Minor League Baseball and Satisfi Labs Partner to Enhance Fan Experience

May 16, 2018

Bilingual Artificial Intelligence Solution Amplifies League-Wide Multicultural Initiative

Minor League Baseball (MiLB) recently announced a new collaboration with Satisfi Labs, a leading artificial intelligence engagement platform, to create a bilingual customer service AI conversation platform for more than 30 MiLB teams. This unique partnership marks the first time a sports league will communicate with its fans in both English and Spanish by leveraging Satisfi Labs’ AI capabilities.

This new product solution will amplify MiLB’s national multicultural initiative “Es Divertido Ser Un Fan” (It’s Fun to Be a Fan”) and its new “Copa de la Diversión” (“Fun Cup”) season-long event series specifically designed to embrace the culture and values that resonate most with participating teams’ local U.S. Hispanic/Latino communities. The interface will initially be made available to the participating “Copa” teams to support their respective fan engagement efforts.

Also Read: Artificial Intelligence Learns and Builds Conversational AI Chatbots Autonomously

The AI platform will operate within individual teams’ Facebook Messenger pages and serve to answer fans’ questions pertaining to aspects of the gameday experience such as ticketing, parking, and other common inquiries surrounding the venue, game, and teams while providing unique answers based on the users’ locations. The platform’s bilingual capability allows each team to effectively connect and engage with their fans in the language of their choice to provide the right information, at the right place, in real-time.

“Our new partnership with Satisfi Labs reinforces our tech-infused strategy specifically designed to improve the fan experience any time they engage with MiLB,” said David Wright, Minor League Baseball Chief Marketing and Commercial Officer. “This cutting-edge technology will better our ability to understand the fan journey by providing a platform for our teams to engage a more diverse audience and turn data into intelligent action.”

Also Read: Chatbots and Virtual Assistants are Fast Becoming the New Graphical User Interface

“We’ve developed several unique platforms for brands across entertainment, retail, and sports, but this is the first tool we’ve created that can communicate as efficiently in Spanish as in English. We’re excited to expand our offerings in AI conversation platforms to the Hispanic community and support one of the largest sports leagues in the U.S. in its effort to better connect with all of its fans,” said Don White, CEO and Co-Founder of Satisfi Labs.

MiLB and Satisfi Labs plan to roll out an expanded AI conversation platform and league-wide fan engagement tool for the 2019 season.

The Foundry Wins Three Webby Awards For Its Innovation In Virtual Reality And 360-Video Content

PRNewswire

May 16, 2018

The Foundry Wins Three Webby Awards For Its Innovation In Virtual Reality And 360-Video Content

The Foundry Serves as Meredith’s Creative Content Resource

The Foundry at Meredith Corporation has been honored with three awards at the 22nd Annual Webby Awards for its work in immersive content, it was announced by The Foundry at The Webby Awards Show.

Holographic capture company, 8i, created groundbreaking virtual reality experiences in partnership with The Foundry’s LIFE VR. “Buzz Aldrin: Cycling Pathways to Mars,” in which Buzz Aldrin takes viewers from his Apollo 11 landing site on the moon to Mars, is the Webby winner in the Film & Video: VR: Branded Cinematic or Pre-Rendered category and also The Webby People’s Voice Award winner in the Film & Video: VR: Branded Cinematic or Pre-Rendered category. Sports Illustrated’s co-production with Endemol Shine Beyond USA and LIFE VR, “Capturing Everest,” the first-ever surface-to-summit climb of Mt. Everest in VR, is the winner of The Webby People’s Voice Award in the Film & Video: 360-Video: Branded category.

Also Read: Meredith Corporation Bolsters Video Team To Enhance Strategy And Growth

“We’re thrilled that The Webby Awards recognizes LIFE VR’s unparalleled work in creating innovative and immersive experiences,” said Chris Hercik, Chief Creative Officer of The Foundry at Meredith. “This important industry honor is a testament to The Foundry’s commitment to providing relevant, cutting-edge content for our audiences and advertisers—and to partnering with the best in the business to make those ideas a reality.”

Also Read: Meredith Board Of Directors Elects Steve Lacy Executive Chairman And Tom Harty President And Chief Executive Officer

The Foundry serves as Meredith’s creative content resource, harnessing the power of Meredith’s publishing know-how, editorial approach to storytelling and data capabilities to enable deeper connections with audiences that fuel growth for clients, no matter the format or platform.

Today, Meredith uses multiple distribution platforms — including broadcast television, print, digital, mobile and video — to provide consumers with content they desire and to deliver the messages of its advertising and marketing partners.

Sureshot Expands Board Of Directors And Strengthens Leadership Team

PRNewswire

May 16, 2018

Sureshot Expands Board Of Directors And Strengthens Leadership Team

Sureshot’s Cloud-Based Customer-Engagement Solutions Solve Marketing Operations Challenges That Impact Data Management, Campaign Execution, and the Customer Lifecycle

Sureshot, a B2B marketing technology company has announced that three people have joined its leadership team. Chris Williams will serve as President and COO and Nate Pruitt and Patrice Greene have been appointed to Sureshot’s Board of Directors.

As President and COO, Williams will be responsible for overseeing all product innovations, as well as executing the company’s market strategy and long-term growth plans. Williams has served on Sureshot’s Board of Directors for several years and will continue to do so. Pruitt is the founder and CEO of Growth Digital, a web strategy and inbound marketing company, and Greene is the President of Inverta, a B2B marketing consulting firm. Both have deep experience in martech, and will work with other members of Sureshot’s board to provide the company with ongoing strategic direction. All three leaders will report directly to Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, David York.

“Sureshot continues to experience tremendous growth, and I am glad we’ll have the leadership and expertise of Chris, Nate and Patrice to guide us in achieving future goals. Chris is an invaluable source of wisdom and insight, who has served on our board for several years. And Nate and Patrice have demonstrated track records of leading revenue growth for martech companies. I know I speak for everyone on the leadership team when I say we look forward to the impact these three will have on Sureshot,” said York.

Also Read: SaaStr Announces The SaaStr Superhero Awards to Honor Rising Women Superstars in B2B Technology

Williams has more than 20 years of experience developing innovative technology solutions, enhancing global operations, and developing strategies that drive growth and enable technology-based companies to expand to new markets. “Since merging Connexio Labs with Sureshot Media, I have watched David and his team successfully transform Sureshot into a market-leading software company and I am excited to help lead this team as we continue to accelerate our next phase of growth,” said Williams.

Over the last two decades, Pruitt has served as a tech-industry thought-leader, marketing consultant, and highly sought-after expert in generating revenue for Fortune 500 companies and startups alike. A hands-on leader, Pruitt is skilled in identifying a company’s unique strengths and equipping their leaders with practical guidance on how to leverage every advantage to dominate the market. “Sureshot’s capabilities put it in a unique position to transform marketing operations, and I’m glad to play a role in helping the company fulfil its vision,” said Pruitt.

Also Read: Madison Logic Partners with Marketo to Help B2B Marketers Quickly Convert Target Accounts

A strategic thinker, Greene has over 15 years of experience guiding the growth and development of marketing companies, utilizing marketing technology to drive revenue, and creating demand for client products and services. “I have followed Sureshot’s swift rise in the martech space as a solutions-leader, and have both used and recommended their solutions. It’s a company I admire and trust and I am thrilled to contribute to its future,” said Greene.

Sureshot’s cloud-based customer-engagement solutions solve marketing operations challenges that impact data management, campaign execution, and the customer lifecycle. Designed to integrate seamlessly with the key platforms of a martech stack, Sureshot solutions empower modern marketers to validate and enrich data, automate and extend cross-channel campaigns, and deliver higher-quality interactions with customers and prospects.

The FIVE Key Building Blocks for a Solid ABM Foundation

Rob Weedn

May 16, 2018

The FIVE Key Building Blocks for a Solid ABM Foundation

Account-based Marketing (ABM) is helping B2B marketers achieve outstanding ROI. According to a 2017 ABM Benchmarking Survey, 87% of marketers reported that ABM delivers higher returns than any other marketing approach. But ABM success depends upon careful planning and execution, starting with putting five foundational building blocks in place: Systems, Data, Processes, Content, and Analytics.

Systems

Martech & salestech tools to store, manage and engage your contacts

Before you undertake an account-based marketing initiative, you need to have the right systems in place. First, you need what Gartner calls a “system of record”, such as Salesforce or other CRM—a place to store and track your account data, contacts and leads.

HubSpot is an example of a hybrid to the next layer up in the ABM stack, which is a “system of engagement”, a process-oriented tool that enables you to segment your ABM contacts, create customized offers, launch email campaigns, etc. Many marketers are using Marketo, Oracle Eloqua, or Pardot as their system of engagement. To complement marketing’s ABM efforts, SDRs, inside sales, and many field sales teams use sales automation systems, such as SalesLoft or Outreach, to automate how they engage with all the target contacts and accounts in their territories.

Along with having the right systems in place, you also need people with right marketing ops and sales ops talent to integrate and manage those systems effectively and use them efficiently.

Also Read: What’s Old is New Again, Thanks to More Sophisticated Data

Data

Fresh, accurate info to help you plan, prioritize, and personalize your ABM engagement

To scope your ABM effort effectively, you first need to understand the total audience for your target buyers, AKA your total available market (TAM). That means fresh, accurate, complete firmographic, demographic, and perhaps technographic data that can help you answer these key questions:

How many accounts are there that fit my ideal customer profile (ICP)?
How many contacts are there at those accounts that fit my buyer personas?
How many accounts and contacts can I go after given my budget and resources?

Even if you’re paring your TAM down to a smaller set of accounts or a single persona for your initial phase, it’s important to make those decisions within the context of your total audience and a bottom-up measurement of your total addressable market.

Once you know your TAM, you need a clear understanding of your coverage, i.e., do you have the right data in your system of record to engage with that audience and personalize that engagement effectively. Ask yourself:

Which accounts fit my ICP and do I have their complete firmographic details?
Who are the contacts at those accounts that fit my customer personas?
Do I have their complete, accurate contact details (current title, email, direct phone, etc.)?
Do I have data about their areas of interest/responsibility/pain points so I can personalize our outreach to them?

In working with B2B companies from start-ups to enterprises across many industries, we find that most organizations are missing up to 80% of their total target audience, and up to 50% of the data they do have is incomplete or outdated. Contact discovery can help fill that gap.

The importance of data quality

If you define the right buyer personas and you’re selling to the people who are the most likely to buy your product or business service, that’s typically going to result in better conversation rates. Picking the right targets depends upon having complete and accurate data to analyze, particularly if you’re trying to use predictive tools. No matter how your team determines which accounts to target, starting with account and contact enrichment can help ensure that you’re making decisions based on a complete and accurate picture of your situation.

Since ABM depends upon actually engaging your targets, data quality becomes even more vital as you start running campaigns. Because data decays at an alarming rate, you need email addresses that have been verified. The gold standard is a 95-100% deliverability rate, so you should seek a guarantee from any data vendor that they will provide that level of quality. Having direct dial phone numbers is also key so that your sales team can follow up with contacts efficiently. This buyer’s guide provides a helpful checklist of questions to ask data vendors.

Also Read: Decoding the B2B Purchasing Puzzle in 2018

Processes

Which channels will you use and how will you execute your ABM strategy?

Defining your ABM processes is about aligning your goals with the tactics you’ll use to achieve them—deciding how you’ll use your core systems, and what others you may layer on top. Over the last several years, the martech landscape has expanded exponentially to include many specialized ABM tools.

Will you do ABM advertising and retargeting to drive inbound? You’ll still need a defined process for how marketing and sales will handle each lead. You also need to consider: how often will you send emails, will marketing or sales send them, and will they have customized landing pages per account or by segment? How might you layer in buyer intent to identify new accounts and demand centers and integrate them into your ABM process? What about custom events? Direct mail? Each medium or channel you consider needs a well thought out and documented execution process in order to drive revenue.

Also Read: How to Run an Entire ABM Strategy from Inside Outlook

Content

Personalized messaging that engages your target audience

So, you have all your systems and processes in place and you’ve perfected your audience data. Now, what the heck are you going to send them?

Whether you’re doing display ads, email campaigns, customized videos, direct mail or all of the above, running ABM efficiently means developing resonant content that can be tailored for each account and buyer persona, and be repurposed. One reason that 92% of B2B companies see higher opportunity-to-close rates from ABM accounts (per the SiriusDecisions 2017 State of ABM Study) is that the messaging and content are highly tuned to the target buyer.

Our customers have achieved great results by segmenting their ABM lists by title/seniority and then sending a high-level message about innovation and line of business goals to the C level, and more nuts and bolts tech benefits to the hands-on practitioners. They also segment their lists and content by the size of the company they’re targeting, since pain points will differ. You can read a case study here.

Where a good generic email campaign may get 10-20% open rates…with engagement and conversion rates following from there, we’ve seen customers who hyper-target their content get 50-70% open rates, 25% engagement rates in a first call, and an 8% conversion to a meeting within five to seven business days. Sure, it’s a little bit more work to personalize and tailor your content, but it’s 5-10x more effective.

Also Read: Scale, Drive Revenue, and Win with ABM – 3 Lessons from B2BMX

Analytics

Measuring & optimizing your ABM programs

Now, your systems are all in sync, you’ve got a process for fresh data and customized messaging and you’re engaging your targets with tailored content. You’re scaling. Now it’s time to measure and optimize your ABM program. Here’s what you’ll want to look at:

Content: Which messages, subject lines, creative have driven the most engagement & revenue?

Systems/Mediums: Where am I seeing the best conversion rates and ROI? Should I change my targeting slightly to get more specific?

Data: Can I optimize my target personas? Add/remove keywords or change exclusions? How might that change my TAM?

Processes: Can we be working leads more efficiently? Is our lead/account-scoring accurate? Do sales & marketing still agree on whom to target?

We’ve seen customers with optimized systems and processes hone in, exclude the noise and perfect their target personas by 20% or 30% achieve 2-3x conversion rates as a result. ABM practitioners who can use analytics to measure and optimize the key building blocks of their program are truly Master Builders…or 4+ on the SiriusDecisions ABM Maturity Model.

Also Read: Data Attribution: A Key to Successful ABMExecution

Plus one more…Marketing-Sales Alignment

The cornerstone of effective ABM programs

Did I say five? While the first five building blocks: Systems, Data, Processes, Content, and Analytics are essential for operationalizing ABM, without careful alignment between your marketing and sales teams, your ABM program won’t be structurally sound.

To build a strong foundation that will make your ABM program a towering success, your marketing and sales teams must collaborate on your ideal customer profile (personas and target accounts/criteria), develop a joint process to engage contacts across channels, and also agree on the KPIs you’ll use to track and measure your results.

Also Read: 5 Easy Steps to Turn Third-Party Marketing Data Into Great First-Party Data

Yieldify And Infinity Announce Global Partnership

MTS Staff Writer

May 16, 2018

Yieldify And Infinity Announce Global Partnership

The New Partnership Brings Customer Journey Optimization And Call Center Intelligence Together To Support E-Commerce Businesses

Yieldify, the customer journey optimization (CJO) company, announced a global partnership with Infinity, the leading call intelligence platform. The partnership will see the two companies working hand-in-hand to support businesses connecting the online and offline customer journeys.

Through Yieldify’s offices in New York, London and Sydney, and Infinity’s locations in New York, San Francisco, Baltimore and the UK, the partnership will benefit both customer bases worldwide, totalling over 1,250 companies. The two companies will support one another in growth and retention efforts, complementing each other’s products and services for customers across the retail, travel and financial services sectors.

Also Read: Yieldify Appoints Luke Oubridge As Chief Operating Officer

Yieldify Appoints Carlos Silva As VP Product And Services — Jay Radia

“We’re excited to bring Infinity into our partnership programme, which is experiencing fantastic growth this year. They have an incredible roster of clients across the globe and we can’t wait to start introducing Yieldify to them,” said Jay Radia, CEO and co-founder of Yieldify.

For Infinity customers, Yieldify’s customer journey optimization product and services drive high-value calls through to call centres by engaging e-commerce customers at the moment of the purchase cycle when phone support can make a pivotal difference to conversion rates.

Also Read: Yieldify Appoints Carlos Silva As VP Product And Services

This comes as the Yieldify Conversion Platform introduces a new ‘click to call’ functionality, allowing retailers to run mobile campaigns that help customers place a call directly to a call centre with a single click, creating a seamless experience. To date, these campaigns have seen conversion rates increase by up to 40 percent. Infinity’s call tracking platform will complement CJO efforts, enriching customer journey data and helping lower the operational costs associated with independent call centre provision.

Paul Walsh, Chief Executive Officer of Infinity, added: “Every strong partnership Infinity makes with other high-quality technology companies represents a huge opportunity for our clients. Working alongside Yieldify is a truly exciting development, and we look forward to exploring all the ways their customer journey optimization solutions can work alongside call intelligence to bring exceptional benefits to both of our clients.”

Recommended Read: With Tetra, No Need to Record And Transcribe Calls

MRP Partners With Symphony Marketing To Bring AI-Powered Customer Acquisition To Japan

PRNewswire

May 16, 2018

MRP Partners With Symphony Marketing To Bring AI-Powered Customer Acquisition To Japan

Symphony Marketing to sell MRP’s Prelytix platform

MRP, the leading global provider of AI-powered customer acquisition software and services, announced a partnership with Japan-based Symphony Marketing allowing Symphony to resell the MRP Prelytix platform in Japan.

“B2B sales and marketing teams that use AI-driven technology are better equipped to acquire and serve clients,” said Kevin Cunningham, CEO of MRP. “Our partnership with Symphony Marketing creates an opportunity for us to continue to transform sales and marketing departments and to expand our global reach.”

Symphony Marketing will now offer MRP Prelytix, the leading proprietary predictive analytics engine built specifically with the needs of sales and marketing executives in mind, as well as MRP’s programmatic display advertising offering, to the Japanese market. MRP Prelytix is powered by Kx, a high-performance, streaming analytics and operational intelligence provider.

Also Read: MRP’s New ABM Display Advertising Offering Gives Marketers Direct Reach into Target Accounts

“At Symphony, we are committed to using data to create new, more effective sales opportunities for B2B companies, and a partnership with MRP maximizes our ability to help our clients,” said Ichiro Niwayama, president of Symphony Marketing.

As an MRP channel partner, Symphony Marketing will have access to MRP’s industry-leading software and services, as well as its technical expertise.

The partnership increases MRP’s growing presence in Asia, where it employs more than 100 people throughout the region.

Also Read: MRP To Showcase The Convergence Of Predictive Analytics And Account-Based Marketing At 2018 B2B Marketing Exchange

MRP provides predictive customer acquisition software and services. For 15 years, clients have relied on MRP to help them achieve their revenue goals by combining cutting-edge predictive analytics with a full suite of account-based marketing services to acquire new customers, faster.

Kx technology is a leader in high-performance, in-memory computing, streaming analytics and operational intelligence. Kx delivers the best possible performance and flexibility for high-volume, data-intensive analytics and applications across multiple industries, including sales and marketing as evidenced by MRP’s predictive analytics model.

Kx and MRP are subsidiaries of First Derivatives plc (FD), a global supplier of software and consulting services.

3 Pivots Marketers Need to Make to Improve Marketing Performance

Thom Gruhler

May 16, 2018

From predictive analytics to machine learning and AI, the rise of data intelligence and new technologies have changed how brands approach marketing and the ROI they can create. While what we can measure and understand through data has advanced dramatically in the past three years, the reality is there are still some gaps for marketers today as they work to fully understand and impact marketing performance.

The biggest gap is in the customer experience. Despite their best efforts, many companies today don’t truly take a holistic approach to measuring their digital marketing and customer experience efforts. As a marketer, you need to understand the relationship between each channel and how one complements the other. But too often, the approach by companies is to simply measure every metric they have access to, rather than focusing on metrics that really matter. The result is misleading data or an over-reliance on vanity metrics, rather than focusing on the data that truly impacts marketing performance and CX.

The modern landscape demands that marketers take the entire marketing technology stack into account when calculating ROI. This starts with taking an enterprise-level view of your organization to make sure you have the right people, technology, and processes in place to capture the right data and put those insights into action. In short, marketers need to shift from viewing marketing platforms as individual tools to understanding how those platforms and investments fit into their larger strategy.

Also Read: Have Facebook and Google Done Enough to Restore Advertiser Trust?

Here are three pivots marketers need to make–

Leverage Predictive Data.

It’s not enough anymore to simply measure the number of qualified leads generated from a specific activity. Instead, you need to understand the impact every activity has at every level of the sales funnel. The problem is that most companies are focused on historical marketing effectiveness rather than predictive models. While the former helps you tell the story, the latter informs the creative process and tells you which stories you focus on. In other words, historical models are reactive, while predictive models are proactive and ultimately more efficient in the modern marketing ecosystem.

Also Read: Are You Pinterested Yet? User-Generated-Content Is Going to Transform Online Advertising

Understand Behavior with Qualitative Data.

While marketers are spending more money than ever on technology, most of their digital efforts are focused on performance and customer experience personalization. What they’re often lacking, however, is the qualitative data to understand why things happen and why consumers behave the way they do.

The qualitative component is key, without which it can be very hard to transition from a local maximum to a global maximum when it comes to marketing performance and effectiveness. It’s time to move beyond the touch attribution models and adopt models that leverage machine learning and AI to determine just how much importance is attributed to each touch-point in the customer’s journey.

Also Read: How to Reduce Risk and Start Strong When Going Global

Set the Foundation and Nail the Basics.

Without a strong foundation for how your organization uses its marketing technologies, the tools are bound to be more trouble than they’re worth. And here is where nailing the basics is essential. This means using a using a uniform taxonomy to tag links and content with consistency, and maintaining documentation to establish the historical baselines that provide the data necessary to assist marketing decision making. With a framework in place, you can optimize online channels to effectively attract, engage and convert the right customers.

Remember that digital marketing efficiency is not all about deploying new technologies. In fact, before implementing any new technology, it’s crucial to conduct a cost/benefits analysis to see where the new tech might fit in.

Before you make sweeping changes, it’s important to understand how each marketing platform you adopt fits into their overall strategy and how the updates you’re making with new platforms may impact the customer experience.

At the end of the day, great marketing is about tapping into data to be able to deliver personalized, frictionless, relevant experiences that will actually move customers to action. To be successful in designing content & experiences that drive growth, you need to understand both quantitative and qualitative data, while also investing the latest technology to anticipate and deliver the right experience and content in the moment.

Also Read: How Can Your Team Avoid Marketing App Overload?

Janrain’s Martin Day to Be Honored at Portland Business Journal CFO of the Year Awards Ceremony

PRNewswire

May 16, 2018

Janrain's Martin Day to Be Honored at Portland Business Journal CFO of the Year Awards Ceremony

Martin Day is Being Recognized for Helping to Establish Janrain as the Industry’s Largest Independent CIAM Leader after Record Bookings in 2017

Janrain, the company that pioneered the Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) category, announced that Janrain CFO Martin Day will be honoured at the Portland Business Journal CFO of the Year Awards ceremony this week. As a CFO of the Year honoree, Day has demonstrated a strong record of innovation, outstanding performance and a clear track record of meaningful community involvement. Day was chosen along with a handful of other financial professionals from more than 100 nominations after Janrain experienced record bookings in 2017, including doubling new customer wins and enjoying the largest single quarter bookings in the company’s 16-year history. Janrain continues its record-setting pace for growth in 2018 with Q1 bookings that were three times that of the prior year.

“I am truly honoured to be recognized by the Portland Business Journal especially after Janrain experienced such incredible momentum in 2017, which set the stage for continued record-setting growth in 2018,” said Day, adding, “With such a talented employee base driving new product innovations and global expansion, supportive investors, and world-class customers, Janrain will continue setting the pace for the rest of the identity space.”

Also Read: Janrain Delivers First Universal Integration of CIAM Event Data with SIEM Systems

Day joined Janrain in June 2015 and has over 20 years of finance and operations leadership for high-growth companies. Prior to Janrain, he held finance and operations leadership positions at MotoSport (where he tripled revenue), Digimarc, Ascension Software, CSI Digital and Spinriot after starting his career at Ernst & Young.

“We’re very proud of our CFO Martin Day for being recognized for the tremendous work he has done to help drive growth, profitability, and overall success of our business,” said Janrain CEO Jim Kaskade. “Janrain is now the largest independent CIAM leader in the industry with the most mature business model compared to its peers, and Martin has been instrumental in helping us make that happen.”

The Portland Business Journal’s CFO of the Year Awards ceremony will take place on May 17 at the luxury Nines Hotel in Portland.

Recommended Read: Janrain Taps Todd Etchieson for VP of Product Post

Nudge.ai Expands Horizon in Relationship Intelligence with New Tool for Sales

Sudipto Ghosh

May 16, 2018

Nudge.ai Expands Horizon in Relationship Intelligence with New Tool for Sales

To Further Grow Expertise in Relationship Intelligence, Nudge.ai Responds to Google’s Launch of ‘Nudges’

Nudge.ai, the leading relationship intelligence platform, has advanced its solution that empowers businesses to build relationships at scale. As Google announces a ‘smart reply’ feature to Gmail, Nudge.ai has launched intelligent follow-up cadences that set and manage reminders based on relationship strength, and smart templates that allow instant personalization of email outreach.

With the new features, Nudge.ai now enables sales teams to set follow-up cadences to keep in touch with prospects and accounts.

Nudge.ai cadences are intelligent: they function on intervals – for example, two weeks or three months – automatically tracking if a rep or company is in touch, and displaying reminders only if they are not in touch with a prospect or account. The cadences display where sales teams already work, including in Gmail, Outlook, Salesforce, SalesLoft, and Outreach. Reminders clear automatically once a new touch is made, as Nudge.ai tracks any relationship activity directly from the source, including email, phone, and calendar.

Nudge.ai helps salespeople access new accounts, analyze deal risk, and measure account health – powered by relationship intelligence required to build faster network relationships.

Plus, Nudge.ai now also provides smart templates to engage prospects based on persona. These templates make outreach easier and faster. It takes sales teams one-click to customize an email based on a buying persona. Nudge.ai also provides AI-powered sales insights directly inside the email to make personalizing outreach easy.

Currently, Nudge.ai helps sales teams to access new accounts, analyze deal risk, and measure account health. Nudge.ai integrates with the tools that sales teams already use including Gmail, Outlook, Salesforce, SalesLoft, and Outreach.

Ask Yourself, What’s Bringing Audiences to Your Website?

Sudipto Ghosh

May 16, 2018

Ask Yourself, What’s Bringing Audience to Your Website?

Privy’s CEO Ben Jabbawy Tells Us How to Draw Audiences to Your Website

Did you know that ninety-eight percent of the visitors to your website may actually never convert! With an ever-expanding universe of digital businesses catering to an almost similar set of audiences, the chances of converting and reaching a higher percentage of the audience could actually be even smaller. To help small businesses and retailers understand the true state of marketing and sales automation and the power of optimized email lists, Privy released a report, titled, “The 2018 Privy Ecommerce Trends Report.”

We sat down with Ben Jabbawy, CEO and founder of Privy, to dive deeper into the growing horizon of sales and marketing automation platform for SMB ecommerce merchants, and how easy or tough it actually is to set up an ecommerce business in 2018. All that, to best understand how to bring more audience to your website and convert.

How should SMB ecommerce businesses leverage onsite marketing strategies to generate better ROI from their website management?

The short answer: keep it simple.

In 2018, there isn’t a single marketer out there who don’t want higher conversion, SMB or otherwise. But, small ecommerce merchants often get stuck in a growth rut, they want better performance, but they think “better” means more complexity and increased investment.

It doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, we’ve found that by staying focused on relevancy instead of over-optimized, personalized strategies, SMB ecommerce brands can shatter the industry standard 2-3% conversion rates.

What are the winners doing differently?

Homing in on the most important segments – your top sources and most engaged shoppers. Ask yourself, what’s bringing people to your site? Identifying your top traffic sources, and using targeted displays can help thread the needle and ensure every visitor has a relevant experience. These targeted displays keep interest alive and mean the difference between a purchase or an exit.

**via The 2018 Privy Ecommerce Trends Report**

How should businesses better engage the visitors and convert them for sales?

Consistent engagement at all points in the path. Sending automated email flows can help keep the conversation going while encouraging customers to return to your site with new items in stock or new deals. And, for repeat visitors, it’s an easy reminder to purchase the items they’ve been eyeing. Before your customer leaves, create a display designed to pop-up if they show signs of exiting. Similarly, creating cart value-based offers, and sending cart abandonment emails can help push people to complete their purchase.

Our 2018 Ecommerce Trends Report showed that SMB eCommerce merchants face similar growth challenges to their larger retail counterparts – driving traffic to stores, engaging repeat customers, and increasing cart size. And yet, they remain optimistic about the year ahead.

In fact, over half of the SMB ecommerce merchants polled reported they plan to grow by more than 50% in 2018. That’s an impressive goal, but using the above, we’re confident they will be well on their way.

How has the definition of Customer Experience evolved over the years with new technology formats for marketing?

In October, Shopify reported more than 70% growth year-over-year. With more than 500,000 merchants on its platform, ecommerce is clearly exploding. On Privy sites alone, there were 3.2 billion consumer sessions on small- and medium-sized merchant sites in 2017. All this to say, customers have lots of options and expect an experience vastly different than years before.

In the past, the Ecommerce merchants were giving visitors more or less of the same web experience — a ‘one-size fits all’ approach for all visitors and overlooking when and how they got there. Today, merchants can provide a relevant experience to every visitor without adding complexity or a large investment.

The customer experience can be truly personalized with relevant messages. Ecommerce merchants can leverage targeted displays and messaging apps to connect with customers, and targeted email tactics to never lose a lead. Enabling relevancy is what will separate the winners from the losers in today’s crowded market.

Understanding each segment of your customer base, where and what is driving their interest and path to purchase, will help marketers craft a relevant message enabling higher conversion. Even for small merchants with smaller budgets, these strategies can be easily implemented by using behavioral data from shoppers to deliver a relevant customer experience that once seemed impossible 10 years ago.

How should SMB marketers identify the best-fit toolset to create a relevant experience for buyers?

What we find mostly is brands are so focused on changing one thing — driving more traffic to their site — that they forget about delivering an entire experience. If brands take a step back and really look at the path someone takes to get their site, they can then work to bring them relevancy.

Today, marketers are spending an extraordinary amount of time, money, and energy on a problem that’s really quite simple to solve.

Instead of investing thousands in the ‘shiny new object’ like chatbots or voice assistants, ecommerce brands can win by simply nailing the basics.

Don’t invest in tools that will only complicate things — there are lots of affordable options that get the job done.
Focus on one or two things that deliver a clear ROI, like onsite targeting or email nurturing. From there, you can connect the dots, and figure out what’s bringing visitors to your site.
Understanding who your customers are and what is driving the audience to your website will dramatically help in creating relevant experiences.

What tools and technologies are you keenly following this year? How do you prepare for an AI-centric technology-driven marketing ecosystem?

Ecommerce merchants might think they are offering personalized experiences, but they are really giving each visitor more or less of the same web experience. It’s easy to say AI and data science will be the saving grace for “personalization” in ecommerce. But the reality is that even those deploying advanced tactics, likely aren’t doing their best at the basics. It can be hard to ignore the shiny new SMB marketing objects that promise powerful and complex analytics and fully-optimized ecommerce capabilities.

Experience tells us to keep things simple. And the best platforms will do just that. The future of ecommerce lies in building a strong foundation that drives high-quality traffic and captures relevancy data on your top shoppers and most engaged visitors to boost conversion.

Also Read: Fight Fake News in Journalism: Media Intelligence, Your Best Ammunition

UnGagged TechBytes with Bastian Grimm, Director Organic Search, Peak Ace

Rohan Jagan

May 16, 2018

Bastian Grimm
Director Organic Search, Peak Ace

The much-awaited UnGagged conference is to be held in London from 11-13 June, 2018. Designed to uncover some of the biggest and most profitable opportunities in digital marketing, UnGagged features a host of speakers and experts who would give the latest on SEO and how to leverage it to boost your business. We spoke to Bastian Grimm, Director, Organic Search, Peak Ace to figure out the latest trends in mobile SEO and search.

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Could you tell us about your journey at Peak Ace?

I am the CEO and Director Organic Search at Peak Ace where I am overseeing SEO as well as Performance Content Marketing. Peak Ace is an international Performance Marketing agency based in Berlin, Germany. With more than 100 employees, we implement campaigns in over 20 languages at native speaker level and are among the fastest-growing technology companies in Germany. I started in software deployment back in the day and ended up online in 1999. I was building websites at the time and at some point, got annoyed about not having any visitors on those. Which was kind of my first touch point with search and actually SEO as well. I worked as an affiliate, moved in-house (among other things I worked for a company called Jamba/Jamster which sold mobile phone ringtones then; good old times!), went freelance again and now am heading Peak Ace AG.

How should brands prepare for Google’s Mobile-First Index? What strategy did Peak Ace adopt to prepare for this?

I’ve been talking about MFI for quite a while now; in fact, I just recently did a webinar together with DeepCrawl which has lots of information on the topic in general (recap is over here). I think the most important thing is to fully understand which setup you’re using (e.g. m. vs www, responsive or dynamic serving) and what the individual pros and cons of each setup are. Google has stated repeatedly that they’re not going to let you drop out of their results if you only have a desktop site for example – so no need to panic. But, say you are using a traditional mobile subdomain, you’d want to make sure that all relevant info is available on that m-subdomain as well. I’m not only talking about content per-se; also, often tags (e.g. canonical, hreflang), indexation directives or schema.org markup are missing. For responsive sites, that’s usually easier since it is the same code base. Whatever you choose or have, content and markup parity is crucial. If you want to implement some of the routines we use for testing, make sure to check this presentation.

What are the three key metrics that you believe marketers should track to measure the success of an SEO campaign?

Ultimately, it comes down to what’s most important for the individual business, I guess. Say it’s an ad-driven portal, then page views resulting from organic would be a solid metric, assisted by secondary metrics such as visits per session from organic. If you’re an online shop you certainly wouldn’t care about page views but rather about revenue, again based on your organic traffic – depending on the model, it can also be important to differentiate between new and existing registrations (say for subscription businesses).

I think it’s safe to say that only tracking rankings, search visibility or the amount of links is not sufficient anymore. Those can certainly be assisting metrics, but you should definitely make sure to tie them with real-world business metrics.

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What advice do you have for companies that seek to increase their critical rendering path optimization?

One of the most powerful concepts in web performance optimization is taking special care of your “critical rendering path”. Essentially, this is commonly referred to as the initial view (which is critical for any user since it’s the section of the website they see on their screen straight away), followed by all contents below the fold (which is not critical as you’d have to scroll down to see it). Thus, making the initial view load very fast directly implicates the perceived performance of your website. To do so, you need to remove as many render blocking elements as possible (such as JavaScript or CSS). Otherwise, the browser will have to wait for each of those files to come back before continuing the render.

To speed up your CSS delivery

To speed up your CSS delivery as much as you can, I’d recommend to:

Audit, clean (de-duplication, get rid of unused styles, etc.), and afterwards split your CSS into two parts: one for the “initial view” and the rest of the CSS for “below the fold”.
Use Critical (which is free) to help identify as well as generate the critical, required CSS info.
Inline the previously generated CSS for the initial view (yes, inline!).
Use rel=“preload“ and “loadCSS” to asynchronously load below the fold/site-wide CSS (a “noscript” tag will provide fall back for clients without JavaScript enabled).

By the way, there is a good reason why Google is inlining their entire CSS (on their search result pages): it’s way faster than making HTTP requests!

What are the three main takeaways that you think attendees will get from your talk at Ungagged London?

Same as last year, it’ll be a pretty wild ride through loads of things I’ve seen in SEO/search during the last twelve months – and based on this I’ll be trying to do some guesswork on what I think is coming up next. E.g., among the big topics last year, were my thoughts on a new SERP layout on mobile. Well, it wasn’t entirely spot on when I stated that we’d see almost only swiping in the future – but also not too far off; ditto for full HTTPs as well as performance for mobile sites being more important than ever. I don’t want to give too much away, but I’ll be sharing some really, really cool tech SEO stuff again – keynote-style, of course! ?

Thanks for chatting with us, Bastian.
Stay tuned for more insights on marketing technologies. To participate in our Tech Bytes program, email us at news@martechseries-67ee47.ingress-bonde.easywp.com

Register Now Use Promo Code – itech10 (for a 10% discount)

dunnhumby Acquires Aptaris to Bolster Customer Data Science in Retail

Sudipto Ghosh

May 16, 2018

dunnhumby Acquires Aptaris to Bolster Customer Data Science in Retail

dunnhumby’s Latest Acquisition Powers More Effective, Efficient Pricing and Promotions Leveraging Dunnhumby’s Customer Data Science

dunnhumby, a leading customer data science company, has announced it has acquired Aptaris Software, a leading enterprise marketing, and promotions management company. The acquisition is the culmination of a strategic partnership that embedded dunnhumby customer data science into the Aptaris solution, providing retailers with the only end-to-end promotions management platform in the market.

Currently, Aptaris connects the entire marketing and promotions management process for seamless omnichannel customer communications.

The acquisition will help retailers everywhere to more effectively compete in the new data-driven economy by leveraging dunnhumby’s leadership and expertise in customer data science.

At the time of this announcement, Guillaume Bacuvier, CEO of dunnhumby, said, “We are extremely pleased to welcome the Aptaris team into the dunnhumby family after such a highly successful partnership. This acquisition is a pivotal step for us in our goal to be the world’s leading customer data science company by enabling retailers around the globe to increase revenue and profits by delivering exceptional experiences for their customers.”

Guillaume added, “We look forward to using our synergies and combined assets to take our customer data science platform to the next level of innovation, and deliver greater value for our clients.”

Used by retailers and their suppliers, the dunnhumby Enterprise Promotions Management platform combines dunnhumby’s leading customer data science-driven forecasting with Aptaris’ innovative workflow and vendor management. The easy to use and a one-stop platform delivers better efficiencies at every stage of promotion management, including providing all the information needed to plan, deliver and measure every promotion within merchant and vendor teams. Many North American retailers have already implemented the platform including Associated Wholesale Grocers, Mitchell Grocery and Weis Markets.

With this acquisition, dunnhumby is further strengthening its positions as the global leader in Customer Data Science. It will be empowering businesses everywhere to compete and thrive in the modern data-driven economy.

Tom O’Reilly, CEO of Aptaris, said, “I believe this is a great opportunity to bring together two companies so closely aligned so that all of our clients have the tools and insights they need to better compete and thrive in today’s data-driven economy. I am looking forward to the next chapter of our new story.”

Tom O’Reilly is now serving as a strategic consultant for dunnhumby. William Morrell, Chief Technology Officer, Krista Gettle, SVP of Product Management and Delivery and John O’Reilly, SVP of Sales and Marketing will also join in key executive positions at dunnhumby. With the acquisition, dunnhumby also gains a team and office in Rochester, New York.

Aptaris streamlines systems, processes, and data – from the moment of deal initiation through implementation to settlement and post-promotion analysis. Retailer merchandising, marketing, advertising, and store operations departments work better together to quickly identify opportunities, improve communications, get more from budgets and drive profitability. In a world of fewer resources and growing complexity, Aptaris helps marketers do more with less. Aptaris supports national retailers, distributors, and consumer goods vendors.

With deep heritage and expertise in retail — one of the world’s most competitive markets, with a deluge of multi-dimensional data — dunnhumby today enables businesses all over the world, across industries, to be Customer First.

Currently, the dunnhumby Customer Science Platform is our unique mix of technology, software and consulting enabling businesses to increase revenue and profits by delivering exceptional experiences for their Customers – in-store, offline and online.

Influential and Oracle’s Moat Join Forces to Measure Social Media Influencer Campaigns

MTS Staff Writer

May 16, 2018

Influential and Oracle’s Moat Join Forces to Measure Social Media Influencer Campaigns

This Collaboration Incorporates Measurement Viewabilities and Metrics for Deeper Insights

Influential is an AI influencer technology and Developer Partner of IBM Watson. Influential and IBM Watson have co-created technologies which allow agencies and brands to use psychographic data in identifying influencers along with three first-to-market AI products. Influential, the leading social intelligence firm will work with Oracle’s Moat- a SaaS analytics measurement provider which is a part of the Oracle Data Cloud. The Oracle Moat and Influential will combine their abilities to deliver attention metrics and viewability on Influential’s platform. The collaboration includes Influential’s social media marketplace along with Moat’s viewability and attention metrics. This will help advertisers and marketers get deeper insights so as to assess their influencer campaign performance.

The video and display content across major social media platforms, especially for brands in various industries such as telecom, CPG, retail, entertainment and automotive — will be fuelled for Influential customers due to the collaboration with Moat’s measurement.

The insights will help brands in content optimization and in the addition of another layer of multivariate testing which will ultimately lower spending and increase viewable insights.

A classic example of the Influential methodology would be National Geographic’s show The Long Ride Home. In this show, Influential’s technology implementation made for some extremely interesting and impressive results. A post from an influencer which ranked 57 percent for on-screen percentage was higher than the baseline and it also had 65 percent more valuable and valid insights.

Also Read: Oracle’s Moat Is Now a LinkedIn Partner for Video Viewability and Analytics

Ryan Detert, CEO of Influential said, “The wild west of social media metrics will only be tamed with transparent data and accountability. With Oracle’s Moat, now brands are able to see third-party validation on the key metrics to measure success for all influencer campaigns.”

Jonah Goodhart, SVP of Oracle Data Cloud and Co-Founder of Moat said, “Our collaboration with Influential allows brands to reach the right audiences and arms them with metrics to validate the success of their influencer campaigns and creative content. The results show that consumers respond well to authentic branded content from trusted voices when correctly matched to the brand.”

Influential’s unique approach to using social data is followed to collect the best results. The 3-pronged system includes matching the best influencer and their content to a brand’s audience –and this is based on contextual, psychographic and demographic significance. All campaigns conducted by Influential go through a brand-safe gateway and it also provides robust recaps via third-party analytical parties. Influential runs campaigns for Fortune 100 companies such as Nestlé, Coco-Cola, Kia Motors, General Motors, Sony Pictures, Fox TV and more.

InAuth Notices Significant Growth in Mobile Customer Base

MTS Staff Writer

May 16, 2018

InAuth Notices Significant Growth in Mobile Customer Base

InAuth Records 161% Growth in Mobile Transactions

InAuth is a pioneer in digital device intelligence for a mobile-connected world. The company announced it had seen tremendous next-generation technology growth in 2018.

One of the increasing investments for InAuth has been to make the mobile channel for InAuth customers more secure in the area of customer-facing applications. InAuth’s mobile customer base significantly grew in 2018. More consumers happen to be adopting the mobile-channel due to the increasing hike was seen in the growth of mobile transactions by InAuth. The number stands at 161%. These transactions include financial money movement, retail purchases, account openings, logins and person-to-person payments.

Also Read: YouAppi Says Future of Retail is Mobile in Digital Commerce

The emergences of new digital platforms are fuelling increased investments in mobile capabilities across varied sectors. This includes the growth of new commerce platforms that enable real-time payments, a growth of ride-sharing platforms and increased adoption of mobile payments in the retail sector.

Unfortunately, as mobile usage increases so does other fraudulent activities such as cyber-threats and malware. Companies must take strong stances and guard their users against any kind of malicious applications, fraud, velocity attacks and credential compromise.

“Today’s mobile-first approach presents users with advantages never experienced before. With the right security strategy, mobile customers benefit from interacting with the most secure channel, with far less friction, and with enhanced capabilities. InAuth’s InMobile platform is the foundation of that security strategy,” said Lisa Stanton, president, InAuth.

Also Read: Here’s How Marketers Can Avoid Brand Safety Violations

InAuth’s InMobile platform utilizes an easy-to-integrate SDK. It provides enhanced authentication through permanent mobile device identifications, security mechanisms for devices transacting through mobile applications and device integrity screening.

InAuth delivers the most advanced analytical capabilities possible to help organizations minimalize friction, limit risk and reduce fraud within all their digital channels combined. A safer digital transaction for all organizations in multiple industries is an ideal proposition which will enable companies to optimize on better revenue opportunities and compete effectively for rapid growth.

Interview with Peter Isaacson, Chief Marketing Officer, Demandbase

Sudipto Ghosh

May 16, 2018

Interview with Peter Isaacson, Chief Marketing Officer at Demandbase

[vc_wp_text]“The ABM Innovation Summit is an opportunity to network and share ideas, learn from each other, but mostly importantly, grow both the ABM community and ABM as a category.”

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[easy-profiles profile_twitter=”https://twitter.com/peisaacson” profile_linkedin=”https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterisaacson/”]

Tell us about your journey into the tech industry. How is SF’s tech ecosystem different from when you first started here?

I got my start in the tech industry while I was working at a New York advertising agency on the Compaq account. From there, I moved to the Bay Area to work at Adobe where my responsibilities ran the whole gamut of marketing, from advertising and brand marketing to field marketing and demand generation. I’ve been in the Bay Area for over two decades now and it’s been incredible to see the tech ecosystem evolve and grow. Having been through the dotcom bubble of the early 2000’s as well as the current boom of technology growth, I’ve seen multiples cycles of both rapid growth and consolidation. But what’s different in today’s tech landscape is the pace of innovation. With the rise of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, the massive amounts of data we have at our disposal, and the analytical power of data scientists and engineers, technology is making what was previously just a pipe dream a possibility.

How did you manage to make ABM Innovation Summit 2018 a must-attend event for B2B marketers?

This was our fifth ABM Innovation Summit and our best one yet, for several reasons. First, ABM as a category has grown rapidly over the past few years. The technology has gotten better, and as a result, adoption has skyrocketed. Secondly, the market has moved beyond the “why” to understanding “how to do ABM better” and this year’s conference addressed that need with the theme of “Get Real.” We had a stellar roster of real practitioners provide practical how-to advice on what has and hasn’t worked for them in their ABM journey. We also added a third level – “Expert” in addition to “Foundations” and “Advanced” – to our ABM certification. And finally, we’ve become pros at putting on conferences! With inspiring keynotes with tennis legend Billie Jean King and comedian Aasif Mandvi, and speakers from companies like Salesforce, Forrester, LinkedIn and others, add to that the great food and beautiful location on the waterfront in San Francisco, I couldn’t have asked for a better summit.

What is the biggest drive for you and your team to recreate success at every ABM Innovation Summit?

The ABM Innovation Summit is our seminal event each year that brings together over 1,000 B2B marketers from around the world. It’s an opportunity to network and share ideas, learn from each other, but mostly importantly, grow both the ABM community and ABM as a category.

How are data-driven branding strategies evolving with the maturity of AI/ML and Marketing Analytics?

As marketing technologies leverage AI and machine learning and become both more powerful and easier to use, marketers are increasingly embracing data-driven strategies. Measurement is the cornerstone of an ABM strategy and having accessible, easy-to-use tools that measure across the entire funnel will be instrumental in helping marketers scale and improve their efforts. Also, we see the actions that are based on AI becoming more and more automated. AI is great, but if it requires human intervention and decision making at the back end, it will slow everything down, and undermine the effectiveness of your programs. So triggering an automated action based on AI will become more and more standard.

What are your predictions on the ‘State of B2B Marketing’ platforms in 2018-2022?

In the next few years, we’ll continue to see B2B marketing platforms grow and flourish. We’ll see the pace of innovation skyrocket, with new companies and partnerships forming at every turn. It will be an exciting time for B2B marketing filled with creativity and improvement. It will also be a time of major consolidation. It’s already happening, with some small companies taking on even smaller companies, who just couldn’t get traction in a crowded landscape.

How should young sales and marketing professionals train themselves to master automation and sales intelligence tools?

Focus on the tools that will really impact your role and sign on for training sessions and tutorials, take advantage of your vendors’ Customer Success Managers, read up on tips and hacks, and talk to your peers and colleagues on how best to use these tools. And of course, practice makes perfect, so actually using the tools on a daily basis will naturally provide you with a solid understanding of how these tools work.

Tag the one person at the ABM Innovation Summit 2018, who has made big strides in the tech industry.

Pat Oldenburg, ServiceMax

Thank you Peter! That was fun and hope to see you back on MarTech Series soon.

[vc_tta_tabs][vc_tta_section title=”About Peter” tab_id=”1501785390157-b58e162d-0ae25a4b-c27aca64-108e51b0-80edaf37-bd3d357a-6c46d712-3b6865b3-5b4c”]

Peter is currently the CMO of Demandbase, a B2B marketing technology company focused on advertising and website personalization. Demandbase makes it possible for businesses to deliver personalized ads to people at specific companies across the web, and then help tailor the messages on their website to convert these companies to customers.

He has a strong marketing background with experience across consumer and enterprise marketing, product and corporate strategy, and brand strategy to demand generation programs.

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Demandbase, the leader in Account-Based Marketing (ABM), offers the only Artificial Intelligence-enabled, comprehensive ABM platform that spans Advertising, Marketing, Sales and Analytics. Our patented IP technology helps B2B businesses identify companies to target, market to them across the web and on their website, and close business faster. Enterprise leaders and high-growth companies such as Accenture, Adobe, DocuSign, GE, Salesforce and others use Demandbase to drive their ABM strategy and maximize their marketing performance.

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[mnky_heading title=”MarTech Interview Series” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fmartechseries-67ee47.ingress-bonde.easywp.com%2Fcategory%2Fmts-insights%2Finterviews%2F|||”]

The MTS Martech Interview Series is a fun Q&A style chat which we really enjoy doing with martech leaders. With inspiration from Lifehacker’s How I work interviews, the MarTech Series Interviews follows a two part format On Marketing Technology, and This Is How I Work. The format was chosen because when we decided to start an interview series with the biggest and brightest minds in martech – we wanted to get insight into two areas … one – their ideas on marketing tech and two – insights into the philosophy and methods that make these leaders tick.

Sabio Mobile Promotes Ashley Perkins to VP of East Coast Sales

MTS Staff Writer

May 16, 2018

Sabio Mobile Promotes Ashley Perkins to VP of East Coast Sales

Ashley Perkins Has Worked in the Mobile Industry for Nearly a Decade with a Strong Focus on Travel, CPG, Finance, and Entertainment Verticals

Sabio Mobile, a leading mobile advertising company that developed App Science, the first predictive AI for mobile data, is pleased to announce it has promoted Ashley Perkins to VP of East Coast Sales. In her new position, Perkins will oversee Sabio Mobile’s New York sales team and spearhead the company’s expansion into new east coast markets, including Washington DC, Boston, and Atlanta. Perkins will report to Sabio Mobile’s CEO, Aziz Rahimtoola.

“Ashley has played an integral role in growing Sabio Mobile’s business into a mobile advertising industry leader,” said Rahimtoola. “She is an amazing leader with tremendous industry expertise that will help propel Sabio Mobile to new heights. We look forward to the positive impact Ashley’s continued contributions will have on the strategic direction and growth of our company.”

Also Read: Sabio Mobile Adds to its Growing West Coast Team, Hires Heads of Finance and Product Innovation

Perkins stated, “Sabio Mobile is shaking up the advertising world with AppScience®, our proprietary machine learning platform. I’m excited by the opportunity for more mobile advertisers and marketers in new markets to benefit and effectively transform their businesses with our predictive business intelligence technology.”

Sabio Mobile’s AppScience is the proprietary methodology of evaluating diverse data sets to uncover trends and patterns that allow for predictions in consumer behaviour and purchase patterns.

Also Read: Sabio Mobile announces Validated Publishers: A data-driven approach to define “premium”

Rahimtoola added, “It’s why we say, ‘You are what you App.’ Our targeting is based on the analysis of diverse data sets such as the users’ downloaded apps, a strong indicator of a person’s preferences and affinities. Through the predictive capabilities of AppScience we’re able to identify your customer and deliver your ads at the start of their purchase journey, keeping you steps ahead of your competition.”

Perkins joined Sabio Mobile in 2016 as Director of East Coast Sales. She has worked in the mobile industry for nearly a decade with a strong focus on travel, CPG, finance, and entertainment verticals. Prior to joining Sabio Mobile, Perkins spent over five years at Tremor Video where she managed a portfolio of travel, technology, insurance, retail, health, and education accounts. She is an active member of She Runs It, formerly AWNY, dedicated to encouraging and promoting women’s role in advertising.

ON24 Names Ian Halifax Chief Financial Officer as Company Accelerates Growth

PRNewswire

May 16, 2018

ON24 Names Ian Halifax Chief Financial Officer as Company Accelerates Growth

With More Than Two Decades of Public and Private Company Experience, Ian Halifax to Lead Global Finance and Operations Teams

On the heels of unprecedented growth, ON24, the leading technology provider redefining the way businesses engage, announced Ian Halifax has joined the company as its Chief Financial Officer. He brings vast accounting, financial, and operational experience across a range of public and private companies to the ON24 executive team.

“Our mission at ON24 is to help marketers across the globe turn engagement into data that drives revenue,” says ON24 CEO and Co-Founder Sharat Sharan. “A strong leadership team is fundamental to achieving our vision, and Ian brings tremendous experience to scale our growth. I’m thrilled to have him on board for our next chapter.”

Halifax most recently served as the CFO of Tintri, where he successfully led the storage and enterprise cloud management company through its IPO in June 2017. He also served as CFO at Wind River Systems, a publicly-traded company providing embedded operating systems software and related technologies, where he drove significant increases in revenue and profitability prior to its acquisition by Intel. Halifax also served as a public-company CFO at Micromuse and Macrovision (now TiVO).

Also Read: ON24 Grows New Bookings by More Than 50% YoY for an Unprecedented Fourth Quarter

“Every single organization today is looking at new ways in which data-driven decisions can improve their business impact. ON24 offers a unique solution to this challenge by helping marketers engage their audiences and turn that engagement into insights,” says Halifax. “As the only platform built for live, on-demand and personalized engagement, I think there’s an enormous market opportunity for ON24. I’m excited to help build on the company’s strong legacy to drive momentum in the future.”

Halifax will lead all of ON24’s global finance and operations teams from the company’s headquarters in San Francisco. A native of the United Kingdom, Halifax earned his BA from the University of York and his MBA from Henley Management College. He’s also a Certified Public Accountant and Certified Management Accountant.

In addition to Halifax, ON24 also hired Alex Saleh as VP of Sales Strategy and Operations in early May. Saleh will be responsible for helping the company scale world-class operations and enablement capability across its global sales function. Saleh most recently acted in an advisory role to the CEO and CRO at DemandBase helping them shape go-to-market strategy and sales operations capability. He has also held leadership roles at Birst and SuccessFactors.

Recommended Read: ON24 Webinar World 2018 Comes To Hyde Park, Sydney

Marketo Announces Partnership With The Pedowitz Group to Provide Marketing Services to Mid-Market Manufacturers

PRNewswire

May 16, 2018

Marketo Announces Partnership With The Pedowitz Group to Provide Marketing Services to Mid-Market Manufacturers

Marketo and The Pedowitz Group Will Provide Pre-Configured Software and Services to Help Manufacturers Create More Personalized Marketing Efforts

Marketo Inc., the leading provider of engagement marketing software and solutions, announced a strategic go-to-market partnership with The Pedowitz Group, a global revenue marketing company. The new alliance will help to operationalize business accountability, digital transformation, and the customer experience for mid-market manufacturers to transform their marketing organizations.

“The Pedowitz Group has consistently been a valuable partner, helping hundreds of Marketo customers succeed in their transformational journeys,” said Ted Purcell, senior vice president and general manager, North America SMB field operations, sales management, Marketo. “Their industry experience in manufacturing, combined with our Marketo Engagement Platform will help manufacturers use marketing as a differentiator to respond to and successfully compete in today’s digital, customer-driven world.”

Also Read: Marketo and TCS Join Hands to Offer Improved Marketing Services across the Globe

Through this partnership, The Pedowitz Group and Marketo will provide software, services, campaigns, and reports that will help to increase the rate of adoption and return on investment for manufacturing marketers. With a goal of driving results and accelerated growth, the alliance combines Marketo’s strength serving vertical markets and The Pedowitz Group’s proven track record in revenue marketing transformation.

A highlight of the partnership will be a special pricing structure that includes free implementation, expert services, and software licensing designed to maximize technology adoption and return on investment.

Also Read: The Pedowitz Group is a Revvie Finalist for 2018 Partner of the Year Award

Jeff Pedowitz, president and chief executive officer of The Pedowitz Group said, “After working with more than 150 global manufacturers, we have found a significant transformation underway. Manufacturers are rapidly adopting a customer focus, new sales models, new service models, and digital technology. As the category-defining, global leader in revenue marketing, we are delighted to be Marketo’s strategic go-to-market partner to serve manufacturers as they continue their journey of pioneering change through intelligent marketing solutions.”

LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Matched Audiences to Integrate with Pega CRM

Sudipto Ghosh

May 16, 2018

LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Matched Audiences to Integrate with Pega CRM

Pega Partners with LinkedIn Sales and Marketing Solutions to Better Engage Potential Buyers on Pega CRM

Leading technology provider for customer engagement, Pegasystems, is now fortifying its CRM suite. In the latest move to empower marketing and sales teams with better insights into buyers journeys, Pega has partnered with LinkedIn. The company announced an agreement with LinkedIn Sales Navigator and LinkedIn Matched Audiences. The two powerful buyer insights tools will now integrate with Pega Sales Automation and Pega Marketing software. With access to LinkedIn capabilities within Pega CRM applications, Pega clients now have a convenient and powerful way to connect with potential buyers, inform their sales and marketing strategies, and close more deals.

Now Connect Predominant Business Networking Community Inside Pega CRM

At the time of this announcement, Don Schuerman, CTO and VP of Product Marketing at Pegasystems, said, “The proliferation of digital channels makes today’s buyer a constantly moving target for marketers and salespeople. Pega helps engage prospects with the next-best action in real time – even as they jump from channel to channel,” said

Don added, “Our integration with LinkedIn gives Pega clients a valuable option to connect into the predominant business networking community inside Pega’s leading CRM software.”

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is available today within Pega Sales Automation, while LinkedIn Matched Audiences will be available within Pega Marketing by the end of 2018. The integrations will be demonstrated live at the PegaWorld annual user conference held 3-6 June 2018, at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

LinkedIn and Pega CRM Transform Marketing and Sales Campaigns

LinkedIn Sales Navigator and LinkedIn Matched Audiences tap into the power of LinkedIn’s 560+ million member network to help businesses find and build relationships with prospects and customers through social selling and marketing.

Smart sellers and marketers regularly turn to LinkedIn to understand and engage the complex matrix of decision makers at targeted organizations. Pega clients can now view LinkedIn profiles and engage buyers via native LinkedIn capabilities within Pega’s leading customer relationship management (CRM) sales and marketing applications. Pega software uses the AI-powered Pega Customer Decision Hub to analyze customer interactions with brands in real time and suggest the next-best action to take with each targeted prospect on LinkedIn.

Amplified Productivity for Pega Sales Automation Customers

Pega Sales Automation users can be more productive with integrated LinkedIn Sales Navigator capabilities that enable them to —

Grow contacts by reviewing relevant LinkedIn profiles and organizational matrixes within Pega Sales Automation and saving leads for later use.
Stay up to date on prospect changes by viewing LinkedIn profiles and feed updates directly on Pega contact profile pages.
Send LinkedIn InMails to prospects from Pega Sales Automation using real-time icebreakers such as noting if they were mentioned in the news.

Pega Marketing Laser-Focused on Right Audiences Driven by AI-based Insights

Practitioners using Pega Marketing will be able to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their paid media strategies by tapping into LinkedIn Matched Audiences capabilities to–

Identify the right audiences on LinkedIn with Pega AI capabilities based on a customer’s propensity to buy.
Target with contextually relevant ads at the optimal time on LinkedIn using Pega’s AI-powered recommendations.
Update LinkedIn audiences and adjust content and offers in real time based on prospects’ latest interactions with the brand.

Pega provides a unified CRM suite of customer engagement applications for marketing, sales, and customer service powered by its AI-driven decision hub. Built on Pega Platform, Pega’s applications enable clients to constantly anticipate customers’ changing needs and provide personalized next-best-action recommendations throughout the customer journey. By engaging customers with the right message, at the right time, on any channel, Pega clients increase customer satisfaction while enhancing customer lifetime value.

LinkedIn will be the official sponsor of the Social Media Lounge in the Tech Pavilion during PegaWorld. In addition, LinkedIn senior director Mike Weir will participate in a panel discussion at the event on Tuesday, 5 June, titled “The CRM Partner Ecosystem.”

Confirmit Announces 2018 ACE Award Winners

Sudipto Ghosh

May 16, 2018

Confirmit Announces 2018 ACE Award Winners

At 2018 ACE Award, Confirmit Clients Were Recognized for Success in Customer Experience Programmes and Commitment to Driving Business Change and ROI

Today, Confirmit has announced the winners of the 2018 Confirmit ACE (Achievement in Customer Excellence) Awards. Established in 2005, the annual award programme recognizes Confirmit clients who demonstrate proven excellence and innovation in their Customer Experience programmes. Confirmit is a leading global solutions provider for Customer Experience, Voice of the Employee, and Market Research.

About ACE Award: A Quick Overview

The ACE (Achievement in Customer Excellence) Awards programme was established in 2005 to recognize outstanding achievement in customer excellence. Receiving a Confirmit ACE Award is a distinct honor that demonstrates both rigorous application of customer experience processes and outstanding performance as measured by those processes. All Confirmit customers are eligible for Confirmit ACE Awards for their company, business units, or segments of a business.

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This year’s programme boasted a competitive applicant pool from a wide range of industries and countries around the world, including Australia, Ireland, Norway, Spain, the UK and the United States. This year, the awards included two new categories, B2B and Multi-Channel, introduced to highlight key areas of focus for Confirmit’s clients.

Several of this year’s winning companies have also been recognized with the prestigious Judges’ Choice Award, which recognizes companies that exhibit exceptional results from their Customer Experience programme. These results include:

A 49-point increase in Net Promoter Score® in 12 months
94 percent policy retention rate for an insurer
13 percent reduction in customer retention costs
250,000 Euros revenue increase

The panel of judges was impressed by the range of submissions this year which demonstrated the scope of the programmes that Confirmit’s clients are running. Philadelphia Insurance has used the Voice of the Customer to implement dozens of company-wide process changes, targeted customer initiatives, and launched marketing campaigns that are driving real results. At the other end of the spectrum, the panel was keen to recognize the work of RBUP, whose submission covered their work in using the feedback and research to improve the quality of mental health services in Norway. The judges felt this was a very different, but extremely inspiring and innovative, application of the technology.

Winning organizations include —

Category: Voice of the Customer

Judges’ Choice: Amadeus, Cognita, Erie Insurance, Telegraph Media Group

Winners:

AIG Travel, ANSYS, Asurion, Authorize.net, Cybersource, Deltek, Empire Today, Grainger, NCR: DI University, NCR: Digital Insight Software Solutions, HMS, Infor, McKesson, Moore Medical, OpenText, Philadelphia Insurance Companies, PODS Enterprises LLC, Quest, Selective Insurance, Siemens Building Technologies, The Hanover Insurance Group, Virgin Money, Visma, Waters Corporation, Wyndham Vacation Resorts Asia Pacific

Category: Voice of the Employee

Judges’ Choice: CSAA

Winners:

Accenture, Cognita, ENGAGE with Moss Bros

Category: Business Impact

Judges’ Choice: Bupa Global, HMS

Winners:

ANSYS, Kongsberg Digital, The Hanover Insurance Group, Virgin Money, Visma, Wyndham Vacation Resorts Asia Pacific

Category: B2B

Judges’ Choice: Philadelphia Insurance Companies, W5 with AIB Merchant Services

Winners:

Amadeus, B2B International, Grainger, HMS, OpenText, Visma

Category: Innovation

Judges’ Choice: RBUP

Winners:

Amadeus, CSAA, HMS, Philadelphia Insurance Companies, Rockbridge Associates Inc., W5 with DEASP

Category: Multi-Channel

Judges’ Choice: Virgin Money

Winners:

Cognita, Grainger, Erie Insurance, Wyndham Vacation Resorts Asia Pacific

Ken Østreng, President and CEO of Confirmit, said, “Increasingly, we are seeing the Voice of the Customer become more prioritized within companies and truly integrated within their business models. This year, the judges noted a significant increase in the number of companies who are able to demonstrate real business change as a result of their programmes, making this the most competitive awards yet. Our clients’ dedication to delivering positive customer experiences, changing business culture, and generating significant Return on Investment is highly encouraging, and we are thrilled to help them deliver those results.”

Currently, Confirmit is the world’s leading SaaS vendor for multi-channel Customer Experience, Employee Engagement, and Market Research solutions.

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About ACE Award: A Quick Overview

Category: Voice of the Customer

Judges’ Choice: Amadeus, Cognita, Erie Insurance, Telegraph Media Group

Winners:

Category: Voice of the Employee

Judges’ Choice: CSAA

Winners:

Category: Business Impact

Judges’ Choice: Bupa Global, HMS

Winners:

Category: B2B

Judges’ Choice: Philadelphia Insurance Companies, W5 with AIB Merchant Services

Winners:

Category: Innovation

Judges’ Choice: RBUP

Winners:

Category: Multi-Channel

Judges’ Choice: Virgin Money

Winners:

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