Marketing distribution specialist mda has been acquired by European logistics business Staci for an undisclosed sum. Staci says the acquisition creates the first pan-European marketing logistics business for brands and retailers.

Creating, storing, distributing and activating point of sale and marketing materials for the world’s biggest brands including Heineken, Coca-Cola, Mars, Unilever, Diageo and Mercedes-Benz, mda, which recently celebrated 30 years of business, becomes part of a £250m Europe-wide fulfilment group with operations across France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Poland, BeNeLux and now the UK.

Wayne Chapman, mda Managing Director, says: “This is genuinely fantastic news for our clients and teams and we’re extremely excited about the years ahead. We’ve operated from the UK for 30 years, but in the last 24 months we’ve seen clients’ desire to operate facilities in multiple European territories under a single contract significantly increase.”

Mda, which currently has turnover of £5m a year, has 350 employees at five fulfilment centres across the UK.

Staci is the European leader in the B2B retail logistics segment for a large group of networks: retail, GMS and GSS, oil companies, agribusiness, hotel and restaurant chains, banks, insurance companies, operators telephone companies, car manufacturers, the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industry and the public sector.

Prior to the mda acquisition, Staci had 35 sites in Germany, Belgium, Spain, France, Italy and the Netherlands with a workforce of 1,550 employees.

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John Lyons of Brandmovers provides some timely advice for those looking at using receipt validation in their promotions

Everyone’s talking about receipt validation for promotions, rebate and loyalty, but why and when should you use it?

In the past, activating a proof-of-purchase sales promotion or loyalty program required significant investment in product packaging, integration with a limited set of retailers – or just one retailer – or cost-prohibitive inflexible solutions, along with the blind hope that the model would deliver ROI.

With a number of technology-based receipt processing platforms coming to market, it’s now possible to use scalable and flexible automated purchase validation as part of your sales promotion, rebate incentive or rewards program.

It may sound complicated – but actually it’s simple.

Customers submit photographs of receipts via a wide range of electronic media – smartphone camera, email, SMS – and have them validated almost instantly. At the same time, any decent receipt validation solution should data capture all pertinent information from the customer’s receipt, including date/time, the store purchased from, and – if you want it – their entire shopping cart, to give added insight into purchase patterns.

A robust system will come complete with fraud prevention built in.

You can use it for:

• Proof of Purchase Promotion – gift with purchase, coupon claim, purchase necessary prize draw, instant win.
• Repeat Purchase Promotion – frequency of purchase, buy x products to unlock a gift, earn entry to prize draw, instant win.
• Rebate or Cash back.
• Loyalty Program – points-based rewards program, incentives and benefits program.
• Trade Incentives Program – reward B2B trade purchases, incentivise and reward B2B sales representatives.

But when is receipt validation best used, and why would you choose this mechanic over more traditional models?

Five Reasons to use Receipt Validation:

1. As an alternative to unique code on pack

Quickly deployable and with no impact on printing or packing, purchases can be validated almost instantly. Run promotions or loyalty programs in a more cost-effective fashion without having to worry about the effect on production lines or packaging design.

2. If retailer support isn’t available

Marketers should be looking for a truly retailer-agnostic digital and mobile solution that is not dependant on integration with POS systems or geography. Ideally, solutions should work with any retailer or with multiple retailers – so if the purchase can be identified, the receipt can be processed and rewards activated. This is especially relevant for products that can be purchased anywhere, such as a can of Pepsi.

3. Gain extra market research

Data capture should be able to digitize not only the content needed to verify the relevant purchase, but also retailer, date, location, payment method of purchase and the entire purchase basket for deep dive data insights and pattern analysis.

4. Connect directly with your brand consumers

Receipt validation should be deployed to create a direct communication loop with brand consumers, without negative impact on retailers. Often this helps strengthen brand-retailer partnerships, with insights leading to mutually rewarding activations.

5. Build towards a loyalty solution

If you’re new to receipt validation, then start small – learn to crawl before you walk before you run. You should be looking to upscale and learn from localised test activities. Data from these should help you plan and implement bigger projects successfully, based around your business objectives and your customer data. The goal should be to design a well-planned multi-territory enterprise loyalty execution and deliver real return on investment.

John Lyons is Managing Director, Europe, of Brandmovers, a global leader in digital engagement promotions and loyalty that help brands connect with their consumers.

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The events and experiential industries can benefit from specialist apps, says Greg Lusk of Liveforce. SPONSORED COMMENT

The role of technology should be to make our lives easier.  Innovations in streamlining, problem solving and improving communication are leading us towards a greener, happier technological utopia.  We may not be there yet, but in the last 10 years there has been a huge shift as investment in software and mobile applications continues to rise at a healthy rate.

Our relationship with technology is stronger than ever, with smartphone users spending 90% of their time on mobile apps rather than browsers.

Mobile apps have changed the way we shop, the way we work, the way we date, the way we manage our time and communicate. Now we are seeing significant growth in apps designed to help ease the burdens of our working day, particularly in the events and promotional industries.

Technology and the promo event manager

Great promo events don’t just happen.  There’s a lot of hard work behind the scenes, most of which falls on the shoulders of Event Managers, who have a special set of juggling skills.

On any given day, there are brand ambassador and freelance staff to collaborate with, venues to coordinate, a long list of tasks to check off, pressure to increase attendance – and all of this within strict deadlines.  The outcome is time-consuming and stressful.

Yet the events industry has been relatively slow on the uptake to digitise.  Notoriously analogue, surrounded by paperwork, a typical planning wall has traditionally been covered in post-it notes and cross checked with excel spreadsheets.

There’s no need for that any more, however. In recent years, developers have been designing software to help streamline tasks and salvage the sanity of the over-worked stressed out events manager by.

Arguably, we are now firmly in the age of automation, and the digitisation of Event Management is revolutionising and professionalising the industry.

Impact of the ‘Gig Economy’

One area where technology has particularly changed lives is in employment – and in driving the growth of the so-called ‘gig economy’. The whole process of finding freelance work is now easier and much more rewarding.  An estimated 5 million UK workers are now employed through staffing apps and platforms.

These are replacing more traditional modes of employment with a system which offers a far more flexible working schedule, and one which many believe drives productivity and performance. Mobile devices are the gateway to a more agile and responsive workforce, regardless of where they are.

Event management software leading industry growth

The Events and Experiential industries are going through an exciting growth period.  Automation is a culmination of a multi-decade evolution.  It seeks to change the traditional experience of event planning, moving away from the current complex and manually intensive model.  Event Management Software is a fast-growing sector.  Forecasts suggested a growth from $5.44 billion in 2016 to $9.28 billion in 2020, a CAGR increase of 11.3%.

Factors pushing growth

• Smartphone users increase – 203% increase in mobile app usage at live events.
• Expectations – most attendees will assume there is an app for the event. They want to engage and enhance their experience.
• Rising budgets for events.
• Use of cloud platform.
• Existing products.

This leads to a need for products that have the capabilities to constantly change, adapt and improve.

There’s an App for that…

Born from the need to digitise, there are a number of products available that can problem-solve for event planners or improve the delegate experience.

Among others, Etouches, Bizaboo and CVent provide an all-in-one offering.  Eventbrite is a well-known and widely-used ticketing site that also successfully attracts attendees.  Boomset allows guests to check in and print their badge in one easy click.  Then there are experientials, like the Savor Band from Event Farm.  There is constant innovation in these areas, year after year.

Automation improves efficiency, saves time and sanity

The benefits of Event Management Automation are reduced stress and increased productivity for managers, this in turn has a positive impact on ROI.  Event Managers are reporting improved communication and tracking, the ability to create complex plans in minutes – all of which allows them to be more strategic & productive. This gives EMA users a competitive edge.

Taking promotional staffing software a step further

For the Events Industry and Promo Agencies, there are particular struggles and staffing issues are nuanced.  Managing multiple projects, multiple staff members, scheduling and sourcing crew used to result in hours spent scouring databases or excel spreadsheets or on the phone chasing staff or payroll.

The future of events and promotional planning lies in the development of apps with seamless integration and good user experience.

Greg Lusk is Founder of Liveforce AS, which offers an online automated freelancer booking and management tool for event and promo agencies.  It enables managers to easily recruit and manage crew, create job boards, manage timesheets and expenses.   With more and more freelancers, crew and promotional staff to manage, an interactive, powerful and flexible App will drive productivity.

Liveforce addresses the problems faced by event planners, managers and promotional agencies and delivers an app that resolves these issues.  The aim is to make working in the events and promo industries easier to manage for both organisers and freelancers, ultimately enriching the customer experience.

Liveforce is a sponsor of the IPM COGS Awards 2017.

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