Posted by Jonathan Despinidic | 5 May 2011

Matt Bennathan

WRM Media

279 Comments

Tags: email marketing

Matt Bennathan has been involved in B2C direct and digital marketing for the last 14 years. Starting out in Account Management and Sales, Matt became the Managing Director of EDR, a media agency in the UK specialising in response based email marketing.

In September 2010, Matt harnessed his entrepreneurial spirit, and joined WRM Media to launch in APAC. The business provides third party advertising to the membership of http://who-remembers-me.com. Taking on this responsibility has seen Matt move to Sydney where he is growing a successful, industry leading business within the Australian market.

What made you decide to pack your bags and move to Sydney, Australia?

The challenge of starting a business in a foreign territory and the learning I could take from this. It’s also a country and city I’ve always wanted to visit.

 

Are you enjoying drinking cold beer rather than room temperature beer?

The colder, the better when it comes to lager. Although the beers here are too small. I don’t want a pot, I want a pint.

 

What major challenges have you had to face?

I’ve always seen building trust as one of the biggest challenges. I’ve achieved this through an extremely open and transparent approach. Clients also have existing relationships. We need to complement these, and identify partners not competitors. Recognising and delivering the correct legal structure for a UK company in AU and how that feeds in effectively back home is also a new challenge for me.

 

What does WRM Media have that your key competitors don’t?

We use our behavioural data to very good effect. Our broadcast platform is second to none globally. We also have a comparatively high volume of AU data, including postal, which enables multi-channel campaigns and audience reach.

 

Where do you see the email marketing industry in Australia in the next 7 to 10 years?

Whilst you can persuasively argue it’s not beneficial for clients ultimately, performance commercial models will take precedence over CPM. Also, I sincerely hope the ESPs start structuring in-boxes more effectively. For example, preference-led Marketing Messages from approved advertisers rather than a Junk folder would be effective.

 

Where does WRM Media fit in to that?

We need to continue and increase our involvement with the IAB in all markets – we currently sit on the UK IAB Email Council – and maintain and build relationships with ESPs, ensuring we are lobbying for effective solutions that work for advertisers, service providers and consumers.

 

Do you have any advice for anyone else thinking of moving to and starting a business in Australia?

Go for it, it’s a brilliant place and currently offers a very compelling environment in global terms. The people are frank and easy to do business with. Make sure you get your planning and strategy right, stick to it and measure your progress along the way with effective KPIs and milestones. Be realistic about what you can achieve. Work extremely hard with sound objectives and you will succeed

 

You can find WRM Media at http://wrm-media.com/