Ellisa Kamula is a veteran adult industry player with a strong track record, wielding seasoned experience alongside an affinity for cutting-edge moves that keep CAM4 ahead of the game.
As a marketing programs manager, she coordinates global campaigns with cam models and the CAM4 crew, masterminding elaborate strategies from the venerated cam site’s North American headquarters.
I wear many hats these days but my main role is to ensure traffic to our site through paid media. This also includes the creation of a much-awaited CAM4 affiliate program. We are finally getting ready to add a lot of new tools and to make it a lot more competitive.
Since performers are the lifeblood of her company, Kamula also leads the North American recruitment team, to keep fresh faces signing up and established cam models fully supported.
Focused strongly on digital media advertising and trade shows, she knows the value of having a powerful brand presence on the internet and in-person networking at elite gatherings.
To outline her influential role at CAM4 and get a better understanding of her background, XBIZ sat down with Kamula for this exclusive behind the cam interview.
XBIZ: Tell us about your professional background prior to CAM4.
Kamula: I have been kicking around the adult industry since 2001 or 2002 — it is so long ago, I don’t remember now. I spent some time working for a company called Platinum Bucks that many of your readers may remember, after which I went on to have my own affiliate program comprised of 16 sites and then created a product called CCBTools which provided webmaster tools for CCBill affiliate programs.
This last project synced with a lot of change that came in the industry around 2008 and I started sticking my nose into the mainstream side of affiliate marketing and advertising. This led me down a path of web development and outsourcing and overseas to the Philippines, where I had an outsourcing startup.
Although I always had one foot in the adult industry this venture brought me in contact with a great many other industries. I returned to Canada nearly two years ago and joined the CAM4 team.
XBIZ: What led you to join CAM4?
Kamula: Honestly, I sought to work with the CAM4 crew, unlike my first jobs where the industry sort of found me. This time I made a very conscious decision to return.
I came back to adult because I missed being on the cutting edge of what was going on, and despite mainstream catching up and innovating on their own, I do still believe that a lot of new tech evolves in our space first as there are simply so many early adopters here.
I placed a call to one of the CAM4 owners and our CEO to ask for a job. They had needs that met my skill set and fortunately a positive memory of my previous roles and achievements … and as they say, timing is everything. So here I am!
XBIZ: Describe your role at the company.
Kamula: I wear many hats these days but my main role is to ensure traffic to our site through paid media. This also includes the creation of a much-awaited CAM4 affiliate program. We are finally getting ready to add a lot of new tools and to make it a lot more competitive.
Our APIs have been in development for a long time and are finally ready to share. They are top-notch and will allow our affiliates to build out just about anything they can think up. I am responsible for our marketing programs, primarily various incentives for camming with us, and for our affiliates sending traffic to us.
I oversee our North American recruitment team and try to make sure that we are not only bringing on new talent but that our performer managers are in contact with as many of our performers as possible to help them get the most out of CAM4. I also handle events, both B2C and B2B — the latter would include anything to do with studio events as well.
XBIZ: How do you interface with the rest of the CAM4 team, to execute marketing programs and events?
Kamula: We are very much a global company with offices in multiple cities. We rely on project management tools like Jira and Confluence, as well as Slack to keep our communications open to the whole global team.
I work in the headquarters in North America. So for the most part I am dealing with our director of global marketing, sales and my recruitment team. I am working with them to ensure my programs help them to meet their goals.
For events, I work with all teams globally and again, everything we do works towards a specific set of CAM4 goals. I try to work with our brand and creative teams, who come up with our wonderful “Cams Without Limits” campaign and make sure that we are situated to reach our target markets, be it viewers, performers or affiliates.
XBIZ: Talk about your branding efforts with cam models.
Kamula: As a cam platform, we do not truly brand our models. We naturally spend time procuring great swag that they love so they feel inclined to sport our colors. Offline our efforts are an attempt to mimic what we do on the web.
We provide great opportunities for our models to build their business on our platform. We take them to trade shows and events that allow them to be who they are and really promote themselves. Naturally this involves talking about where they can be found, which is CAM4.
We provide them not only with customer support and account managers, but also with coaches who have spent a lot of time on cam and can help them to identify their own brand and develop their business on our platform.
XBIZ: What makes CAM4’s marketing efforts unique?
Kamula: We have invested in some emerging technologies that set our brand apart, like VR for example. This makes us an interesting story and worth talking about at places that adult companies are typically excluded from, such as SXSW and TEDx Talks.
I believe that we are unique in how diverse we are as a company. I think our global offices really contribute to making CAM4 a unique site that provides our viewers with content that they simply can’t get on any other platform.
XBIZ: Given how many avenues there are for marketing, from trade shows to digital advertising, which do you most often rely upon?
Kamula: I don’t think there is any one avenue that we rely on per se. As a digital product, of course the most important thing is bringing people to our site and we are focused on digital advertising above all.
However, without properly making use of all the digital marketing pillars as well as the old-school ad agency pillars, we are of course leaving money on the table. We will try anything once to see if it works and I can’t imagine relying on only one specific medium.
XBIZ: Tell us about your approach to marketing analytics.
Kamula: Marketing analytics are of course an integral part of any digital company. We rely heavily on our software stack to give us insights into our traffic as well as our clients. This allows us to be proactive in developing our product.
I think, as an industry, we have come so far from just our archaic tracking systems that not having proper data science to back our decisions would put us at a disadvantage.
XBIZ: What’s next for the CAM4 brand?
Kamula: As the adult industry, and the world at large, moves into an age of increasingly restrictive online regulations, I expect that many sites will be focusing on staying above board and finding new marketing strategies that allow us to work within the laws legally.
The struggle to find ways to do what we do and be compliant is always prevalent in this industry. I believe these next rounds of change are going to force us to rethink some of our marketing channels and cloud-based solutions.
As always, I expect CAM4 will find ways to use these new ideas to be more innovative and market the extra measures as the things we must do to keep the internet safe for everyone.
Particularly, where age verification is concerned, this is something that is not only going to keep young prying eyes off our sites as users, but will help to deal with a much larger issue in some of the developing countries where human trafficking is a real everyday problem. Anything we can do, as an industry, to lessen the chances of these horrible people thinking that this is a source of income, is part of a good plan.
In terms of what you can expect to see from us as a product … keep your eye out for our new performer tools and as always expect to see some truly exceptional things!
