Scale-up Spotlight: A conversation with Alec Dobbie, CEO and Co-founder of Fanfinders
Alec Dobbie explains FanFinders different methods for businesses to maintain long-term marketing results and insights.
Fanfinders is a performance marketing and consumer insight company that connects brands with parents who want what they offer. Alec Dobbie, CEO, and co-founder explains the origins of this company, stating that “shortly after becoming a dad and realizing my partner’s data and that of other parents was being misused, I joined up with some smart people to launch our performance marketing and consumer intelligence company back in 2013.” The company now provides this service to the UK and US through its consumer platform, Your Baby Club. They publish a wide range of baby content, showing its 5 million members offers and exclusive discounts to the products they are interested in.
In the retail marketplace, it is difficult for one company to stand out and differentiate itself from the crowd; Dobbie says that“from day one it has been about bringing something different to the marketplace. We designed Your Baby Club to be personalized, globally scalable, and innovative.” Aiming to please the users while also giving its brand partners visible results. The partnership with brands from the start of the business has, the majority of the time, been a pay-on-results marketing business model. Presently the company’s primary focus is to bring tech from other places into its market to drive hyper-personalized experiences, where users are given relevant content at the right time.
Fanfinders have now built its custom analytics platform, Unite, which lets companies monitor their campaign metrics and insights in real-time. Through this, the companies can see a transparent analysis of leads generated through offers and advertisements they have begun.
In the past year, Fanfinders hit a significant goal of starting their international service journey, hiring their first employee in the US. This will be the first country they expand into outside the UK. On the technology side, the company has developed its email marketing software, called MailRokket, broadening its portfolio.
Unfortunately, Covid-19 made the business take a step back to re-evaluate plans and priorities. However, this has turned positive, resulting in a “more streamlined and better business.” Dobbie also points out that growth has continued in Fanfinders during this time as they have managed to increase the staff headcount by 30% remotely and integrated new starters better than before the pandemic.
Dobbie reports on the way the company has needed to be “incredibly flexible in our approach and find digital solutions to support our clients as much as possible” to work with businesses facing different challenges during this time. Instead of looking for short-term wins, the effort has been made to treat each case individually and develop long-term partnerships.
Read More:
- How to bridge the sales and marketing alignment gap – once and for all
- Why marketers need to think ‘human to human’ rather than ‘brand to consumer’
- Enhancing marketing in the digital age
- Why customer conversations are vital for brand survival in a post-COVID-19 world
More competition in the e-commerce space during the pandemic surge into virtual shopping has caused more brands to reach out and see how FanFinders can help drive brand awareness in a crowded online marketplace for new and expectant families. These brands also focus on driving consistent CRM year-round, with more sophisticated lead management meant to nurture leads-to-sales over a more extended period than a short-term ‘one-off’ deal. This long-term strategy requires more tailored targeting, and in response, Dobbie states the company is “rapidly developing technology to support this approach over the coming months and years.”
Click here to discover more of our podcasts
For more news from Top Business Tech, don’t forget to subscribe to our daily bulletin!
Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter
About Alec Dobbie
FanFinders’ CEO and co-founder
With over 20 years of experience as a developer, Alec started up the performance marketing and consumer intelligence company shortly after becoming a dad back in 2013. After realizing that his partner’s data was being misused, he set out with his co-founders to evolve marketing to parents.
FanFinders now has over 5 million parents signed up on its self-coded data platform, Your Baby Club, and operates on two continents.
