Salesforce consultancy 4C launches MENA marketing cloud practice

Salesforce consultancy 4C has established a dedicated marketing cloud practice in the Middle East, recruiting Ali Saeed to head up the new unit.

Citing the region’s high level of internet penetration, digital transformation consultancy and Salesforce specialist 4C has announced the launch of a dedicated marketing cloud practice for the Middle East and North Africa. Long-time London-based Salesforce architect and solutions engineer Ali Saeed has been brought on board to head up the new practice, joining a rapidly growing local team.

“There is a monumental shift in market dynamics in recent years, influenced largely by ease of access to digital services and smart devices,” said 4C MENA managing director Jake Callaway, who first arrived in the region in 2016 to help establish 4C and noted the hyper-personalised customer experiences which are taking now precedence in both the business-to-consumer and business-to-business realms.

Callaway continued; “Backed by the benefit of having a well-established Marketing Cloud practice in the United Kingdom [together with Dubai one of the 1997-founded firm’s major office locations alongside outlets in Paris and Brussels and its home-base of Mechelen], 4C is ready to replicate this successful model and deliver an incredibly valuable and relevant offering to our Middle East customers.”

4C stated in a press release that the new practice will extensively leverage the Salesforce Marketing Cloud platform (the company bills itself as the largest independent Salesforce Platinum Partner in the EMEA) – helping businesses to “deliver relevant, personalised journeys for their customers across channels and devices; enabling marketers to deliver the right messages to the right people via the right channel.”

According to the firm, the new digital marketing practice will initially focus on the financial, hospitality, entertainment, retail, automotive, energy, and travel sectors (the latter one of the latest industries undergoing a regional innovation boom), with Saeed taksed with building “the high performing professional services unit” which will be specialised in delivering a range of marketing automation services.

Saeed joins 4C in the Emirates after nearly eight years with Salesforce in the UK, most recently serving as its Lead Solution Engineer, and is credited with delivering successful Marketing Cloud projects for companies including Sony PlayStation and The Palm Resort in Dubai. Holding a BSc in Computing Science, Saeed has altogether spent over twelve years working in the digital marketing domain.

“Digital marketing in the Middle East is still in its nascent stages but this is changing rapidly – driven not by businesses but rather by consumer preferences. There is a tremendous first-mover advantage for those businesses that adapt their marketing models to successfully engage the new breed of tech-savvy, digital-first customers,” Saeed stated, forwarding the Salesforce Marketing Cloud as the ideal platform.