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Product Launches

Enhanced SmartSelfie tn.png

Situation
In 2024, digital fraud surged across Africa, with a 700% increase in biometric authentication requests observed by Smile ID. Traditional liveness detection methods were increasingly bypassed by advanced spoofing techniques, including deepfakes and 3D masks. High-risk industries such as banking, remittance, and digital payments faced escalating threats, necessitating more robust identity verification solutions.

Task
Develop and launch an enhanced biometric verification feature—Enhanced SmartSelfie™—to counter sophisticated fraud attempts and strengthen Smile ID's position as a leader in secure digital identity verification.

Action

  • Defined core messaging and positioning based on fraud trends, regulatory pressures, and customer feedback from banking, remittance, and lending sectors

  • Built differentiated value narrative around advanced spoof protection, low-bandwidth optimization, and compliance with global liveness detection standards

  • Partnered with product and engineering to translate technical features into benefit-led language for sales, customers, and partners

  • Led go-to-market planning: coordinated launch timing, internal enablement, external communications, and cross-channel content delivery

  • Created all marketing assets - product one-pagers, launch video scripts, FAQ sheets, and website copy

  • Ran training sessions with sales and customer success teams to drive adoption conversations and objection handling

  • Set up and moderated topic focused webinars with keynote guests


Result

  • Launch content directly contributed to shortened sales cycles for high-value prospects in fintech and financial services

  • Existing customers engaged early - driven by messaging focused on fraud prevention ROI and reduced compliance risk

  • Sales and CSM teams reported stronger confidence in discussing Smile ID's competitive edge in biometric liveness

  • Website traffic and demo requests spiked in the first 30 days, with Enhanced SmartSelfie™ becoming a top entry point for inbound leads

  • Helped reposition Smile ID as a proactive leader in anti-spoofing innovation, reinforcing trust with enterprise partners

An image showing RFM Analysis on Zane Van Rooyen product launch page

Situation
As part of the company growth objectives, a customer focused PLG product was scoped out using market and customer feedback.

Task
To work closely with the product managers in taking this product to market from a market fit and marketing viewpoint as well as communication, information and education assets both internally and externally to customers and prospects.

Action
Create a multi layered clear communication launch  for this advanced analytics customer behavior monitoring software based on the buying behaviors of our customer's customers. Launch and measure.

Result
100% of the customer trial group purchased this addition within the first 3 weeks of launch. Product became a crucial sales driver tool with sales reaching and exceeding projected targets.

An image showing Business Analytical Tool on Zane Van Rooyen product launch page

Situation
Through customer interviews and customer data analytics, it became apparent to me that the opportunity existed for this SaaS cloud based Point of Sale software business to be able to offer their customer business owners a real-time status reporting tool to have reports and analytics wherever and whenever they wanted it.

Task
Prioritize building this product add-on that could then be a PLG, value add or differentiator during deal discussions.

Action
Collate the data sources, scope out the project, hold developer meetings, supply mock-ups for UX team, project manage the build, create marketing collateral. Launch and measure.

Result
Adoption was almost immediate with 78% of existing customers using their instance within the first month. New prospect signings showed a direct impact in shorter time to close sales, and NPS increased to a record rating shortly post launch.

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