marketing automation
• Those of you who aren’t entirely sure about the security of your data because you’re using a provider based outside the EU
• Those of you paying an outrageous amount of money for one of those big suites…
• Those of you who’ve got yourselves ‘stuck’ in an integration
• To those who aren’t getting any support at all – not from customer service, not from anywhere – and if they do… it’s a rip-off
• To those of you who need a scalable, long-term solution that can handle increasing complexity and features, rather than having to change every year and a half

The 8 checks

What I call the 8 checks have been developed through discussion, understanding and reflection. These are 8 verifiable FACTS that explain why Actito is an excellent choice for your marketing automation needs. These checks—these verifiable facts—taken together, make Actito a unique solution.

Having been in the sector for some time now and having worked with various products, I’ve been catching up with lots of people over the last few months. The first question from partners and clients was, “Well, what about Actito? Why? Tell me about it? ‘Tell me, how is it different from X? Just tell me one thing,’ and the person I was speaking to was usually expecting a straightforward answer along the lines of: ‘Well, we’re cheaper and do the same thing’ or ‘we’re much better at doing X’, and so on. But my answer was more abstract: ‘We’re the most balanced solution on the market.’ And what on earth does that mean? What do you mean by ‘balanced’? It was at that moment that I began to draw up these eight checks to provide an answer.

In short, Actito has a reasonable, solid, meaningful and BALANCED value proposition, and what makes it balanced is that you can ‘run’ these checks and other vendors are bound to fail on two or more of them. How many meet all of them?:

1. Reliability and robustness

When you’ve been in business for over 20 years and have more than 800 clients in markets as aggressive, advanced and competitive as France, Belgium and, to a lesser extent, the UK, Spain, the Nordic countries or Germany, there’s little more to add. It’s easier said than done. Think about how many brands, integrations, campaigns and customer journeys this entails. In such a complex market, with so many vendors, so many similar value propositions, so many marketing automation tools – and so many tools that aren’t strictly marketing automation tools but can still perform tasks typical of marketing automation – and with such a wide variety of possibilities, having that volume of clients is simply incredible and is a guarantee of reliability. Now, someone might tell me that the big American firms and others have many more. YES, undoubtedly, but as I said, this isn’t about just one client; it’s about all of them.

2. European companies

Why is this important? I’d recommend taking a look at this article. Data and GDPR. Is your data secure? More and more DPOs are looking for EU-based solutions. My clearest and most specific recommendation to companies is this: first and foremost, when you’re about to engage a company to handle your data, speak to your legal department and your solicitor, and let them advise you.

Furthermore, for me, it’s not just a matter of data security. It’s about business dynamics, how you view the business, sales dynamics, local support, and working with the vendor – not exclusively with partners (mind you, we’re very proud to work with partners).

3. Genuine local service

This phrase is overused by now 😊. But it’s not just about saying it; it’s about having a culture of service and having genuine local service and a local team. For us, our service-oriented approach starts right from the sales stage, of course. Here, you’ll find Eduard dealing with you and, most likely, Nacho, who’ll show you the product before you become a customer. And perhaps one of our partners too. But the fact is that Nacho will lead the integration project if the need arises, and he’ll be working with the Barcelona support team, led by Anne-Sophie, where you’ll be looked after by, for example, Gabriela or Eduardo. Once you’re a customer, Oliver and Román – again based in Barcelona – will be on hand to help with any queries you may have.

As well as the nearly 20 people in the local team, you can count on our CEO, Kenya – who speaks Spanish fluently – or Benoit (CEO), who’ll be delighted to speak to you if needed, or Marc (CRO), or Eric (CCO), or Caroline (Head of Client Services and Academy), or John (VP Marketing), or any of the international managers such as Marine (Integration Delivery Manager), Tias (VP International Sales) and many others – you can count on an EXCELLENT support team that will back up the local team to ensure everything runs smoothly, and of course, our partners.

4. Integration

As a critical part of the service, as well as carrying out rapid integrations (who doesn’t say that?), what we do here is ensure that the person who shows you the product is the same person who will lead the integration… thereby ensuring the pre-sales and post-sales alignment that causes so many problems. And the aim is for you to start sending emails quickly – very quickly – and with purpose, but quickly.

5. Data

Data for what? Data how? Under which data model? In what structure? From which sources? Can this model grow; can it become more complex? Well, this is the key: answering all these questions and a few more in a way that enables something very simple: saying what I want to the person I want, at the right time. We’re talking about hyper-personalisation. This is only possible if we have a RELATIONAL data model – one that’s flexible and scalable, capable of gathering data from different sources and providing us with a single view of the customer.

6. Easy to use

And following on from that line of thinking, if we have the data but I need to be an SQL super-expert to use it, I might have a problem. With Actito, you DON’T have that problem: absolutely EVERYTHING in Actito is configured from the front end. EVERYTHING. Saying a tool is ‘easy to use’ is such a cliché that it’s almost meaningless, but when I say ‘easy to use’, I mean that I do it from the front end – in other words, even I can do it (for reference, I’m from Generation X and I’ve been working for over 23 years… so if it’s easy for me…).

7. Price

It’s reasonable. We can start wherever you’re at. Very importantly, the cost of a tool isn’t just the licence fee; it’s the integration, it’s what it takes to make the most of it, it’s whether you always need a third party to help, it’s the pay-as-you-go charges you sometimes don’t factor in, and it’s the clarity of the licensing model – where sometimes we don’t know what we’re paying for… All of this is part of the price, or rather the TCO. Actito’s is reasonable and balanced because the licence cost is fair, the licensing model is clear, there are no hidden costs or pay-as-you-go charges (except for SMS, where this is unavoidable), we start with low data thresholds for licensing, and as it is easy to use, making the most of the tool requires only a limited investment.

8. QNTM Group

We’ve been part of this group since December 22. What is QNTM and what impact does it have? There are more of us – brilliant. And there’s surely more money involved – perfect. But what’s in it for you, really? To start with, QNTM is a Nordic group, a network of European companies specialising in marketing technologies that share a vision: ‘composable’ solutions – in Spanish, this would be something like ‘soluciones componibles’.

What does this mean? The ‘suite versus best-of-breed’ dichotomy now has an alternative. Anyone facing this choice will either end up paying for features they don’t need – as is often the case when buying a suite – or face the problems that come with using several different solutions, which can typically lead to issues with integration and data unification.

The aim is to reach a point where the customer can COMPOSE their own solution, selecting not only the products they need from within the group but also the specific features of each one. We’re moving in that direction. Can you picture this? For me, this image illustrates very well where we’re heading. I don’t think anyone else in the market can say this. QNTM is important for this very reason – for this vision and the path we’re embarking on. Working with Ibexa, Qualifio, Raptor and others right from the start is incredibly rewarding.

Conclusion

For all these reasons, I’d say that Actito is BALANCED, reasonable, solid, long-term and a safe bet.

Now, think about it: how many vendors have these verifiable FACTS? how many vendors – perhaps there are a few – can say that they scale, integrate, and form part of a group with such an interesting vision and direction, with a product that allows you to easily do what you need to make money from marketing automation, at a reasonable price, based in Europe, with a genuinely local team?

I’m available (LinkedIn profile) to discuss this further whenever you like. Anyone on the team is available too. We’re here for you. We’ll be attending events soon – you’ll see these mainly on LinkedIn – so let’s speak soon.